"A total letdown" - NASCAR Insider blasts state of short track racing following lacklustre Bristol race

NASCAR journalist Jeff Gluck said he was disappointed by the playoff elimination race at Bristol. The race won by Kyle Larson has attracted criticism for its poor racing product.

This was reflected in the fact that in 2022, the first year of the Next Gen car, 421 out of the total laps were led by three drivers. In the 2023 Bristol night race, that number was 431 between three drivers.

In Saturday's race at Bristol, Larson led 462 laps alone. In doing so, he made and recreated several firsts. But it all came at the cost of exciting racing on the track, especially at a track like Bristol which is one of the most famed venues for exciting racing in NASCAR's history.

Speaking about this on the "Teardown", Gluck said he wasn't angry, but expressed his disappointment with the race, adding that there had been excitement about it beforehand. He said,

"It was a total letdown. It was just such a disappointing night, because everybody was so excited for it. Take the racing side - First of all you had, 'Oh, what are the tires going to do?' You had this unbelievable Bristol race in the spring. That was one of the all-time NASCAR races, I enjoyed it so much. It was everything you were looking for in a lot of senses, even though it was an accident, with the tire wear, it was so exciting" [3:18].

Gluck said that even if teams adjusted their cars for the tire fall-off issue and eliminated the factor, it was still an elimination race.

He added,

"There's still things that can happen. And then you start to realize, 'Oh, they can't really pass.' Martin Truex Jr. was running 2nd, he was going to have a top-3 car, gets a speeding penalty, restarts 24th, finishes 24th. He could not pass Kaulig and Rick Ware cars with his playoffs on the line, to just even get around them" [5:15].

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Jeff Gluck doesn't want NASCAR to settle for the current state of short-track racing

The NASCAR insider attributed the poor racing product at Bristol to possible factors like cars running the same speeds, difficulty of passing, track position, dirty air, and so on.

But there was one thing that Jeff Gluck said is simply non-negotiable for him in his expectations from NASCAR.

He said,

"Here's my thing, you can say what the solutions are, or whatever, but ultimately what I want to see is that NASCAR just cannot settle for this as the short track product. This cannot be what is acceptable in any way[...] The history of NASCAR short track racing is way too rich and way too meaningful to the sport, to just go, 'This car just doesn't race that well there'" [6:20].

The NASCAR journalist added that while he doesn't know what can be done, how it can be fixed, or who that person or body to fix it would be, races such as Saturday's Bristol night race are unacceptable because of the track and the event's significance in the history of NASCAR as he further said:

"This is an amazing place, it is an amazing race, it should be something that goes back to selling out and people get hyped up for, and you shouldn't go there being like, 'Man, I feel duped. What did I see?'"

With all this in mind, it'll be interesting to see if NASCAR reacts to these comments and makes any changes to Next Gen racing at short tracks in the future. While these could possibly include experimentation with the car's elements and tires or some other big change on a foundational level, fans and drivers will have to wait for now.