NASCAR held its annual “State of the Sport” address on Friday afternoon and dropped many notable nuggets about the future of the sport. One of those involves short tracks and road courses.
Steve O’Donnell talked about how NASCAR is looking at ways to improve the aerodynamic packages for short tracks and road courses for the 2023 season and beyond. This is very important as the competition at these styled tracks has not been that great.
Most notably, the race at Bristol Motor Speedway was a mess as durability and tire concerns were a big deal. The idea is to possibly fix the aerodynamic aspects to help improve the quality of racing.
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NASCAR looking to fix short tracks and road courses moving forward
The short-track races during the 2022 season have not been that fantastic for the NASCAR Cup Series. There is no denying that but it appears that everyone is trying to fix what has happened to these events.
The good news is that the sport understands that improvements need to be made. Perhaps, this can be attributed to the ongoing dialogue between NASCAR, drivers, and the teams.
NASCAR President Steve Phelps stated that meetings with the drivers have been ongoing for about five weeks now. While the meetings are not mandatory, many drivers have been coming and working through many issues.
The open communication between the sport and its drivers opens up the future in great ways. If there is solid communication between both parties, the future will be very bright.
Back to the matter on hand, the short tracks and road courses used to be one of NASCAR’s bright spots but it has changed due to the NextGen car. Instead, the intermediate tracks have been very positive throughout the season.
While it is great to have the 1.5-mile tracks regain their competitiveness, it came at a price that everyone is looking to fix moving forward. No matter how you view it, the idea of working with on-track racing is a good one.
Hopefully, NASCAR is able to find what they are looking for in new potential aerodynamic packages. The sport needs every styled race track to maximize its potential moving forward into even brighter events.