A striking exchange early Friday on X between one of the most powerful figures in American motorsports and one of stock car racing’s most prominent drivers/team owners resurfaced current and long-standing tensions in the NASCAR garage.
Marcus Smith, the second-generation track mogul whose Speedway Motorsports owns or controls nearly 40 percent of the NASCAR schedule, had intense exchanges on the social media platform with Denny Hamlin, the series’ most recent winner and co- owner of the 23XI Racing team with basketball icon Michael Jordan.
“Ignorance exposed for the world to see,” Smith posted in part after Hamlin criticized the paving job at Smith-owned Sonoma Raceway for destroying its asphalt on Thursday, just weeks after a recent repaving. “I will delete this tweet when @dennyhamlin texts or calls me directly to ask why this is happening.”
“You don’t (sic) need to delete. We’ve seen your reconfiguration record,” Hamlin responded, referring to controversial Speedway track reconfigurations, like the one in 2017 that severely damaged Texas Motor Speedway.
Smith responded by writing that his company sometimes takes risks that don’t always work out, then added, “We also saw your championship attempt.”
This intensified the conversation, as Hamlin is known for being NASCAR’s winningest driver without a Cup Series championship.
Chided Smith: “Maybe you could give me some golfing tips.” »
This prompted the most personal response yet from Hamlin, who posted about Smith’s late father Bruton: “Here’s (sic) your advice.” Let someone else run your business before you waste everything your father gave you.
Smith responded by calling Hamlin “almost @NASCAR Champion” and urged him to “keep working at it and one day you’ll get a big trophy!” »
Later Friday morning, Smith deleted his recent posts on X, then posted a follow-up.
“I’m very proud of our teammates’ dedication and hard work to make @NASCAR the best it can be and I shouldn’t let conversations on social media get personal, so I’ve deleted these posts,” Smith wrote. “@dennyhamlin is a passionate driver and team owner and I really look forward to seeing him drive for a championship this year. Our team is working hard to resolve some @racesonoma roadway issues and we will get there. Let’s continue this positive dynamic in 2024!
Hamlin reposted Smith’s mea culpa and added one.
“I will (sic) co-sign this,” Hamlin wrote. “I will certainly take responsibility for my role. It got more personal than it should have, that’s for sure.
I will co-sign this. I will definitely take responsibility for my part. It became more personal than it should have been, that’s for sure.
– Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) April 5, 2024
This feud may just be an overnight tantrum, but there has been ongoing frustration and disagreement between the two sides, and the episode comes at a tense time for the sport as NASCAR and its teams are working on new charter negotiations.
Teams are seeking a larger share of media rights revenue than the 25 percent they currently get, with 65 percent going to the tracks and 10 percent to NASCAR. Although NASCAR (which owns the majority of racetracks) and Smith are both willing to give an increased percentage to racing teams, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations, the concessions offered so far have not satisfied the teams.
Smith also developed a reputation for his bold and outlandish ideas, which appeared to be boom or bust moves. He created a road course (the “Roval”) inside Charlotte Motor Speedway, dirt-covered the beloved Bristol Motor Speedway for one of his races, and transformed Atlanta Motor Speedway from a traditional-style intermediate track into a “superspeedway”, which created one of the best results in NASCAR history in February.
He also resurrected the left-for-dead North Wilkesboro Speedway last year with the help of government COVID relief and found a way to bring NASCAR racing to a popular market (Austin, Texas) by concluding a partnership with the Circuit of the Americas. Formula 1 track.
But Smith has also been criticized for Texas’ disastrous reconfiguration, retaining the Roval race (many in the industry would prefer to see Charlotte’s playoff race return to the oval, and drivers like Hamlin and Chase Elliott have compared the course to a race in a “parking lot”) as well as the decision to modify Atlanta in the first place – which left many drivers privately furious.
Meanwhile, some of the infrastructure at Smith’s current tracks, like Texas, Atlanta and Las Vegas, remained relics from the 1990s NASCAR boom era. And in the past, the company was known for making decisions without driver input (such as when she chose to adjust the racing trajectory with the application of sticky substances on certain tracks).
Drivers have been perturbed by Speedway’s impertinence, such as when Speedway’s Steve Swift – who oversees the company’s track preparation and development – dismissed concerns about Kentucky Speedway in 2017 by telling NBC Sports: ” I think we know what we’re doing. »
When Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brad Keselowski subsequently published criticism of Kentucky, Hamlin I rang on X: “Listen to the boys…’they know what they’re doing.’ »
In July 2021, shortly after news of Atlanta’s reconfiguration was revealed to the surprise of drivers, Swift told the Associated Press: “I say that — as a joke. When a driver is happy with our track, the fans are usually not.
This led Hamlin answer on: “With all due respect. This same group reconfigured Texas, Kentucky and Bristol with 0 driver intervention. One of them lost a race, the other we don’t race anymore and the last one we We dirty it. But hey, what do the pilots know?
Of course, Hamlin wasn’t the only one to blow up the Atlanta movement.
“You can’t have a bunch of combinations to design a race track,” Kevin Harvick said then.
“Nobody’s thinking,” Kyle Busch said. “Brains for sale. Never used. Operate racetracks.
“I heard Marcus Smith say he consulted with a lot of drivers, but I haven’t heard of anyone they talked to,” Kyle Larson said. “Maybe it was in the Truck series or something.”
Asked about driver frustration that weekend by AthleticismSmith measured his words carefully – as he often does, with the exception of Friday morning X messages after midnight.
“If someone has expectations and those expectations aren’t met, you get upset about certain things,” Smith said. “I heard there was some controversy about it, but I should learn more about the issue and talk to them about it.”
(Top photos by Marcus Smith and Denny Hamlin: Tim Heitman/Getty Images; Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)