Denny Hamlin explains why NASCAR wants ‘as many cars as possible’ on screen at once

Denny Hamlin took some time to explain why some NASCAR broadcasts look the way they do, for better or worse.

During the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin elaborated on why NASCAR’s broadcast partners want “as many cars as possible” on the screen at one time, which can take away from the individual battles on the track at times.

“It’s definitely proving what the drivers have been asking for, which is more off-throttle time. We’ve been, I’ve been in the sport for 20 years. We keep asking for it. They keep reducing the off-throttle time, and the passing becomes more and more difficult. But that is because, head offices down in Daytona in the headquarters, they want more cars to be on the screen at one time,” Hamlin explained. “They want you to believe that that car could pass that car. They don’t care if they actually do.

“They just want their — you to be on the edge of your seat, of maybe you’ll get them, maybe you won’t. I’ve definitely been told that, that they just want more cars on the screen.”

That’s a pretty fascinating tidbit that explains a ton about what we’ve seen during certain broadcasts over the last couple of seasons. Regardless, Hamlin believes last weekend’s race at Bristol could be an example of that theory not working for the decision-makers down in Daytona.

“Watching the race back and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m gonna blow the tires off this thing.’ I was watching myself go through the lapped lapped cars and I’m like, ‘God, dang.’ You know, I’m just driving way more aggressively than everyone else. But it just hung on. It hung on. We didn’t know like, ‘Is the No. 11’s light switch gonna go off like a light, and then the No. 19,’ but I think at the end of the race, if you look at our lap times, they dropped like a rock the last four laps,” Hamlin stated. “Our cars went turned off, as Kevin Harvick says, the same lap. They turned off together. So as I was slowing down, he was slowing down too, because we have nothing left. But it was it was crazy. It was so crazy.”

The final battle between Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. at Bristol was exciting television, and an example of why less is sometimes more during the broadcast. We’ll see if there’s any adjustments to the way races are put to television and the product continues to change moving forward.