Denny Hamlin explains why Texas Motor Speedway has so many cautions

Denny Hamlin broke down why the NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway had multiple cautions. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin revealed that the “track profile” was the biggest issue during the race.

“It’s very flat [Turn] 1 and 2,” Hamlin said. “So if you get down close to somebody, you don’t give them much room, contact can be made easily. Off of Turn 2 is a very flat corner. So typically, the characteristics of the car is that you’ll lose the front nose. Well, if you have someone right on the outside of you, and we saw this with Carson Hocevar and [Ryan] Preece.

“Preece is on the outside of Carson Hovecar. Carson’s already in a vulnerable part of the racetrack where his car is starting to lose front grip because the track is flattening out. Preece is right there on his outside dumping air on his spoiler. Carson’s car just takes off right. Just flat takes off and it pinches Preece into the wall.”

Denny Hamlin shares more on Texas race

“We could go through every wreck and talk about how the track profile and aerodynamics for the NextGen car causes the wrecks in some sort of way,” Hamlin added. “None of these wrecks are intentional, it’s just you can get in these pockets of air where it’s just really really hard to control.”

Sunday’s race featured 12 cautions for 73 laps. One of those cautions came on Lap 75 when Hamlin’s No. 11 car caught on fire.

But do the 12 cautions make Texas Motor Speedway a bad track? “It does challenge you. It’s a very challenging track,” Hamlin said on the podcast. “The banking is more in three and four than it is in one and two. So, to have a car that is optimized in one style of banking versus another, it’s extremely difficult. You’re not going to get it perfect in both. You usually try to pick and choose where you think you’ll make passes that weekend, and set your car up for that. … It doesn’t make it a bad track. I think you know, if it was one car length wider, you’d really have a great racetrack. But I think it’s, you know, it’s coming into its own.”

On3’s Steve Samra contributed to this story.