"There's no excitement whatsoever": Bubba Wallace's spotter left unimpressed with NASCAR racing at Talladega

On the recent episode of the Door Bumper Clear podcast, Freddie Kraft, the spotter of Bubba Wallace, commented on the state of superspeedway racing in NASCAR. The most recent playoff race, at Talladega, also became a subject of criticism for its racing product.

Throughout the year this season, superspeedway racing has seen fuel-saving strategies becoming a major theme. Drivers running half throttle, saving fuel to make it to the end, has also become a subject of criticism.

At Talladega recently, the NASCAR Next Gen cars lined up four-wide at one point, which, according to Kraft, is impressive, but not difficult.

As his fellow spotter, Brett Griffin asked Kraft what he would change for the Daytona 500, which is a little over three weeks away, the 23XI spotter said:

"I don't know, aside from starting over from scratch with a different car, I don't know what to do."

Kraft claimed that the fact, that drivers like Joey Logano mentioned they didn't have fun, and Denny Hamlin said that everything he learned from Tony Stewart and Dale Jr. is irrelevant, points to a big problem.

"My problem is, yeah sure, four-wide looks impressive and it is impressive, but even at half throttle, to be out there running around four-wide is not easy by any means. But it's easier than when you were running wide open back in the day. But my only problem is, that's great, we can make it look impressive when nobody really cares. But when we're trying to race at the end of the race, it's two-by-two, you can't get a third lane going, and then there's no excitement whatsoever. It's just whoever can get their lane pushed at the right time riding down the backstretch entering turns three and four, that's who's going to win," the spotter said.

Reacting to this, the third co-host of the podcast, TJ Majors, suggested that the reason drivers could run four-wide was that the racecars were 'super easy to drive.'

Majors further contrasted the Cup racing with Xfinity, suggesting the issue is with the cars.

Denny Hamlin's crew chief made a big statement on the NASCAR Next Gen era after Talladega

Echoing Freddie Kraft and his own driver's sentiments, Chris Gabehart, the crew chief of Denny Hamlin was left disappointed with the racing at Talladega. After the race, the #11 crew chief remarked that in the Next Gen era, the focus is no longer on a driver's skills and talent.

Instead, Gabehart suggested that Next Gen cars are detrimental to factors like race strategies and fuel saving. He elaborated:

"With Gen 7 speedway racing, I just don't see any greatness. There's qualifying up front, there's a little bit of a tussle after an event. So a green flag falls off, or falls, you know, green flag comes out, or, you know, a pit cycle just completes, and there's a little bit of flustering. But once they all get lined up, you're just stuck."

The crew chief concluded that in modern NASCAR racing, there is no room for driver ability or talent.