Denny Hamlin Questions Inclusion of Superspeedways in NASCAR’s In-Season Tournament: ‘It’s Not Good Strategy’

The first round of NASCAR’s maiden in-season tournament concluded at the EchoPark Speedway last weekend. Most notably, the Stage 2 wreck took out nearly all the important competitors from contention for the $1 million prize. This has left Denny Hamlin questioning the promotion’s choice to kick things off at a superspeedway.

Drivers who saw their day end after the massive pile-up included Hamlin himself, Kyle Larson, and Joey Logano. On a recent episode of Actions Detrimental, the Joe Gibbs Racing veteran expressed his belief that this can’t be good to increase fan engagement since people aren’t going to be interested in the tournament if none of the best are competing.

12 drivers have won a race so far this season. Of them, only Chase Elliott remains in contention to win the tournament. Hamlin said, “This is the unpredictability of putting us on a speedway race. It’s why I’m so against it being in the playoffs. It’s why I’m so against it being the start of our bracket. They knocked out seven of the top eight guys in points.”

Hamlin used the examples of the NCAA and the WWE to make his case that people would simply not be interested if their favorite drivers aren’t in the mix. However, he also expressed awareness of the reality that who remains and who gets knocked out cannot be scripted when it comes to motorsports. “If you had to pick, if NASCAR is like, ‘How do we get people engaged?’ It’s probably not a good strategy to knock out all your top guys,” Hamlin continued. So, if not for most of the winners, who remains in the tournament?

The drivers who are still in contention for the $1 million prize money

Heading into Atlanta, 32 drivers stood to win the ultimate prize. At the end of the weekend, 16 still stood. These 16 drivers have now been seeded against each other and will race next in Chicago.

Brad Keselowski will go up against Ty Dillon, Elliott will race against John Hunter Nemechek, and Alex Bowman will race against Bubba Wallace. The other matchups are Ryan Preece vs Noah Gragson, Tyler Reddick vs Carson Hocevar, Ty Gibbs vs A.J. Allmendinger, Erik Jones vs Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Chris Buescher vs Zane Smith.

Eight drivers from this lot will progress to the next round based on their results in the Chicago Street Course. From there, they will race at Sonoma and Dover before winding things up at Indianapolis.