NASCAR fans have dealt with the Next Gen car for a solid chunk of time now, yet the car still raises concerns in what feels like every other race.
This week, those concerns reared their heads during the closing moments of the Yellawood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, when Kyle Busch tried to exit the two lines of cars that had already formed to make a late race pass. Nobody went with Busch, and thus he fell farther and farther toward the back of the pack.
These events took place after fans witnessed nearly 10 minutes of four-wide (yes, you read that correctly) racing while drivers were attempting to save fuel. That certainly didn’t help NASCAR in the PR department, but in truth it has nothing to do with the Next Gen car specifically, and the problems aren’t something NASCAR hasn’t worked around in the past. The real question is why didn’t NASCAR do just that this past weekend?
Fuel Saving Can Be Fixed by Stage Adjustments
The thing with superspeedway racing that never fails to disappoint is that it seems like none of the tracks:
a) talk to each other or …
b) want to use the same ideas as one another.
Before the final Daytona race of the season, questions circled all week long about whether or not this would turn into another fuel-saving race, but NASCAR acted.
The stage breaks saw an adjustment in length that allowed the first stage to be run all out while the other two were far too long for anyone to make it on one tank, no matter how much fuel they saved. Granted, that race was 400 miles as opposed to 500, but the same basic principle could certainly be applied. It doesn’t take a mathematician to spread those extra 100 miles out throughout the stages.
Does it make the breaks a little wonky? Sure, but does it also make sure that nobody is riding around a 2.5-mile track at half throttle? Yes. Both can be true.
All that NASCAR needed to do was take the same principle that worked just fine at Daytona and apply it to a nearly identical track. However, NASCAR has bigger fish to fry right now, so that point will just have to lie where it is.
The Next Gen Car is Not Why Busch Fell Back
Truth be told, Busch could have been in anything from a top fuel car to a 1986 Lincoln Continental and he would have dropped back when he made his move. The Next Gen car is not to blame for the principle of drafting and aerodynamics — physics are.
When Busch pulled out of line, nobody went with him, and that’s the end of the story. At a track like Talladega, nobody gets to go anywhere without a drafting partner. Pulling out of line like a lone wolf may fly at some tracks, but a superspeedway is not one of them. No Car of Tomorrow or any rocketship from the late ’90s would have been enough to give Busch a shot at the win without help from the draft, rendering it completely pointless to blame that instance on the Next Gen car.
It sounds like the real culprit here, then, is not on the Next Gen car itself, and maybe that’s a good point to think on. Maybe it never has been. It’s still the same racecar underneath (to an extent) that every driver has to hop into.
The case is there on 1.5-mile tracks to add horsepower and strip away some downforce, sure. But instead of pointing the finger directly at the car that has proven that it can provide good racing on many, many occasions, some naysayers could stand to look at NASCAR itself instead. There’s an old saying that has taken many people far in life: Keep it simple, stupid. Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to figure out a problem that may not even exist, would it kill NASCAR to simply do something that it’s done before, like adjusting stage breaks?
NASCAR doesn’t need to reinvent its car or the wheel, it just needs to keep it simple, stupid. At least this week, pulling out of line alone may win someone a race.
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for TopSpeed.com, an AP Wire reporter, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host and master's student at Mississippi State University. Soon, Tanner will be pursuing a PhD. in Mass Media Studies. Tanner began working with Frontstretch as an Xfinity Series columnist in 2022.
The fact that no one went with Busch is a sign of what the Chase is doing to the racing. I’d rather stay in line and finish 4th than try for the win because I’m racing for points and to get to the next cutoff. 4th is better than…19th.
Adjust the stage breaks by getting rid of them. Green flag pit stops are way more interesting anyway.
If not that, if we’re so desperate to keep the field bunched together how about this… No refueling allowed during stage breaks. Then there’s only one calc we need to worry about, and that’s how to get to the end of the race.