This is bizarro world.
The seventh-generation NASCAR Cup Series car’s superpower is that it has made tracks like Kansas Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway and even Texas Motor Speedway more palatable than ever before.
However, it also has a kryptonite in that it has made tracks with just one groove, generally short tracks and road courses amongst the least entertaining on the schedule.
It’s frustrating because prior to 2022, a trio of Cup Series races at Martinsville Speedway, Darlington Raceway and Bristol Motor Speedway would have been appointment television and considered part and parcel to the very identity of the sport.
We’re all hate watching these races right now to a degree.
And sure, there will be a subset of the audience and those in the Charlotte and Daytona offices that will decry this as being alarmist, but we need to have good faith conversations right now about what we have even if we don’t have a solution for what we’re going to do.
Kyle Larson led 411 laps on Sunday at Bristol but that isn’t the actual problem. Sure, it’s not the optimal race watching experience to see one driver lead so many laps but that’s racing and even some of the best heyday era races have such ass-kickings.
That’s racing.
Instead, it’s just how little action there was for the second consecutive race at Thunder Valley, especially compared to the usual standard there. This also recognizes that Saturday in the usually reliable Xfinity Series wasn’t exactly a barnburner but there was more than just a conveyor belt.
And even if it warranted a discussion, there was no shortage of Xfinity Series action at Martinsville and Darlington too.
It’s just a continued theme in the NextGen era that some of the best historical tracks in NASCAR are becoming its most uneventful while improving the tracks that previously needed addressing in the previous period.
It’s just unfortunate that it also coincided with a period in which NASCAR has added more short tracks and road courses when that would have been a benefit prior to the NextGen.
For example, Denny Hamlin continue to beat the drum about needing to do something on this front:
“It is certainly more sensitive to being behind another car. That is certainly the consistent thing with it and Darlington is so narrow that you can’t escape the wake of that car in front of you. The normal mile-and-a-halfs … like Kansas and Charlotte, the track is wide enough that you can get a new lane (and) you can get as clean as air to try to complete a pass.
“But at Darlington, it’s the only one and a half, two lane mile-and-a-half (1.366) track we have. So there just isn’t room to get away from someone and when (we are) all running within a tenth of each other (and) it’s just going to be really hard to pass and you’re going to be relying on someone holding up the guy you’re trying to pass.
“It’s just part of the cycle that we’re in. The car drives good around the track. It just doesn’t like to have any other car on the track with it.”
And then his plea to just try to make a marginal swing on horsepower levels:
“You’re coming off a couple of races of domination and what I hear on my end is — the racing and how are we going to make it better. No matter what we do, 20 years ago, we’re going to be talking about how to make the racing better. What we have to understand is that the parity is what is making it so hard to pass. It’s making it so hard to get near each other to crash which is what some fans are there to see, which is more action. …
Could we at least go back to the 750 horsepower, which is only 100 more than what we got now, which would at least be a step in the right direction to make it where … these cars are just so planted. I can’t tell you enough how much that’s the case, that they’re stuck to the race track. We have to unstick them somehow. …
“I don’t see a reason to not go back to the 750 and try it. Please let’s go back to the 750 and let’s just try and see if it puts it back in the drivers’ hands.”
Even Jeff Gordon, who is Larson’s de facto boss and no doubt enjoyed the results of Sunday, conceded that he wanted more from a racing action standpoint given how little tire fall off:
“I mean, I am a little disappointed in today with the tire, I’ll be honest. There was no fall-off and no wear. We all thought there was going to be tremendous wear, and there wasn’t.
“But at the same time, I don’t like what happened last year either. I want to say this: Goodyear has a tough job. I think this car, we have a heavy car. Just stock cars in general. We have these high-bank tracks, heavy loads, abrasive surfaces. There’s just a lot of things that are very difficult for them to do the things that they do to make a tire that’s durable and perform well. …
“Running two seconds off the pace is not what I think we want in NASCAR to manage a tire. So, yeah, … I am biased but I would take this over that. But I still was disappointed to see how many — how few cautions and how little fall-off there was today.”
The point being, it’s inarguable that there is some kind of problem to address based on the past three weeks, and god bless Goodyear because they have done a tremendous job in trying to get the product where it needs to be but there is only so much further to go.
And if you, as a sanctioning body, are rooting for cold weather and tire cording to spice up your racing product, there is a much larger issue to focus on here than just the tire compound.
Again, this isn’t to be alarmist, and it’s not a five alarm five yet but we as an industry spend too much time talking about the cost of doing things we should consider and not enough time thinking about the cost of inaction …
- The cost of not investing into the competition product
- The cost of cutting, cutting and cutting at-track experiential content
At track attendance isn’t as important of a business gauge as broadcast metrics but fans are starting cut, cut, cut wanting to spend their time at Martinsville and Bristol, and it has already affectively cost Richmond Raceway a date too.
Meanwhile, this car has accomplished something else, and that is an enthusiasm for Kentucky Raceway and wanting to run it back at Chicagoland Speedway once the street race moves away from Grant Park. Those are still more than fine options too but these short tracks are really important to the identity of the NASCAR Cup Series and here’s to hoping this bizarro world doesn’t eventually include killing them off altogether.
The status quo continues to not deliver there.
