‘We want to be known as racers.’ NASCAR drivers hope to improve packed racing in Cup Series
Denny Hamlin earned a dominant victory in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville.
There were 10 cautions throughout the Cook Out 400, most of which came during the first three-quarters of the race. Hamlin got his advantage during the middle of the race and held off Christopher Bell, Bubba Wallace and the rest of the field for his first victory of the season.
While the race was clean late as Hamlin drove away from his competitors, it was particularly difficult to pass, drivers said after the race. Wallace had been running in second place before falling behind Bell on a restart stemming from a caution, and he wasn’t able to benefit from any long-run speed as he ultimately finished in P3.
“Just gets stuck with this package,” Wallace said. “Still need work as a whole, as an industry, to get this package better. But all in all, it is what it is.”
‘We don’t want to be known as wreckers’
The final 74 of 400 laps were green Sunday, and Bell feels it’s reflective of the stronger Cup Series drivers.
NASCAR’s lower-series races sent the sport’s social media circles ablaze earlier in the weekend, as double-digit cautions overshadowed Friday night’s action-packed Truck Series race — won by Kannapolis native Daniel Hemric — and a wild overtime Xfinity Series race on Saturday.
The race Saturday evening needed 15 cautions, and only 154 of 256 laps were run under the green flag. It marked the most yellow flags in a race in 18 years, and Austin Hill earned Richard Childress Racing its 100th Xfinity Series win after leading just one lap.
“Our cars are tanks now,” Bell said. “The Xfinity (Series) cars are a lot more fragile than what we have today. It just comes down to respect, and whenever you have respect in a race car and respect for your competitors, the outcome is a lot different. We want to be known as racers; We don’t want to be known as wreckers.”
Hamlin calls for NASCAR to step in
While the Cup Series race ran much cleaner, its winner called on the sport’s sanctioning body to take action.
Hamlin teased that he’ll have more to say on Monday’s episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, but the personality-filled driver noted the importance of NASCAR getting involved following what transpired at the ends of this weekend’s races.
“I think the sanctioning body needs to get involved a little bit,” Hamlin said. “We’ll talk about it a little bit (Monday), but I certainly think the sanctioning body needs to get involved and step up on egregious things. It’s continuing to ramp up, and we’re seeing this stuff — it used to only happen on green-and-white checkereds, and this place, it seemed like inside 20 (laps) to go, people would lose their minds.
“And then those guys (Saturday) did it with 50 (laps) to go, just absolutely screaming at each other. It was horrible driving by most of those people out there, and it’s just not a good look. You shouldn’t be able to wipe someone out egregiously. We have a black flag for a reason, and I think we should start using it.”
This story was originally published March 31, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘We want to be known as racers.’ NASCAR drivers hope to improve packed racing in Cup Series."
