Dale Earnhardt Jr. Is Not Buying Denny Hamlin's Comment

NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin raised some eyebrows with a comment he made about the cost of running a NASCAR team.

On the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin put the cost of joining the upcoming "Run What You Brung" rules package for the upcoming All-Star Race at around $2 million.

Via Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin:

“We’ve been very transparent in the fact that this car cost $300,000,” Hamlin said. “Do the math real quick. If I put my three cars on the racetrack and just to build this wild, illegal car, I’m going to destroy it and now I lose one more car out of my fleet. I only get seven cars per door number. So, that’s three cars that are wiped out of my fleet that I’m not going to get a replacement for because I’m not going to get a replacement car if the car has damage to it if you wreck it. You have to show NASCAR that it’s wrecked, bent or whatever and you need another chassis. I can’t afford to lose that out of my rotation.

“We used to have 14 cars, now we’re down to seven. The whole cost-cutting thing was to shorten up how many cars we have in our stable. Can you ask for another chassis? Sure, but I’m gonna spend $1 million just on parts and pieces. We haven’t even developed anything yet. So, just in parts and pieces to replace all this sh*t we’re gonna modify, we’re gonna spend a sh*t ton of money. And it only pays $1 million to win. It’s paid $1 million to win for 30 years. It’s not that cool anymore. Even if one of my cars won, I don’t see this as even remotely breakeven proposition.”

But that number Hamlin proposed hasn't sat well with some of other NASCAR stars, including Dale Earnhardt Jr. On Tuesday’s episode of his Dale Jr. Download podcast, Dale Jr. dismissed the price as too high. 

Dale Jr. seemed to believe that Hamlin was inflating the price of the car in order to "make a point," possibly about the winning purse being too small.

“That’s overstating it,” Earnhardt said. “I think it would cost the teams some money, for sure, but not $2 million. I just don’t believe it. I think that is just an excuse to say, ‘Yeah, this is why we didn’t want to do it.’ And I think he’s inflating the cost to make a point. Will it cost money? He’s already mad about the damn purse being $1 million for 30 years. He said that over and over. That’s fine, that’s a great argument. I think that race should pay $3 million to the winner. The purse is absolutely a reasonable argument; he’s got a valid point.”