"It's a great racetrack": Denny Hamlin points to NASCAR's major flaw with the Next Gen while defending Phoenix

Denny Hamlin recently shared his thoughts on Phoenix Raceway holding the championship race. With Joey Logano leading the duo of Penske cars that dominated the all-important race of the season, the scrutiny around the Arizona racetrack intensified, with some wondering if it's time for NASCAR to take away the championship race.

But speaking on Actions Detrimental recently, Denny Hamlin defended the venue and shared his thoughts on what he believes is the real culprit in the racing product. It's worth mentioning that fans and some NASCAR insiders criticize Phoenix for not creating exciting races as they demand the championship race be taken to either a new venue or back to Homestead.

And yet for Hamlin, Phoenix remains 'a great venue'. He elaborated on his thoughts, saying:

"I hate it that the racing is not better because it is a great, it's a great racetrack, the layout's very unique, it gives us some options on restarts, we're racing multiple lanes, but we have a car problem and we're trying to fix it through some other things and we can talk about what the fix is but I believe in my heart of hearts we got to get the back of the cars up so the rear car can manipulate the spoiler of the front car like the Xfinity cars. But right now we plant the back and then there's no effect that the rear car has on the front car. We've got to make it to where the back car can manipulate the front car. That's how passes get made. 90% of Xfinity passes get by someone just jamming their their nose right behind somebody, gets them loose boom goes on by them." [38:25]

Denny Hamlin touches on his Joey Logano prediction, Steve Letarte dissects the outrage

Speaking further about Phoenix, Denny Hamlin pointed to the fact that Phoenix would be retaining its spot in the championship race in 2025 as well. Before Phoenix became the Final 4 venue in 2020, Homestead hosted the season finale from 2002 to 2019.

With Phoenix staying in its place along with the playoffs, it's an interesting situation for NASCAR to have 'left the window open' to make some tweaks, as Hamlin remarked.

The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran then recalled his prediction from before Phoenix as he said:

"We said on this podcast, if Joey Logano won the championship there would be outrage and there has been. And for right or wrong now, I will say this, you got to give Joey Logano the due because he, in my mind, he executed the best that day. And I would have been fine with a #22 or #12 champion on that day." [39:45]

This prompted the show's guest for the episode, Steve Letarte, to share his thoughts on the outrage aspect of the subject. He claimed that those who are fuming over Logano's win don't want to look at the numbers considering Logano won the second most races after Kyle Larson.

The veteran crew chief claimed that people just want Logano to beat Larson, which he would've had the #5 made it to the Final 4. Letarte believed that even if Larson had been in contention at Phoenix, Logano would've come out with 4 wins and a championship and Larson's win tally would've remained unchanged.

He added that people only want the champion to have some noteworthy performances in the regular season, which Joey Logano didn't have except for a win at Nashville.