"A recruiting facility for the people" - Denny Hamlin details vision behind 23XI's Airspeed facility

Denny Hamlin recently unveiled the new facility for 23XI Racing, Airspeed. It's a 114,000 square foot building that took less than a year to build but much more than that for Hamlin to conceive.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was a big part of the conceptualization, the interior design, and the overall architecture of the place. And it was important for Hamlin that Airspeed doesn't turn out to be simply a race shop.

During a recent interview with Racing America, Hamlin shared his thoughts on the new Airspeed facility and how it's in service to the employees of 23XI Racing.

"We've got some games, some shuffleboards, pool table, ping pong, simulator back there for them to be able to just have fun. And what I love seeing is people that might be working on the business side or maybe working on the comm side, coming together to eat lunch together because they love staying here and it's a place that they love working at," he described.

"So that's the goal with this. This was a recruiting facility for the people, for sponsorships, and obviously we feel like we're going to be proud to show everyone what we've done here," he added.

Denny Hamlin also revealed that although he is not an interior designer by profession, he has a lot of passion for it.

"I'm not educated in it, I'm not even good at it but I feel like it's something, had I gone to college, had I didn't have racing to occupy my life,certainly architecture and interior designing is something I really have a passion for," he added. [1:25]

For Denny Hamlin, Airspeed is an investment in NASCAR and 23XI's employees

Speaking to RACER, Denny Hamlin opened up on what 23XI Racing's Airspeed represents for NASCAR and the people who are going to work inside it.

"This is our investment in the sport and our people. Certainly, I think it’s very, very hard given the economics of the sport … it’s been said how tough it is to make it all work. This is the raise for our people. This is a way that I recruit. This is a way that when I’m trying to get an engineer or someone else is trying to get an engineer — this is my recruiting facility," he said.

For Hamlin, Airspeed is not that different from "taking kids to college" where they see the dorms, the lunch area, and check all the amenities.

What Hamlin claimed he loves is that they've "gone outside the normal NASCAR workforce" in 23XI Racing. He mentioned that most of their employees don't have a background in other teams, that many of them came from other countries.

Denny Hamlin added that they're attracting interest from people who wouldn't normally look to come into racing.