By the end of the 2022 NASCAR season, NASCAR’s seventh-generation car – dubbed the “Next Gen” – was considered a resounding success.
The first season of the Next Gen car included a lot of parity and exciting racing. Despite a few hiccups, the racing product overall thrived, particularly at intermediate tracks where the Gen-6 car had failed to put on convincing shows in the years before the Next Gen’s debut. In 2022, NASCAR saw an increase presencetelevision notes and general fan interest, as the organization’s new car provided one of the most competitive seasons in the organization’s history.
But today, that shine has worn off. Complaints about the racing product make headlines after Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol in which Kyle Larson dominated and the rest of the peloton had difficulty passing. These complaints came to a head after three weeks of racing at Martinsville, Darlington and Bristol. The once great racing at these tracks has become stale and stagnant.
Like any sport, NASCAR is subject to its fair share of mediocre or bad events in every era, regardless of the car. Some NASCAR races are dominated by a single driver and have few storylines. Sometimes a team just sets up the setup. It’s just as much a part of the game as the occasional defensive struggles in the NFL.
But NASCAR’s problem isn’t the dominance of Denny Hamlin at Martinsville, or William Byron at Darlington or Larson in Bristol. Nor is NASCAR’s main problem its tire supplier Goodyear, which has tried unsuccessfully to bail out NASCAR’s poor product with softer tires in recent years, particularly at short tracks.
NASCAR needs to recognize that the Next Gen car has several fundamental problems that, regardless of other circumstances present on race day, prevent it from consistently being a good racing vehicle, regardless of the track.
You don’t have to venture deep into the mechanical weeds to find these problems. To begin with, the new one, wider the wheel and tire introduced with the Next Gen car in 2022 offers too much grip. Additionally, the lack of power – Next Gen car is capped at 670 – doesn’t generate enough opportunities for wheelspin or other errors.
Perhaps the most glaring problem with the Next Gen car is the specification premise with which it was designed. A car built primarily with identical parts from a single source that teams are unable to modify sounds fantastic in theory from a financial and competitive perspective. Cars similar to each other will not only be cheaper to build, but the similarity between each vehicle will put racing solely in the hands of the drivers.
However, the glaring problem comes when the cars are so similar that even the best drivers with the fastest cars aren’t able to move. Next Gen races have mostly become pure battles of track position, where if a driver who has been in the lead for the majority of the race is relegated to the pack late in the race, he is unable to make any ground. Along the same lines, cars that have struggled to place in the top 20 are able to run up front if they hold track position, thanks in large part to the overwhelming advantage of clean air.
The Talladega-sized elephant in the room can no longer be ignored. It’s time to make sweeping changes to NASCAR’s Next Gen car or design a Gen-8 car.
