Denny Hamlin has picked a side in the NASCAR Hall of Fame debate. He is backing Kenny Wallace and the idea that the Hall should stay focused on the Cup Series.

Hamlin has already questioned how the Hall weighs accomplishments, making it clear he values sustained success at the Cup level more than what drivers do in the lower divisions.

Wallace is on the opposite side of Dale Earnhardt Jr. here. He does not see drivers who built their careers in the Xfinity or Truck Series as being on the same level as Dale Earnhardt Sr., Richard Petty, or Jimmie Johnson. “I’ll join you in this take,” Hamlin wrote, publicly backing Wallace’s stance.

The debate picked up during a discussion on the Dale Jr. Download podcast, when Travis Rockhold raised doubts about Justin Allgaier’s Hall of Fame case, arguing that results in Xfinity and its earlier formats should not carry weight.

For Kenny Wallace, the issue comes down to how hard it is to win at the Cup level, something he pointed to while backing the same stance. In the Cup Series, he made 344 starts with 27 top-10 finishes but no wins, and pointed to drivers like Mike Skinner and Ron Hornaday Jr.

While acknowledging both sides, Wallace proposed a benchmark for drivers from lower-tier series: “If you are gonna be in O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and you’re gonna be in the Truck Series, and you wanna be in the same Hall of Fame as Richard Petty, Jimmie Johnson, and Dale Sr., you have to win 40 truck races or 40 O’Reilly Auto Parts races and three or four championships at least to stand next to them,” he concluded.

Should The NASCAR Hall Of Fame Only Be About The Cup Series?

The debate really comes down to one question: Is the NASCAR Hall of Fame meant to reflect the Cup Series, or the sport as a whole?

As long as names like Ron Hornaday Jr. and Justin Allgaier stay in the mix, the voting committee is stuck trying to balance two very different ideas of what belongs.

A Cup-focused standard protects the prestige of the top level, but it also leaves out drivers who built their careers elsewhere. Open it up, though, and the definition of “elite” starts to get harder to pin down.

This ambiguity leaves the selection process open to subjective debate each year.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Aaradhya Singh

Edited by

Pulkit Prabhav