Race quality with the NextGen is basically an algebraic equation.
There are multiple ways to get to the correct answer, which basically comes in the form of lap time variation but getting there requires understanding the question. Sure, we can talk about horsepower, downshifting and the contact patch of the tire but at the end of the day, this is a spec car and everyone is too damn equal.
So Sunday afternoon at Phoenix Raceway was an exercise in going about solving that equation.
For a litany of reasons, NASCAR has decided that the key to maximizing this car on short tracks and road courses will come in the form of tires and nothing mechanical or aerodynamic, so that is that. So on Sunday, there were two experiments at play, even if only one of them was the stated intent.
The option tire is the one NASCAR wants to bring back to Phoenix in November as the primary tire to improve what has largely been an uninspiring championship race. But how could you not watch that race on Sunday and at least consider making the option tire concept part of the weekly show on road courses and short tracks.
It’s not a novel concept by any stretch of the imagination.
Formula 1 and IndyCar features multiple tire compounds to be used in a single race. Dirt Late Models also have tire options for its races to create strategic deviation. Even from a historical NASCAR standpoint, the resulting safety concerns aside, there was a version of this dynamic at play during the Goodyear vs. Hoosier tire war.
Good racing is achieved through lap time variation.
Maybe in a perfect world, the fall off on this softest Goodyear tire yet will be enough to create variation in terms of how drivers manage the wear, and that is certainly the goal. But the concern is that everyone driving the same lines, in nearly identical spec cars, will result in everyone falling off at the same rate on the same tires. That doesn’t entirely address the problem that is that algebraic equation either.
The race on Sunday was fantastic and the strategic deviation was a large part of why.
Joey Logano, driving one of the fastest cars in Avondale, was hit with a penalty early in the first stage and he used one of his two option tire sets to try to win the second stage with it. Ryan Preece used a set to mitigate his bad qualifying result and got eight stage points and may have had a chance at the win on his remaining set had the final 90 laps stayed green.
Ty Dillon took a sub-20th car and would have had a puncher’s shot at the win if not for a late speeding penalty due to saving both option tire sets for final 100 laps.
The purists will say it’s a gimmick, which is intellectually dishonest at best, because what isn’t in NASCAR from its very founding?
Caution flags that bunch the field back up together, double file restarts, green-white-checker finishes, cars with fenders where contact is allowed, multiple random number generator superspeedway races … let’s not act like Cup Series racing has ever been this bastion of motorsporting purity.
Also, this is an element that the teams can control from when to take the option, how drivers choose to manage the life of those tires once they’re on it, these are not random outcomes. It’s something dictated by the choices made atop the pit box and behind the steering wheel.
Some feel like stages take away from the value of an option tire but you could also argue that it enhances it because some teams will prioritize using them to get stage points if they don’t feel like they have a straight-up chance to win or finish top-10 otherwise like Dillon and the Kaulig Racing No. 10.
And through it all on Sunday, the race came down to most of the fastest teams in a straight-up race anyway, but only after a race full of comers-and-goers and a whole lot of calculator burning in the war rooms.
Ultimately, NASCAR may get to where it wants to be with this car purely through one extremely soft tire that gives up two seconds of lap time over the course of a green flag run (compared to just over a second from the primary tire) but it’s a conversation worth having if this is an element that could improve short track and road course races.
About Bell
The below question gets asked a lot.
Like, the knee-jerk reaction is to say ‘no,’ because it’s such a silly premise, respectfully, that somehow Bell is winning more NASCAR Cup Series races only because Joe Gibbs allowed him to race a Micro Sprint, Midget and Sprint Car over the past two months.
But it’s also easy to go back and think about every conversation with Kyle Larson, who believes wholeheartedly that he is a better race car driver on Sunday because of the cadence he is allowed to settle into with all of his extracurriculars.
So, you know what, maybe there is something to be said about giving a naturally talented prodigy like Bell the extra reps over the winter just to be at 100 percent as soon as Speedweeks rolls around, and he is just a better driver on the margins where so much success is found peripherally.
But really, this is just what Bell and crew chief Adam Stevens have always been capable of and their current success to start the season is just what happens when talent and preparation meets opportunity.
The wins at Atlanta and Circuit of the Americas were different than Phoenix in that there was more fortune baked into it than performance. Sunday was just an absolute beatdown, even when thinking about option tire wrinkles.
There is a reason Toyota developed Bell out of adolescence from Midgets into Stock Cars and NASCAR. There is a reason that Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing stashed him at Leavine Family Racing for his rookie season to avoid a contractual clause that would have allowed him to become a free agent otherwise.
This is just what Bell was always going to become.
But it’s especially impressive that he’s becoming it in the NextGen era for all the reasons articulated above. These cars are extremely close, designed to be spec cars, which makes it speak even louder volumes when someone like Bell goes on a run like this.
When Larson won 10 races in 2021, the final year of the previous generation of car, it was seen as the last time something like that would be possible. There would just be too much parity to reach 10 wins over the next decade.
Bell is now on pace to win 27 races, which obviously is not going to happen, but even meeting his NextGen average of three wins a year from here on out gives him a chance to at least be in the ballpark. Sure, this is also a team (and organization) that went 0-for-19 over the second half last year but this is certainly how special seasons begin.
And given the parity Bell and Stevens are doing this against, you just have to respect it in real time.
Early results matter
The option tire rules aside, this was the first traditional race of the 2025 NASCAR season, and thus it was important for some teams to quickly right a ship before their season spiraled out of control.
Everyone thinks its important to get off to a fast start for intangible reasons like momentum or vibes, and while those two elements do matter to a certain extent, there is something more tangible for why the results after a month matter.
Qualifying.
It’s effectively a death sentence to be amongst the first handful of cars to qualify on most weeks because the track gains speed as the session goes on. Qualifying order is set by the previous week — a metric comprised of fastest lap time (15 percent), driver finishing spot (25 percent), owner finishing spot (25 percent) and owner points position (35 percent).
In other words, getting off to a slow start results in a death cycle of sorts.
Take a guy like Brad Keselowski, one of the modern greats, involved in crashes in both superspeedway style races that opened the season and is outside of the top-30 in points. The best he could qualify on Saturday was 20th and the car arguably had more speed than that.
So now he starts in the back, doesn’t have a chance to score stage points, and is also in the middle of the pack where big crashes like what happened on Sunday occurred and now he has yet another DNF and is even further back in the standings.
He will again qualify early next week at Las Vegas and the cycle will continue until he can roll off enough good finishes to start getting out of that hole. Same thing for Ty Gibbs, who also has a tremendously fast car, but continues to get involved in crashes and now finds himself mired in this death cycle based on where he qualifies.
To that point, Josh Berry having a top-5 day after three races where he finished no better than 25th was a potential season saver. Berry catapulted from 33rd to 22nd in the owner points, is back in the playoff hunt, and will also start having a more advantageous qualifying position starting this weekend.
Why does all this matter?
As detailed above, it’s harder to pass than ever before with these spec cars, because everyone is going the same speed and SMT data (which NASCAR has since developed their own proprietary model) has drivers driving the same too.
Stage points are important and track position is important.
Last year, Harrison Burton got off to an awful start and spent all year outside of the top-30 in points. He won at Daytona to make the playoffs and then started to make the pole round with greater regularity in the playoffs because his car was now in the top-16 of the standings and qualified better as a result.
All of this is to say that Keselowski, Gibbs, Cole Custer, Austin Cindric (thanks to his penalty), AJ Allmendinger, etc. are all behind the figurative 8-ball, and not because of momentum or vibes, but actual tangible qualities that get harder to overcome as the points spread gets wider and the season continues.
Why right rear hooks matter
A lot of fans don’t understand why right rear hooks are considered such a taboo in the aftermath of the Austin Cindric penalty from this past week.
They say things like, ‘what is the difference from hooking the left rear’ and the answer more often than not is physics.
For one, a right rear hook in a series in which most corners are left-handed turns, is just cheap. You expect contact on your left rear. That’s racing. Contact on the right rear is just nefarious and underhanded. There’s a reason why drivers retaliate by hooking the right rear.
In their moment of anger, when they want to inflict the most harm, hooking the right rear is what they are most instinctively inclined to do.
It’s physics.
Especially on high speed ovals, hooking someone’s right rear sends the victim immediately and head first into the wall with all the momentum they carried down a straightaway. If that car was going 175 mph, the contact into the wall is 175 and all the g-force resulting from that sudden stop.
It’s dangerous as hell.
Typically, spinning someone from their left rear means spinning backwards with less momentum into a wall or down onto an apron, which also slows the car. Sure, there are track specific exceptions and the walls at Circuit of the Americas are equal distance apart on the frontstretch but right rear hooks are considered the most underhanded thing one race car driver could do to another.
Just ask Denny Hamlin on the latest episode of Actions Detrimental.
“The reason we don’t like right hooks, right, is there is typically a wall on the right side,” Hamlin said. “So when you right hook someone, that spins your car around to where you can hit either flat sided on the left (driver’s side) which is very very painful, very painful, or you can nose your car head on into the wall.
“So that’s why it’s so dangerous. If you spin someone out on the left side, you typically have more room there to spin and disperse some energy before you hit something and that’s why it’s more egregious to hit someone on the right.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
