2026 short track testing begins this week for NASCAR

The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season begins now in a manner of speaking.

There will be two days of tire testing on Wednesday and Thursday for Goodyear to continue refining its tire combinations for the high-speed half-mile following drastic racing product swings that range from traditional racing to extreme tire wear.

The swing is largely believed to be a byproduct of temperatures, with cooler weather discouraging the rubber marrying to the track surface and creating the spring 2024 and fall 2025 races where a set could only last 30-50 laps when managed appropriately.

While those races have been largely well-received for creating speed differential, and a lot more contact, the general consensus is that there is probably a middle ground somewhere that isn’t as dependent on weather conditions.

The goal of this test

That is what NASCAR and Goodyear hope to figure out over the next two days.

“Competition officials indicated that one of the test’s objectives is to determine a tire setup that promotes fall-off and an emphasis on tire management, but without the excessive wear from the Cup Series’ most recent race on Sept. 13. Another prime goal is to zero in on a setup that’s more temperature neutral, with tires that react the same regardless of any swings in temps.”

Conducting the tests are the following drivers and teams:

– No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota; driver Bubba Wallace
– No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet; driver Alex Bowman
– No. 60 RFK Racing Ford; driver Ryan Preece

This test will also represent the first time the short track package has been outfitted with the 750 horsepower tapered spacer, one of the new rules for the NextGen car next year, up from its current 670 HP target.

After the Bristol test, NASCAR and Goodyear will also conduct a test of some kind at North Wilkesboro, where the Sanctioning Body will also consider making technical changes to the car to continue improving the short track racing product.

When this car first debuted in 2022, it considerably improved racing on the intermediate tracks, but at the expense of flat short tracks and road courses, anywhere that had just one line, due to how aero sensitive the trailing car is.

NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell said last month that there is a willingness to try to take an additional swing at trying some things in addition to the horsepower increase.

Joey Logano, Team Penske Ford

Photo by: Jonathan Bachman – Getty Images

“I think what you’ll see us do is, we got the drivers, with the counsel from Christopher Bell and others, Joey Logano, talking about, ‘Hey! Let’s try some of these things.’ Working with 3 of the OEM manufacturers and crew chiefs or Heads of Competition. Putting some ideas together, going and trying it at North Wilkesboro and see what happens.”

Bell, for his part, says the Cup Series cars need to react closer to the Xfinity Series cars.

“I think they need to get the Cup aero map to match the Xfinity Series cars,” Bell told Motorsport.com last weekend at Phoenix Raceway. “That would be the best case scenario, to get the Cup cars to react like the Xfinity cars.

“I was a big advocate of going back to narrower tires, but after all the work Goodyear has put in this year, the cars are sliding around a lot now. We go to road courses and short tracks, and I can promise you, it is slippery. At Martinsville, and the Charlotte Road Course, we are sliding the car around a lot and are overpowered with the current horsepower.

“I don’t know if it’s aero or mechanical, but I think it’s aero because we drive the car in yaw like the Xfinity cars can and I think that’s a big part of the eye test — the way the Xfinity guys look like they are hustling the cars. Cup cars, even though we are close to out of control, it doesn’t look like it on TV. I would love to get us closer to the Xfinity car.”

The Xfinity Car is nose down and tail up, but the Cup car makes its downforce from the rear with the help of the diffuser so it’s tail down and nose up.

Bell agrees that is the biggest problem, so how do we fix that?

“I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “We need to find a way to optimize with that too. Like, NASCAR can’t tell us ‘drop the nose and raise the tail’ because that’s not how this car is optimal. We’ll always evolve back to nose up and tail down attitude because that’s how the car was designed.

“It’s worse in traffic. This is why we can’t get the car in front of us loose. This hurts passing. We need to optimize the car with the nose down and the tail up, and whatever gets us there, that’s what we need to do.”

In addition to the tires and aerodynamics, NASCAR will also be testing the new Electric Control Unit and Data Logger for next season – the McLaren TAG-510.

Brad Keselowski couldn’t answer what he wants NASCAR to look at without knowing what they were open to looking at when asked.

“You have to be more specific for me to have a strong opinion but I know the ECU is a big part of that test and getting that right,” Keselowski said. “There are a lot of things that those tests will be important for.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has advocated striping the NextGen down entirely for short track races.

The crew chief’s perspective

So how do Cup Series crew chiefs plan on getting to the place Bell suggested? In short, crew chiefs like Bell’s shot caller, Adam Stevens, doesn’t really know.

“I think everyone has a handle on what they want to happen but I don’t think anybody has a handle on what it’s going to take, aerodynamically to make that happen,” Stevens said. “I would certainly put myself in that category. We all want the trailing car to not be at such a disadvantage to the leading car. How to make that happen, I have not put any time or study into that. I can tell you the people that have taken the time to over the years, haven’t had much success anyway so I can’t tell you what widget we need to try either. If anyone knows what that widget is, it isn’t me.”

Rudy Fugle, who serves in that role for William Byron, worries that it would be an expensive endeavor to even strip the car down.

“My opinion on the aero side of it is pretty complex,” Fugle said. “With the way the underbody and the way the splitter is and the way the air flows to the louvers, I think it would be pretty expensive to do some of this stuff. I haven’t heard of any of their plans to be honest with you … but there are definitely some things that I think could help but they are pretty large-scale things in my opinion.

“It would have to be a redesign of some things. There are some smarter aerodynamicists out there than me. I’m not one at all, so definitely smarter than me. Maybe they’re getting somewhere that I don’t know about.”

Rudy Fugle, crew chief for William Byron, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

Photo by: David Jensen / Getty Images

Chris Gayle said he wants to get the cars off the shocks and look at removing parts of the sealed underbody.

With all of that said, everyone is excited for at least moving the product forward, even incrementally with the horsepower increase. Paul Wolfe, who serves as crew chief for Joey Logano, said it’s not going to be a big difference but pairing the horsepower with more gains from Goodyear, and maybe an aero tweak here or there, all start to add up.

That has certainly been the case from where this car started in 2022 to 2025.

“The horsepower thing has been on the radar for a while,” Wolfe said. “I’m excited for the direction. That’s good. I’m not aware of any of the aero stuff that’s been talked about. We’re already on two different packages when it comes to mile and a half versus short track. We’ve run both packages on short tracks.

“It’s hard to say anything has been a big more mover on the aero side but with all this being said, we need to keep in mind that not one change is going to be huge, it’s about stacking little changes here and there to make the racing better. I saw where some guys said ‘were not going to see anything out of the 750’ but is it going to be night and day, no, but when it comes to managing and using your tires, those things, adding horsepower isn’t going to make it worse. It’s going to make the wear worse, which is where we’re trying to go.”

Wolfe said ‘we are trying to stack a bunch of little things’ to make the entertainment increases, which is no different than what teams do in trying to find speed increases.

“I’m excited to see the 750 package and I don’t think it’s going to be worse, and it should directionally make things better,” Wolfe said. “We’ve done some good things with tires this year. Goodyear has pushed the boundary there. We’ve seen good results there and I’m excited to continue down that path.

“This is a tough one, and I don’t know that we as a sport are always going to knock it out of the park there, but it will continue to evolve and we’ve gone in the right directions and I’m excited to continue down that path as well.”

NASCAR said it hasn’t yet determined the parameters and scope of the North Wilkesboro test, including what will be examined and how many participants.

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– The Motorsport.com Team