Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace and 23XI Racing will take the green flag in the Daytona 500 whether the team has charters or not.
Denny Hamlin confirmed that in multiple ways over the past week. First, he and Michael Jordan inked Wallace to a multi-year extension and he fielded questions from sponsors at a summit over the future of the team should 23XI Racing not reach a charter extension agreement with NASCAR.
23XI Racing, alongside Front Row Motorsports, are the only teams yet to sign the take it or leave it offer from NASCAR made after two years of negotiation.
Wallace expressed concern that weekend that the lack of an agreement could derail a deal with 23XI but Hamlin says the extension has no correlation to the charter matter.
“No, nothing has changed on that side with all of that,” Hamlin said on Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway. “We’ve said for a while that we plan on racing next year no matter what, so we are sticking to that.”
Again, with or without charters, Hamlin, Jordan and Curtis Polk will field their two cars and expressed that to all the corporate sponsors that asked during the sponsor summit this past week.
“We were really strong in our messaging that nothing is changing from our employee standpoint to our sponsor standpoint going forward, what battles we have off of the race track is on ownership,” Hamlin said. “We are going to make sure that no one is adversely affected by all of that.”
Jordan certainly has deep enough pockets to run the team without the financial perks of an active charter but it still remains an open question over what will happen if a deal isn’t reached before the start of next season.
As far as Wallace is concerned, Hamlin says he sees growth, even if everyone involved agrees he still needs to continue improving. Wallace missed the playoffs this season but actually had a better season this year than last when he made it into the Round of 16 on points.
“The 23 team needs to make the Playoffs every year,” Hamlin said. “I think that is our expectation, and then make a deep run and finish in the top-10 in points. That is kind of our expectation of kind of where we are at. Just getting in, it is hard for me to say that is the only expectation, but it is an expectation given the standards we are giving ourselves.
“He knows that he needs to get better. I think he has gotten better, so as long as he continues that – last year, when he made it on driver points, he was 14th, this year, 12th – while it won’t look great in the final box score, because once you get in, who knows where you go, your floor is only 16th – this year, it is going to look worse than last year, but we know that given the stats he has had, the laps that he has led – everything has improved over what he had last year, just have to take the next step.”
To wit, Hamlin says he is seeing everything he needs from Wallace from a humility and motivation standpoint.
“I think his willingness to continue to learn is something that I see that is very, very positive,” Hamlin said. “Not that he didn’t in the past but I think his willingness to put himself out there in vulnerable situations to ask for help when he needs it has been very encouraging, and certainly, we’ve seen from my standpoint more pace on road course, more pace at tracks typically that he wasn’t as fast at, that he needed to be, so I think all of that is good.
“His feedback has gotten better. That is very, very important. As long as he continues on that trajectory, he will be fine.”