“It’s understandable” - Denny Hamlin on smaller teams breaking pact in ongoing charter negotiations with NASCAR

Denny Hamlin recently opened up on the reports of the so-called "smaller teams" accepting NASCAR's offer in the current charter negotiations. As per a recent report by Jenna Fryer in the Associated Press, some team owners claimed the newest offer was "one of the worst offers yet from the stock car series sanctioning body."

Fryer's report further mentioned that smaller teams could take up NASCAR's offer despite the alliance stating that all 15 teams would stick together.

This aspect of the charter negotiations was recently discussed on the Actions Detrimental podcast. When the idea of smaller teams accepting NASCAR's offer was put forward to Denny Hamlin, he said he wasn't sure how true that was but there will always be teams with "different agendas."

"I think it’s understandable if some teams were done fighting and we need to just get done," Hamlin said. [1:02:35]

As for whether a team could break the pact or the alliance, Hamlin said it is possible considering the way NASCAR has been dealing with teams so far.

"Because NASCAR can cut a different deal with all different teams, that’s what the provisions they’ve got. They can just cut a separate deal with a separate team. Again, that can make your head scratch at times but it could happen for sure," he explained.

---

Denny Hamlin claims now is a very important time for teams to "lock arms" and stand together

On the subject of smaller teams potentially breaking the alliance, Denny Hamlin further claimed that in his opinion, teams are "pretty aligned" at the moment.

However, the 23XI Racing co-owner emphasized that teams wanting to make their own decision is also acceptable, even though all of them agree that some things need addressing.

"I think it's okay if teams want to do their own thing and say, ‘This is good enough for them. I think everyone has those rights to do that and we’ve seen that happen for many many decades but I think the teams are more aligned than the fact that these are the key issues that need to be addressed and we haven’t had gone through this last 10 year agreement and we have seen where we need to improve and we have seen movement on those things we haven’t got any movement, we know we have to live by this next charter agreement for the next 7 years," Hamlin described. [1:03:45]

He pointed to the number of chartered teams today compared to the number of teams in the previous charter agreement and termed it "pretty alarming."

Denny Hamlin asserted that the current charter negotiations are "a very key moment" in the sport wherein teams can either "lock arms" to grow the sport together or not. However, he also addressed the idea of teams having different agendas and doing what they need to do to survive in NASCAR.