In response to Cup Series team owners, but especially 23XI co-owner Denny Hamlin, NASCAR’s Managing Director of Racing Communications Mike Forde pushed back against the presented narrative over why the ‘Run What You Brung’ All Star Race concept was vetoed.
First, Hamlin’s argument can be read here but the short version is that it would cost teams upwards of $2 million because it would mean permanently losing each car used in the race due to modifying the single source parts used by the platform.
“Denny talked about how this would cost potentially $2 million if we went ahead and did this,” Forde said on the Wednesday episode of his NASCAR Hauler Talk podcast with Amanda Ellis. “I think his math was off by about $2 million. “But what actually it could cost is $0 or potentially save teams money, believe it or not. And I’m sorry, Denny, but I did text with Denny. I told him, ‘You can listen to NASCAR’s hottest new podcast on Wednesday for all of the goods.'”
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Forde also said NASCAR would not have allowed teams to bend, break or otherwise modify the single-source supplied parts.
“What we presented to the teams is that you cannot modify any parts, you cannot build any new parts, you can’t create any new parts, everything still had to be single-sourced,” Forde explained. “But there was a list of things we were going to allow teams to do.”
- Teams could choose their own ride heights
- Damper lengths would not be enforced
- Customizable nose weight
- Choice of short track/road course or intermediate/superspeedway diffuser
- Any spoiler and spoiler base from current inventory available for use
- Minimum weight will be enforced
So why does Forde believe that this could cost teams nothing?
“And part two about this, and why I say teams actually probably could have saved money on this idea is if you didn’t want to do anything, if you wanted to not come up with any idea, you can just build your cars, what you could have done is used body panels that probably aren’t race-ready for a Talladega or a Coke 600, but probably too good for a show car, and use it for the All-Star Race,” Forde said. “So, you could have used sort of like hand-me-downs, which they do now, but if it’s hand-me-downs that are not up-to-snuff for a points race, you could have used it there, and actually saved some money.”