Before recording his Actions Detrimental podcast each week, Denny Hamlin reviews the race broadcast to highlight key storylines. This week, he voiced a frustration shared by many fans after the race at Watkins Glen International—namely, all the crashes and incidents that went unnoticed.
That includes Cody Ware’s crash with nine laps remaining, which caused significant damage to both his car and the fencing at Turns 6 and 7. Many within the industry believed it should have triggered a caution.
“I mean, they definitely missed a few wrecks out there,” Hamlin said on Actions Detrimental. “But NASCAR has to improve. I’ve seen their control center at the production studio. There’s absolutely no excuse… they have cameras pointing in every direction on the racetrack. For them not to see Cody Ware fully destroyed in that final corner… holy cow, man. They need to address that, not just say, ‘We’ll look into it. We’re always trying to get better.’”
NASCAR has reduced the number of on-track officials and replaced them with cameras across most races, yet blind spots remain. These gaps have led to crashes being missed by both the television partner and race control.
This is becoming a recurring issue.
“Take some responsibility on this one,” Hamlin emphasized. “This was not acceptable.”
He pointed fingers at both NASCAR and FOX.
“It’s on both of them. It’s on both of them,” he stated. “There’s a director somewhere in FOX’s production studio watching all the cameras. Surely there has to be someone paying attention.”
Hamlin again highlighted the drop in track stewards compared to previous years, linking it to the growing number of unseen incidents.
“NASCAR has monitors and cameras pointed at just about every corner—I’ve seen it on ovals, they cover every angle,” Hamlin explained. “But they just don’t have as many track workers as they used to because they’ve cut staff repeatedly. Now there are 16, maybe 24 or 36 monitors showing the track from all angles, capturing things not always on TV. There has to be multiple people watching—you can’t have one person track 24 monitors at once. You need several people spotting dangerous events and calling them in. But you can’t just say, ‘Oh, we didn’t see that.’ No.”
