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Short-track racing is the heart and soul of the NASCAR Cup Series.
The typically small-town tracks were the foundation that the series was built upon.
But in recent years, the racing at those tracks has under-delivered. Which led to a drop off in attendance and some tracks even losing races.
So, how does NASCAR solve this problem? Star driver Denny Hamlin, who co-owns the 23XI race team with Michael Jordan has a solution.
“Aero(dynamics) is not the answer,” Hamlin said on the “Dale Jr. Download” with Dale Earnhardt Jr. “It’s a grip-to-horsepower ratio that we have tightened up over the last 10 years, really. We used to be 900 horsepower and tires used to fall off a bunch.
“Now the tires don’t fall off and you have less horsepower, so it doesn’t wear it out. We have less downforce than we’ve ever had. So, less downforce equals less tire wear. So as they continue to keep taking downforce off, you’ve got to move the tire with it to make it beyond soft. I’m talking about gumball soft.”
Hamlin then pointed to NASCAR using its treaded rain tire at Martinsville Speedway in the 2023 season and how the tire degradation led to good racing.
Ultimately, he says, if NASCAR is unwilling to add horsepower, this is the only way to improve the racing.
His comments echo those of now retired series champion Kevin Harvick. Harvick also joined Earnhardt Jr. recently and said that NASCAR needed to add power to the cars to improve the product.
“…But I just don’t know that there’s enough power in the race car,” he said. And I get it, there’s way more to it than just saying ‘hey, we need more horsepower.’ There’s the master plan of the car to bring more manufacturers and people in. But if that race car would blow the back tires off it, and you had to think about putting that throttle down, it would change the way that you race and it would change the way that the tires wear and it would just change so much.”
NASCAR has gradually reduced horsepower in its cars over the last decade in order to reduce costs for team owners.
But Hamlin says that the difference in cost is minimal.
“I can tell you as a team owner, our engine bills when it 700 or 800 horsepower versus right now is no different,” he said.
NASCAR currently limits cars to 670 horsepower on all tracks other than Daytona and Talladega.
“I don’t understand why going back and taking a 50-cent piece of aluminum that it a tapered spacer, opening that thing back up to 750, I can’t make sense of why we’re not doing it,” Hamlin said.
He added that NASCAR engine builder Doug Yates said that the change could be made easily.
Hamlin and Harvick seem to know the answer. Earnhardt Jr. seems to know the answer. But NASCAR, for some reason, refuses to change.