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NASCAR Rips Idea For In-Season Tournament From Driver-Owner Denny Hamlin Without Credit

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Once again, it appears that NASCAR star driver and team owner Denny Hamlin may have a bone to pick with the series,

On Monday, the NASCAR Cup Series announced the introduction of a new in-season tournament with an exciting and highly lucrative format

The new tournament, which currently lacks a title sponsor, will begin in 2025 and be contested over five weeks and contain 32 drivers.

All Cup Series drivers are eligible for the tournament.

The 32 contestants will be determined by top-32 drivers from three qualifying races on Amazon’s Prime Video.

The tournament begins the following week on TNT Sports MAX.

Seeding will be based on best finish in the three Prime Video races with tiebreakers determined by next-best finish, followed by season points position.

The 32 drivers will then compete head-to-head with the higher-finishing driver advancing over five rounds. The winner of the in-season tournament will win $1 million.

Denny Hamlin Had Idea For NASCAR In-Season Tournament Last Year

Ironically, NASCAR’s press release does not mention Hamlin by name.

That’s despite Hamlin going on record a year ago with an idea for a very, very similarly formatted tournament.

When asked how to boost TV ratings on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast, Hamlin proposed the following.

“I got a fix. Five-week fix for where we are going to have more storylines than ever. The drivers are gonna get amped up. This is it,” Hamlin began. “We are going to have a bracket challenge…Five weeks in a row where you have a head-to-head competition…”

Hamlin’s qualifying format was slightly different than the one above. But everything else was almost exactly the same. He talked about how it will increase ratings, increase in-race storylines, and increase gambling opportunities.

He even mentioned that he told NASCAR about the tournament idea a year prior to mentioning it on the show.

And yet he’s seemingly getting no credit for the idea once NASCAR decided to use it. Could it have anything to do with the fact that he’s currently locked in a collective bargaining feud with the series?

Fans quickly called out NASCAR for the omission.

NASCAR and Hamlin are clearly not on the best of terms. And something tells us this won’t help.