Denny Hamlin says NASCAR won’t hold championship at SMI tracks

Denny Hamlin spilled some tea regarding where NASCAR can and can’t hold their championship weekend in the future.

With Homestead on the docket for this weekend, the question of whether the circuit should return to Miami for their championship weekend has bubbled to the surface once again. Currently Phoenix is the host of the festivities, but NASCAR originally planned to rotate the site of their finale, before sticking with the desert over the last couple of seasons.

During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin thought about Las Vegas as a contender for the all-important weekend, but quickly doused his excitement, for a fascinating reason.

“I didn’t think about that, but I think that certainly it could. Vegas could do it. The weather would be fine,” explained Hamlin. “Not going to happen. SMI track. This is the red tape that people don’t know about, that you’re just not going to get around.

“NASCAR owns the championship date. It will happen at a NASCAR-owned track.”

Of course, SMI — or Speedway Motorsports, LLC, owns a number of tracks on NASCAR’s schedule, including Las Vegas, Atlanta, Bristol, Charlotte, Texas, Dover and Kentucky. Those are some pretty awesome tracks, so it’s a shame NASCAR won’t hold their finale at any of them, but Hamlin isn’t giving up hope.

“I think they could make a deal, but this is the politics of NASCAR,” added Hamlin. “You know, you want to own the championship date, because you get good ratings, great fan turnout, which means a lot of ticket sales, concession sales, parking, camping, all that stuff. So yeah, one would have to concede to the other, and then have to make a cash offer, to get it.

“But Vegas certainly is a race track and a city that you would be okay with it being part of the championship weekend.”

Regardless, Hamlin realizes that there aren’t an unlimited number of options, due to the timing of NASCAR’s championship weekend.

“There’s not, because when you race to November, you go from winter to winter basically, you limit your options,” dictated Hamlin. “If our championship ended in September, like it probably should or in October, then yeah, you’ve got absolutely more options, for sure.”

It remains to be seen if NASCAR decides to move their championship weekend out of Phoenix in the future, but a deal with SMI could certainly spice things up moving forward, and Denny Hamlin would love to see it.