There is one thing that is for certain so far in 2024 in the NASCAR Cup Series….
The short track racing has been quite lackluster to say the least.
Superspeedways are always going to produce the show of all shows. It’s going to be awfully hard to top the Ambetter Health 400 finish from Atlanta Motor Speedway in race 2 of this year. The mile and a half tracks are slowly continuing to produce good races. But like the road courses, the short tracks have fell off the face of the earth. People have been screaming that need more horsepower. While I do agree that cup cars need to me max horsepower that the chassis will withstand, I don’t fully believe that is the full problem. So what is it you think is the problem, Matt???
Funny you should ask….
The tires are the problem. When you have a wider contact patch on the ground, going from a 15 to 18 inch tire on these next gen cars, in theory, that makes the cars EASIER to drive. Denny Hamlin said it best on his podcast this week, When the cars are almost dead equal across the board, that makes things too easy. The tires are not wearing hardly any, save face from Bristol. When the stage two winner goes 180 laps on left sides, at Martinsville, THATS A PROBLEM.
These cars are CUP SERIES CARS. They are NOT supposed to be so easy to drive that your grandparents could drive.
Make the tires as soft as sponges, put 925 hp under the hood (don’t say it can’t be done NASCAR, because Doug Yates will tell you otherwise), and put these short tracks back into the drivers’ hands. They ACCIDENTALLY stumbled on something good at Bristol. It reminded me of when iRacing had a patch error and put 950 hp in the ARCA cars, and people screamed leave it alone. This is fantastic.
Fix these cars and stop giving us the SHORT END OF THE STICK at these short track races.