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.
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.
“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.”
Chase Elliott, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet
Photo by: Michael Bush – Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
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.
“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?
“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?
“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.
Austin Cindric, Team Penske Ford, Christopher Bell, Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, Ross Chastain, Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet, Josh Berry, Wood Brothers Racing Ford
Photo by: Christian Petersen / Getty Images
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.
“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 bey