Recently rumors started to rise that 23XI may buy a few more charters to increase their charters from two to three or even four (the maximum). Charters were introduced in 2016 by the NASCAR and the Race Team Alliance to reward permanent team holders for their long-term commitments towards the series. Currently, 36 charters are distributed across three dozen teams. Now the team’s co-owner Denny Hamlin has given his views on it.
23XI Racing was formed in 2021 with Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan as its co-owners. They made a huge progress last year when both Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick made it to the playoffs. The team has always shown aspirations to grow further and now with their mega race shop, Airspeed, they are in a position to finally do it. Hamlin admitted that the team hasn’t decided on buying a new charter as there are lot of uncertainty over the regulation changes NASCAR is going make on the team ownership.
Everything is just kind of hanging on waiting to see what Jim [France] decides to do Because you’re somewhat placing a bet that NASCAR’s not going to blow this whole thing up and make awful decisions that would negatively impact our future as a team or their future as NASCAR. Denny Hamlin said in an interview with SportsBusinessJournal
The 43-year-old was skeptical about NASCAR’s leadership going into the future. NASCAR’s current CEO, Jim France has received backlash from several team owners and principals for his recent decisions that have ramped up the sport entirely. This has made the JGR driver weary of investing more in his team and pushed him away from buying another charter for the foreseeable future. Hamlin is also being cautious because a new Charter will cost them a huge some considering Spire Motorsports recently spend $40 million on one.
Denny Hamlin gives an insight into how he has had to adapt to the Next-Gen cars
Since the adaptation of Next-gen racecars in the stock racing perspective, several drivers have had to make changes in their driving styles to adapt to the new beasts. Moreover, Hamlin is also one of them and has had quite trouble adapting to the 7th gen cars.
In a recent podcast, the 52-time Cup series race winner explained how the newer machinery was quite peculiar. The Next-Gen cars have lower amounts of power and increased drag due to the increase in downforce. This has made these cars quite slower and favors a different driving style than the previous generation cars.
These cars…with having so much drag, so little horsepower, getting off the brake pedal. I’m always just barely on that thing just trying to roll as much speed as I can but just really changing my style to be more momentum-based. Denny Hamlin said in Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour Podcast
Despite such problems, Hamlin has aced such cars with his recent wins in the Cup series. Subsequently, he would be looking to secure more wins down the line to gather points for the regular season championship.
More must-reads: