Denny Hamlin, who has been watching a lot of Formula One racing lately, believes that NASCAR could benefit from an F1-style approach to race weekends.
With a number of Hamlin’s friends tuning in to F1 races, particularly due to the influence of “Drive to Survive,” a popular documentary series, Hamlin too has grown an interest in F1 recently. He says that this year he has watched F1 races more than his whole life. He attributes the influence in social media as one of the factors leading to his interest in this discipline of racing.
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However, Hamlin seems to be not only watching F1 races for mere pleasure but also taking notes on how NASCAR can incorporate certain things from F1.
“It’s crazy because you know – you’ve got probably a 90 percent chance of picking which two guys are going to win (each F1 race). This year has been a little bit different with craziness going on, but there is two people that can win, two teams that can win,” Hamlin said. “There is not much side-by-side racing, as compared to NASCAR, but yet fans and media love it.
“When you talk about how critical fans or media or whoever might be of our racing in NASCAR, it’s head and shoulders above anything going right now. The show is good. Why can’t we get people to turnout?
“Texas was just a big disappointment seeing what was up in the stands there, and yet we are talking about the biggest crowd in history showing up for the COTA F1 race next week. So, there is some kind of disconnect that’s going on that’s not making this deal work.”
Keeping in mind the disappointment in NASCAR in terms of fans presence and the reach the industry has, Hamlin laid out one particular things that NASCAR can take from F1.
“I would love to see us have more of an F1-style approach to a race weekend and how we host hospitalities, parties, just all of those things,” Hamlin said.
“There’s just got to be more to it than us showing up and racing like we are doing right now.”
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