NASCAR conducted a tire test in June at Iowa Speedway ahead of Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 at the 0.875-mile oval. Based on the results of that test, NASCAR and Goodyear decided to go with a tire that had never been used before in a Cup Series race.

The result was an underwhelming race, Denny Hamlin said on Monday’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast. Hamlin cited the lack of tire fall off and how difficult it was for drivers to pass, especially when it came to challenging for the lead. Hamlin revealed he texted Dale Earnhardt Jr. the night before the race in disbelief that NASCAR chose this particular tire.

“The only time you see a remote challenge or battle for the lead is when they catch the back of the pack,” Hamlin said. “… You can make passes if you’re in the middle of the pack when everyone has disturbed air. It’s just challenging the leader in this car is just such a tough task because the leader has such an advantage. If you look at the times, the difference between first place — the fastest car on the racetrack — and the 30th-place speed car is three tenths. We talked about at Indy that you had to be 1.2 seconds faster to actually overtake them. The number at Iowa — I think it’s probably three tenths. That’s why you saw when the leader catches the 30th-place car, it takes them forever to work them over because there’s not enough difference in speed from that car to that car.

“And then, when you look over the course of the run — I sent Dale Jr. a screenshot of this on Saturday night and said, ‘Can you believe that we [NASCAR and Goodyear] tire tested here, and this is the tire they came up with is the one that had zero fall off after 50 laps.’ How in the world do you expect us to put on a good race when everyone’s going to run the same speed and run the same speed from the beginning of the run to the end of the run. It just makes it extremely difficult and the only time you see those passes are when chaos breaks out on restarts or when the leader catches the back of the pack. That’s what we, as drivers, are most frustrated about.”

Denny Hamlin laments extreme difficulty of passing at Iowa

What perhaps best explained Hamlin’s point was the Stage 1 battle between William Byron and Brad Keselowski. Once Byron caught up to lap traffic, he had extreme difficulty in making passes. Meanwhile, it took Keselowski 42 laps to finally make the pass for the lead.

Hamlin didn’t have the best of days at Iowa. He fought his car all day, settling for a 24th-place finish. That didn’t impact his decision to air out the “dirty laundry,” he explained.

“I’m not airing out my dirty laundry just because we ran poorly. Obviously, we had a bad last run with a tire issue where it de-corded really badly. Take off the last run, I still was a 10th to 15th-place car probably if you average it all out,” Hamlin said. “I just think some of the fans are really getting labeled as people that are negative all the time by the NASCAR shills and that’s just not true.

“They’re regurgitating what we are saying and that is that it’s incredibly difficult out there. It should be incredibly difficult, but it shouldn’t be nearly impossible. Not when you’re significantly faster than the car in front of you.”