Denny Hamlin revealed NASCAR called him about the In-Season Tournament bracket idea before it was announced.
The veteran driver had a very similar idea and suggestion to spice up the regular season. Not that he was salty about it or anything.
He revealed his reaction to the call on his podcast.
“Yeah, I mean, I think that I’ll say roll the clip from when I came up with this idea, you know, last year, just for this to happen, I said, we don’t want credit. We just want this for the sport,” Hamlin said on Actions Detrimental. “And so I got the call. So as context, and I said this through another media outlet, but I’ll reiterate it here, is that people were asking ‘Denny, are you pissed about this, they just took the idea and they stole it?’ Not really because we had dialogue with them last year during the bracket when they were asking, ‘Well, how many people signed up? Like are you getting good traction with this? It’s something that is very intriguing to us. But we don’t think we can do it until the new media deal.’
“So more than likely they baked in some money for this for the media deal. I said Listen, I just want it to be part of our sport. If you guys want to take it over, then go right ahead. I have no issue with that. So that’s what they did.”
That’s when Hamlin described a call he received from NASCAR shortly before the official announcement.
“I got a call about 30 minutes before the announcement last week,” Hamlin said. “(Steve) Phelps called me about 30 minutes before it was released and said hey, because I think they were probably a little worried I was going to have a certain feeling about it. But I just said, sounds great … It is certainly something that I think that would be good for our sport, on and off the track.
“And so I think this is a good thing for our sport, and certainly the drivers are going to get excited about it, the teams will get excited about it.”
Drivers are more or less going to be going head-to-head once they are seeded in the bracket. Over the course of five races drivers will be eliminated.
If you want drivers to race all out during a time of the year when all eyes are more or less on you, this is a great way to do it. More incentives will make these drivers push the limits just a little more, something Hamlin wanted.
“This just gives you this extra dynamic where every race of those five races means a little bit more,” TNT Sports chief content officer Craig Barry said. “It creates something really interesting for the casual fan.”
The 2025 schedule has not been released. So, we won’t know what races this tournament will take place during until that comes out. It should be around this time next year. Amazon Prime Video picks up the schedule after the first 14 races. The seeding will be done in the final three races of five that Amazon airs. Then the five TNT races will make up the tournament.
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