LONG POND, PENNSYLVANIA – JULY 23: Kurt Busch, driver of the No. 45 McDonald’s Toyota, spins after an on-track incident during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series M&M’s Fan Appreciation 400, the Pocono Mountains 225, at Pocono Raceway on July 23, 2022 in Long Pond, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images) | Getty Images
It’s been 10 races since No. 45 Kurt Busch was forced out of the car after a crash at Pocono that resulted in a concussion. Last week at Texas, a crash in Alex Bowman’s No. 48 car left him with a concussion and he will also start tomorrow’s race at Talladega. Many drivers have complained this year that the crashes are harder in the Next Gen car than in the old car. The safety concerns and complaints have continued to mount in recent weeks and are a hot topic this weekend.
Denny Hamlin called on NASCAR to restart the Next Gen car from scratch.
The driver/owner doesn’t believe there is a simple solution to mitigate the impact issues that occur when drivers hit the wall – or each other – with the latest iteration of the Cup car.
“The car needs to be redesigned, it needs a complete overhaul,” Hamlin said. “You can still call it Next Gen, but it needs to be redesigned everywhere: front, middle, rear, race. Everything needs to be redesigned. We have a race coming up at Martinsville and it’s going to be tough. That race is going to be exposed and that’s just part of the problem.”
“Competition, safety, we would like to have more. But for sure, we have taken a step backwards in terms of safety and competition this year.”
— The Racing Boys —
Chase Elliott was as frustrated as ever and very open about his thoughts regarding the safety of the Next Gen car Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway.
Elliott, usually reserved in his opinions, did not hesitate to answer this time. Each question was answered thoroughly and thoughtfully, repeatedly expressing his perplexity at such problems in the sport.
“I don’t think we should have been in this position and needing to move forward (with the car),” Elliott said. “We should have moved forward with a new opportunity on a new car, in my opinion. You have all these years of experience and knowledge and time spent racing and crashing these cars and the teams that work on them and build them, and it just amazes me that we can have something new in 2022 that offers all this technology and all this time and experience from so many super talented people in the sport and allow us to take a step back, especially on safety.
“I think it’s just really surprising to me that we let this happen, but it did, and now it’s just a matter of how we move forward from here and make sure we make the right choices to improve what we have and prevent things like what happened to Alex this week, and what happened to Kurt.”
— Runner —
With the new perspective of a NASCAR Cup Series owner and driver, Brad Keselowski hasn’t been as outspoken as his peers about the issues surrounding the Next Gen car.
“I’m sure it affects my perspective, absolutely,” Keselowski said Saturday. “I can go to meetings that I wasn’t in before, where I have a better sense of what’s going on. There’s definitely more transparency in this place.”
“There are people working on it,” the 2012 series champion said. “It would be one thing if there was a magic wand with a solution that just wasn’t being implemented. It would be one thing if nobody was working on anything. But there are people working on things right now and there are projects underway.”
— Runner —
Greg Ives seems far more interested in finding solutions to the Next Gen car’s safety problems than in finding culprits.
And if there is blame to be had, Ives made clear this week that he would take some responsibility.
Asked why he seemed to want to shoulder some of the responsibility, Ives, Bowman’s crew chief, said: “Ultimately, I think it’s for me, it’s a cohesiveness issue as far as being in the sport with NASCAR, with Goodyear (and) with the race teams. I’m part of the race teams.
“Ultimately, it’s my job to make sure my driver, Alex, is put in the safest situation possible. For me, the decisions I made throughout the race in Texas probably cost us a crash and I felt like I could have done something differently.”
— Sports car —
