The horsepower was dropped from 510 to 465 and the spoiler height was also decreased from 7'' to 4''. The primary goal was to end fuel saving runs and makes races more entertaining.

Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Denny Hamlin shared his thoughts on the changes on his post-race interview. He was overall happy how the race wasn't a wreck fest as he expected before the event and wants to NASCAR continue developing on the same direction. But he did pointed out that the longer stages made racing weird and the length of the stages needs to be reduced.

I was overall happy with the changes that NASCAR made, and hopefully this is the direction we go. I thought it was actually a little higher than that. It was just a weird race, just simply because of the stages. And, you know, if you can push the first stage back a little bit from like 35 to like lap 45, and then get those other stages five laps less, you're going to have people racing all out the entire race.

The sanctioning body needs to re-arrange the stages in order to have all out entertaining race throughout. Denny Hamlin pointed out that for the drivers in contention didn't saved fuel as much as they used to do with the previous package, but the midfield drivers were conserving gas.

So, I think that that's going to be the key going forward is getting the stages right to match it because I just didn't think there was a lot of fuel saving for the guys that were racing up front. It was, you know, maybe guys in the back that were content, but just the pack racing felt a little different this time.

This dynamic avoided any log jams that the same strategy from Cup drivers caused in the past and Hamlin was impressed with how the rule changes changed racing. It was the second and third stage where the fuel saving impacted racing.

I didn't think it was quite as log jammed as what it was in the past. If you wanted to get to the front I felt like you could. Just the way the stages worked out was interesting. In stage 2 and 3 fuel saving came into play.

The regular season finale has fixed the last-16 lineup and caused a points table reset ahead of the 10-race finale. Hamlin, who had 100+ points lead on the driver at P2 was reduced to just 25 and many other drivers have closed the gap on the top-3 with the reset. This will make the grind in the upcoming race deep for the No:11 TRD driver.

Oh, it's reset. There's many that have gained a lot of points here overnight. This is the time, though, that you've got to step up and find that next level and next gear. It's on us to go out there and perform. We've got a great final 10 weeks ahead of us. This is just the grind of the season, but you've got to go dig a little more now.

The comments from the veteran shows how the new table isn't in his favor and how he needs to remain performing on the same or better level consistency than he did in the regular season to win the championship. It would be interesting to see if Hamlin can finally win his maiden championship in 2026.

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