Even before the NASCAR Cup Series began utilizing the single source supplied NextGen car, Chase Elliott was waving a red flag urging the community to consider the perils of spec racing.
He said that passing in the previous generation car became an increasingly more challenging proposition because the tighter rule book kept teams in a tighter box. In short, the more cars are the same, the closer in speed they become, and the more procedural the races are.
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That is especially true for tracks with just a single groove.
So now, four years into the NextGen era, that is the biggest competition element that NASCAR is having to address more often than not — especially as parity has given way to a hierarchy but with less passing overall.
“We’ve talked about this before, but for sure, the more we’re the same, the harder it is to be different,” Elliott recently told Motorsport.com. “Everyone at this level is really good at driving these cars. Most of the tracks we go to, there is a preferred lane, and when the track gets rubbered in over the second half of these races, it becomes really difficult to do something different than the guy ahead of you since he’s in the optimal line.
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“And some of it, this is just motorsports in general, people getting smarter over the years, right, in terms of aerodynamics and how to tune these cars. Go back 20 years ago, and the sport was still finding out how some of these knobs and levers worked, and now we have.”
While Elliott laments the sameness in the Cup Series, he also doesn’t shy away from the challenge because it is what is, and Hendrick Motorsports pays everyone on the No. 9 team to figure out how to get track position.
“So now, we’ve never had a bigger emphasis on qualifying and your pit stall, how fast that last pit stop is, and all those things,” Elliott said. “It’s for sure a different time in motorsports, regardless.
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“So, in my view, you have to learn to appreciate the challenges that we have today, because I just think they’re probably going to be a little bit different and, and probably going to be different forever.”
With that said, NASCAR is entertaining the idea of targeting certain areas of the car to allow for competition. League president Steve O’Donnell said as much during a conversation on the Dale Jr Download in October.
“We’re always open to changes,” O’Donnell said. “The one piece I really look at, and I think our group does, we have this car and some things contained from a cost standpoint but what does everyone really like?
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“The ability to tweak on the car and find an advantage to do something cool. What’s the next iteration of that? Now that we have the parts and pieces long term, maybe we look at race teams are making some parts again, some things we can open up.
“We give it a cost cap where we can open it up. But we’ve at least stopped the wasteful spending and now we want to get it back to where an engineer can come in and tweak on a car or an OEM can say ‘this is our IP and we want to try something’ from a new technology standpoint. We’re open to tweaking on it. We had the mindset of needing to stop the bleeding so now what can we do to keep making the racing better?”
Does that interest Elliott?
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“It’s just hard to speculate because I don’t know what specifically he is talking about,” Elliott said. “Like, super casually, yeah but I just don’t know what he means.”
Brad Keselowski had the same answer when asked.
“It’s hard to provide an answer without knowing what exactly they would want to do,” he said.
Adam Stevens, crew chief for Christopher Bell and the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20, was at least enthusiastic about the idea of opening things up because he misses the days where his engineers could innovate.
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“I mean, that’s interesting and I hadn’t heard that OD said that at all,” Stevens said. “I would certainly be in favor of it. Even if I remove myself from the crew chief chair, and take the 30,000 foot view, when you have the ability to work on the car beyond the shocks, and springs, and set-up parameters, it creates competition, right?
“Throughout the history of the sport, at least in my time, somebody has a hot hand and someone doesn’t. You can be on the leading edge of the development curve and everyone catches up and you have to get back to work. It creates comers and goers, and fast cars and slow cars, people on the way up and down, with more areas in which to compete.”
The challenge is that Stevens doesn’t immediately know what NASCAR should open up.
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“I would certainly be in favor of it but as far as areas where, I don’t know, but I would love competing in any area of the car with the equipment that I would be allowed to,” Stevens said. “Selfishly, that is part of the sport that I enjoyed immensely that is kind of gone. I know a lot of talented engineers, racers and fabricators are the same way. I feel like we’re missing that. If they would sprinkle some of that back in, I would certainly enjoy that.”
His teammate, Chris Gayle, crew chief for Denny Hamlin and the No. 11 team shared in Stevens’ general enthusiasm.
“We need to look at some of our underbody stuff,” Gayle said. “Do we need to sit on the shocks. There are some areas they could open up that wouldn’t cost anything, that might would create opportunities, but it’s so hard to say right now without having a lot of time to think about it.”
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Rudy Fugle, crew chief of the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 also doesn’t like having this car sit on the shocks the way it does.
“Absolutely, yes, 100 percent in favor of opening some things up,” Fugle said. “There are plenty areas of the car that you could say, ‘whatever you want to do but don’t do this’ and ‘don’t change that’ to make things way more open. Right now, the car and the setup has been developed around the shock limiters, really. That’s how we keep the cars off the track and that’s created the entire setup around that.
“There are some things I think we could do that wouldn’t be very expensive, in my opinion, it would just take some development. It would be running sim and tinkering — more time than anything else. And that would inspire some of the groups at these race teams too. We have some burnout, going through the year, and we are so limited on what we can change, and with just a little but more opening of the rule book, that could get us excited and it would be fun.”
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Like the rest of his peers, Paul Wolfe for the Team Penske No. 22 team hadn’t heard O’Donnell’s quote but also says he misses the days of innovation.
“Well, I hadn’t heard about that or considered that it would ever be on the radar to open some things back up so I need to put some more thoughts into it to give you better answer,” Wolfe said. “But generally, I enjoy change and I think it’s healthy for competition.
“When the rule book changes and evolves, it creates opportunity, and creates some separation with teams finding that speed early and then others catching up and surpassing them. I support anything that allows for that kind of competition.
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“We’ve gone quite a while now with this generation car with things being pretty stagnant. Those of us who have been in the sport a long time enjoy the competition and creativity and I think the racing would definitely benefit from giving teams a chance to make some things happen or find advantages, even if it’s just for a short period of time.”
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