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Motorsport

NASCAR assures Cup drivers that superspeedway changes are coming

NASCAR Denny Hamlin Christopher Bell Todd Gilliland Michael McDowell Mike Forde John Probst Daytona (Facility) Talladega (Facility) the Sanctioning Body

Saturday morning at Texas Motor Speedway featured a regularly scheduled competition meeting between NASCAR and Cup Series drivers and much of the proceedings focused on superspeedways.

The Sanctioning Body wanted drivers to know that they are aware that work still needs to be done to improve the racing product after the Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega last weekend.

This is welcomed news to Christopher Bell, one of the most measured voices within that group because he doesn’t want to run the current superspeedway package with this car ever again.

Bell expressed urgency on Saturday after that meeting during his media availability.

“We desperately need change,” Bell said. “We needed change for a long time. So hopefully that is the last time that we race that speedway package. I think a lot of us in the industry will be very excited about that”

The race at Talladega on Sunday reflected all the reasons that drivers are frustrated with the status quo. The cars have so much drag that any attempts to pull out of line to make a move kills their entire momentum.

Because of the near impossibility to pass, teams order drivers to save fuel so they spend less time on pit road in the effort to get track position that way instead. Last weekend, when drivers first tried to race after saving fuel over the first half, it resulted in a 27-car crash.

The race was ultimately decided by the same front row that took the green flag after the final pit stops – Carson Hocevar and Chris Buescher.

Bell has seen enough.

“It's literally a lottery race,” Bell said. “I mean, it’s atrocious and now the strategy is so spelled out that it becomes all about fuel saving. We try to adjust the stage lengths so we’re not fuel-saving but you can’t pass.

“So, it becomes all about shortening that last pit stop as short as you can get it, meaning we’re still saving fuel in the second stage, even though you can make it to the end after that last pit stop. It’s a joke. It’s a complete joke.”

Denny Hamlin says this whole process will take time but he senses urgency from the Sanctioning Body.

“I really think NASCAR has a really good idea and direction of where to go for the next superspeedway race,” Hamlin said. “I think we are very optimistic (but) it’ll be hard to get it all done in one chunk. It’s going to take some time, but I certainly think, if I had to guess, that the next superspeedway race will look a little different.”

On NASCAR’s official Hauler Talk podcast, communications executive Mike Forde said that a text from Hamlin to CEO Steve O'Donnell was immediately forwarded to competition executive John Probst. Further, Forde said he passed Probst in the office this week and he was running simulation on various concepts.

Hamlin said he took the lead among his peers and that he feels like NASCAR is listening to them.

“I kind of gave them an idea of where I would like to see the direction go and then NASCAR's going to do all the testing in the simulation world to figure out what we can do in the short term,” he said.

Hamlin also believes there are things that can be done before the next race at Daytona in August that wouldn’t require testing.

“I think there are knobs that can be turned pretty quickly,” Hamlin said. “That’s easy for me to say as a car owner because I don’t build the engines or supply the parts but I feel like there are two major things -- an engine and a spoiler and we can take them down a little bit to get where we want to go.”

Long term, Hamlin wants to pretty much remove the spoiler and decrease horsepower to eliminate drag while also slowing the cars down enough to compensate.

“It still might take some time but if we can change it to 25 percent, you still might see a little different race,” Hamlin said. “It’s not going to be a vastly different race but I think if they could get it in for Daytona, on a hot racetrack, we could see a different looking race.”

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. echoed a lot of those sentiments and said NASCAR ‘isn’t afraid to make some changes’ and believes they will before Daytona in the summer.

Todd Gilliland says he ‘stays quiet in those meetings’ because he hasn’t earned that level of voice yet but agreed with the consensus that was offered to NASCAR.

“There was nothing I could do last week,” Gilliland said. “I was stick in 15th and literally couldn’t go anywhere. At that point, you leave a tiny gap so that maybe you miss the crash. Maybe you try to bait people into starting a third lane and fill the hole when they move up and try that one-by-one, but that is such a frustrating way to race.”

Overall, Gilliland was just grateful to NASCAR for being receptive to the drivers.

“We’re always working on something and these kind of conversations have been really really good for the most part,” Gilliland said. “It’s just nice to get everyone in the same room, sitting down, and it’s different from when you’re trying to text everyone. I think today is where you see a lot of things get done.

“We’re working on a lot of things. The short tracks are still a work in progress and we talked about that too.”

The 2021 Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell took away a sense of urgency from this meeting too.

“They have been working on it, and it’s not like they haven’t been working on it,” McDowell said. “There are obviously steps that need to be taken and I think they are going to do it pretty quickly. There wasn’t an answer like, ‘hey, we are going to do this for Daytona,’ but I do think we’ll have changes for Daytona but there are just a lot of things to work through as you guys know.”

McDowell also praised the collaborative effort.

“The great thing to me is that NASCAR is still open to working on it,” he said. “No one is sitting on their hands and telling us ‘it is what it is,’ right? This car does some really great things at certain racetracks and it’s not great at others.

“And as a group, we’re working through all of it.”