Following a big win at Nashville Superspeedway, Denny Hamlin is talking about the future of the Cup Series race at the track. He’s one driver who wouldn’t mind seeing this race shortened from 400 miles down to 300 miles.
It was another sellout crowd for Music City. Denny Hamlin had an incredible race to win the Cracker Barrel 400. Yet, with the late-night finish thanks to the rain delay and a healthy number of caution flags, Hamlin is joining the crowd of people who wants to see the race taken down a few laps.
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On Actions Detrimental, Hamlin said that he doesn’t understand why the 1.33-mile track, with slower average speed per lap, has a race as long as Charlotte Motor Speedway or other 1.5-mile tracks.
“It’s still too long of a race, though. … Another thing, [if] I am the CEO of NASCAR,” Hamlin said to set up his hypothetical. “Like, somehow, when you’re looking at the length of the races, the math doesn’t math to me. It’s that, you’re running the same lap times, while the mileage might be the same, the Whatever 400, well if you’re running a slower pace, it takes you longer to get to that 400 miles. So, on a normal mile-and-a-half that we run a 400 mile race, like at Michigan this weekend, that race will be two-thirds of the time that this one takes, because we’re running so much faster.
“So, it’s about lap time and speed, versus mileage. So, at a race track like this, it should be 300 miles. Because you’re running a slower pace. You can run 400 miles at Michigan in the time you can run 300 miles at Nashville. So, it’s just, we’ve gotten, this race has run really, really long for a few years now, and I think it’s just, I think 300 laps at this race track, running the same lap times that you run at mile-and-a-halfs when you only run 267 laps, at a faster pace, it doesn’t – the math doesn’t math to me. That’s why this race goes to as late as it does.”
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When you look at the past races at Nashville Superspeedway, it has taken anywhere from three hours to four hours in length. And to be fair to Nashville, Michigan isn’t a traditional intermediate track, either. At 2.0-miles in length it is the fastest track on the schedule, and there tends to be fewer cautions. It is usually over in just under three hours.
Back in 2023, Nashville Superspeedway had its cleanest, and quickest, Cup Series race. It took 3:00:07 in total time from green flag to checkered flag. This year, it took 3:44:57 to go from checkered to green flag. The difference between 4 caution flags and 11 caution flags is pretty big.
So, is it the length of the race, or the number of cautions? Do you think NASCAR should shorten the Nashville race or keep it the same? There have been a few calls to alter the length of the race so far. Denny Hamlin is the first driver to say it publicly following this year’s race.
This story was originally published by Athlon Sports on Jun 2, 2026, where it first appeared in the Racing section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
