NASCAR breaks silence on overwhelming criticism of Next-Gen cars after Martinsville, claims they “are working hard” to fix short-track racing
NASCAR has long been looking to make the short track racing with small tweaks and none of them has worked yet.
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2023 Chicago Street Race (Via IMAGO)
The short tracks has always been the bread and butter of NASCAR since the start of the series. They have hosted some of the biggest moments in the sports history, but since the introduction Next-Gen cars in 2022, the racing at these tracks have witnessed a drastic drop. Reduced horsepower, minimal tier wear and lack of passing opportunities due to dirty air has been the major hiccups.
The underwhelming race product peaked last week at Martinsville, where fans saw a snoozefest with limited entertainment compared to races that have happened at the track over the years. Fans and NASCAR personalities were furious at the sanctioning body for not taking any major steps to fix the issues and continuing to relay of tweaks. Now Elton Sawyer, the senior vice president of competition, has addressed the situation.
He spoke about the situation via “The Morning Drive” show on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio and asserted that they and tier manufacturer Goodyear is doing everything to fix the issues. Sawyer is looking take inspiration from the Bristol race where tier wear was major factor and work out a solution accordingly.
I promise you we are working as hard as we can with Goodyear and we need to work harder. That’s the bottom line. We need to work harder to come to a place, where as I said a couple of weeks ago, we need to figure out how to bottle up what we learned at Bristol and also what we learned the first 30 laps at Richmond last week on how that race unfolded.Elton Sawyer said.
NASCAR doesn’t have a solution to fix short track racing everywhere
Elton Sawyer claimed that NASCAR does have a solution to fix racing in one short track but doesn’t expect that to be the solution for all other tracks. He pointed out that the characteristics of tracks are very different, hence it is hard to apply the same solution to all.
It’s not a one-tire fits all type solution, so we have to continue to work. We’re not resting on anything that we did yesterday. Today, we’re going to be digging on this again and working on solutions and trying to get to a better place.Elton Sawyer said.
NASCAR does have simple and the most demanded way to fix all of short track racing. They have to increase the horsepower of the cars. But this doesn’t seem to be in the playoff of the sanctioning body for the future and it is alleged that they are keeping horsepower low to attract more OEMs. If they want to follow this path, they should come up with a solution associated with tiers soon to keep the teams happy.
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Justin P Joy
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