NASCAR's Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, has addressed the sport's recent and prevalent issues with short-track racing quality. Despite multiple attempts at adapting the seventh-generation Next-Gen Cup car to tracks other than superspeedways or intermediates, drivers and fans have been complaining of dismal races with little-to-no overtaking at tracks such as Martinsville Speedway.
Sawyer spoke about how the governing body has been keeping an eye on things and is not deciding to ignore a serious issue that plagues one of the stock car racing staples. The 64-year-old elaborated on the same on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio and said:
"We’re not naive to this. We as NASCAR want our short-track package to be better. We want that racing to be at the level that superspeedways and our intermediate racetracks are today. I promise you we are working as hard as we can with Goodyear and we need to work harder."
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He added:
"We need to work harder to come to a place, where as I said a couple of weeks ago, we need to figure out how to bottle up what we learned at Bristol and also what we learned the first 30 laps at Richmond last week on how that race unfolded."
Several drivers such as owner-operator in NASCAR, Denny Hamlin, have been extremely vocal about the issues they faced during the 2024 Cook Out 400, speaking about the same after the race as well as on his popular podcast 'Actions Detrimental'.
Denny Hamlin on NASCAR's lack of tire falloff
23XI Racing co-owner and driver for Joe Gibbs Racing, Denny Hamlin, recently spoke about the implications of a non-wearing tire at short tracks for the Next-Gen car.
He discussed this on his podcast, saying:
"We can't even reach the bumper of the cars. The racing needs to be fixed. If we sit back and do nothing, then shame on us."
The upcoming few races present an opportunity for the governing body to work on the publicly voiced issue, with drivers heading to intermediate-style Texas Motor Speedway this Sunday followed by Talladega Superspeedway.
It remains to be seen whether further aero changes are bought in to change the Next Gen car's characteristics, or if Goodyear successfully develops a tire that can provide drivers with wear at short tracks.
