Denny Hamlin shuts down 'shill' argument surrounding NASCAR fans: 'Made that abundantly clear'

Denny Hamlin isn’t buying the argument that fans would tune out if a driver clinched a championship before the last race of the season. He has seen the numbers from the fan council surveys that NASCAR has sent out in recent years.

Hamlin said that fans “don’t care about points as much as they care about who wins a particular race.” He believes fans have made that “abundantly clear.”

“There’s been a million surveys, but the fans have absolutely spoken in their fan council survey that NASCAR sends out that they don’t care about points as much as they care about who wins a particular race. They made that abundantly clear,” Hamlin said on Monday’s Actions Detrimental podcast. “So, the whole argument that some of the shills are making is that, ‘Oh, well you don’t want someone clinching early, people will tune out.’ That is absolutely not true. People will tune in to watch Chase [Elliott], and [Kyle] Larson, and the popular drivers.”

Hamlin’s comments were in response to Brad Keselowski‘s tweet following Sunday’s Round of 12 finale at the Charlotte ROVAL. Keselowski took issue with the continued focus on drivers battling for playoff transfer spots while racing mid-pack, as opposed to talking about winners.

“Clear as day, not enough talk about winning and winners (star power) but covering 15th for known elimination is easier for media storylines,” Keselowski wrote. “Fans are voting with their eyeballs and it’s definitively a net loss for the sport vs full season format. Now is the time to fix this.”

Denny Hamlin calls out issue with Round of 12 finale at the ROVAL

Sunday’s race was a good example of that. Shane van Gisbergen dominated the race, but much of the broadcast was centered around the battle for the final transfer spot between Joey Logano and Ross Chastain. While that delivered chaos, it came after van Gisbergen had taken the checkered flag. Hamlin sees a problem in that.

“I think the race was three hours and some change, and your moment came at hour 2:59:59. I mean, at the buzzer,” Hamlin said. “You’re asking a lot for people to wait and sit through that for maybe that one last corner moment. That’s tough, where on the oval, you’re going to see some amazing racing throughout the day. You’re going to see side-by-side battles, I mean, I watched the end of the race because of the last corner highlight, and it was SVG wins, and then a minute and a half later, we come back around.

“… It wasn’t even at the buzzer, it was two minutes after the buzzer. The game was over and that was what your shining moment was.”