Jeff Burton claims NASCAR has become a “nuclear arms race” over increased cost of racing

Ex-NASCAR racer Jeff Burton has shared his view on the increased cost of racing for the teams in the stock car racing scene.

Jeff Burton claims NASCAR has become a “nuclear arms race” over increased cost of racing

Jeff Burton (Via NBC)

The Next-Gen cars was introduced to the Cup series in 2022, with the primary goal of limit the cost of racing. Reduced sponsorship revenue, and the drop in overall popularity of the sport, alongside the inflation has made it tough to run NASCAR teams. The small teams and the family teams, which has been the backbone of sport, struggled the most with the development.

Ex-NASCAR Cup driver Jeff Burton has recently sat down with his racing family for the On the Crossroads podcast and discussed many aspects of the sport including the increased cost of racing. He shared his view on how the sport has changed, and how the team are finding themselves in a desperate spot.

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He used the term nuclear arms race to describe what is the situation of the sport. Burton pointed out that the teams that can afford to buy the most technology can win easily over the small teams. But racing becomes boring once every other team buys the same technology and with the cost of it going through the roof, the chance of having further advantage makes it hard.

We have an arms race. It’s a nuclear arms race in NASCAR. Whoever can buy the most technology, that’s what they’re all after. And now once everybody has it, why does it matter that you have it? Because everybody’s got it. So, the cost of it is through the roof in every form of racing.

Jeff Burton said via On the Crossroads podcast.

Jeff Burton explains how the sport lost the artistic side

In the same conversation, Jeff Burton talked about how more investment and tech savvy human resource hiring has changed the sport. He pointed out that the engineers have converted racing to a scienced out process compared to the artistic side to building race cars the sports once had.

Jeff Burton (Credits: Net Worth Post)
Jim Burton (Credits: Net Worth Post)

Before, we were like artists saying, ‘Yeah, that looks good, let’s do it like that.’ Now, everything is measured, scienced out.

Jeff Burton said.

The comments from Jeff Burton proves the that small teams are struggling too much to elevate their performance to match the top teams owing to the lack of financial investment. This time calls for decisive action from NASCAR, that includes giving more revenue share with the team.