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Denny Hamlin calls for one major change at Bristol in light of tire wear, wild caution stat

Brian Jones Profile Picby: Brian Jones09/16/25brianjones_93
Denny Hamlin Bristol
Randy Sartin-Imagn Images

Denny Hamlin has shared his thoughts on Bristol after competing at the track in a NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race on Saturday night. On the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin suggested that Bristol should make one big change going forward.

“If they’re going to have these types for races back at Bristol, they need to re-insert the scoreboards that they took out there,” Denny Hamlin said. “They used to have them over in Turn 3 and Turn 1. We had scoreboards. Underneath that big old Jumbotron, there was a scroll ticker of LED boards. They took those out, too. I guess when things just fail or die, they take them out.”

Hamlin said this because he wasn’t sure where he was running during the race. He then added, “There was just so many pit stops, there were so many laps under caution.” Hamlin then revealed a crazy stat from the Bristol race.

Denny Hamlin shares thoughts on Joe Gibbs Racing in the NASCAR Playoffs

“I saw where there was over two hours of run time under caution,” the three-time Daytona 500 winner said. “We ran a lot of caution. …There was so, so many yellow flags. It’s hard to get in a rhythm, and then it just kept mixing up the tire strategy, and then you would run out of tires.”

When the Bristol race came to an end, Hamlin earned a P31 finish. That’s not great, but Hamlin is still in a good position to win a NASCAR Cup Series title as he advanced to the Round of 8 of the playoffs and is on top of the playoff standings.

Hamlin may have had a rough outing at Bristol, but his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Christopher Bell, won the race. The first round of the NASCAR playoffs was a success for Joe Gibbs Racing, as Bell won at Bristol, Hamlin won at Gateway, and Chase Briscoe won at Darlington.

But does that mean the team is in line for a title? “We reset every round,” Hamlin stated. “We reset every round. That was the first thing [Bob] Pockrass asked me after the race. ‘Surely, the championship runs through JGR.’ The championship runs through Phoenix. Doesn’t run through JGR. It runs through Phoenix. It’s one race, and anything can happen. Anything at all.”