NASCAR has finished the road course stretch of the summer months and there is one obvious takeaway from the four events. The sport needs to address the road course package in the NASCAR Cup Series for the 2024 season and beyond.
In NASCAR’s top three divisions, stage cautions were removed during road course events and it allowed the natural race to play out. Quite frankly, it was refreshing to see long green-flag runs, specifically in the Cup Series race at the Indianapolis Road Course. For the most part, the racing at road courses went well for the NASCAR Xfinity and Truck Series but not for the sport’s top level.
Many want to point the finger at the removal of stage cautions as the reason why the racing has been poor; however, it is directly connected to the current package. According to Fronstretch’s Dalton Hopkins, there was not a single pass made among the top-6 drivers in the final 30 laps at Watkins Glen International. For the top-11 drivers, there was not a pass in the final 16 laps.
This happened despite close racing at the front outside of eventual race winner William Byron. The rest of the top-5 finishers were Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, A.J. Allmendinger, and Ty Gibbs. For almost the entire last green-flag run, all four drivers were relatively close to each other. It is not a stage caution problem because how would this have any correlation?
REPOST to congratulate @WilliamByron for WINNING at @WGI!
He jumped right into his burnouts! #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/FgccvQWPpa
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) August 20, 2023
The NextGen car seems to be too good for road courses. It is not impossible to out-brake another driver but it remains very hard. There is a reason why road course events were better with the Gen 6 car. It all comes down to the current car and the package. If the racing on road course events was enjoyable, some drivers and fans wouldn’t believe that NASCAR has too many of them but that is the case.
All of these words aren’t in an effort to tell people what needs to be fixed on the NextGen car for road courses to be fun again. That is something for the professionals to figure out. However, it was very disappointing to look at the top-10 drivers at Watkins Glen with 10 laps to go and understand this would be the final running order despite close racing.
Something needs to change for the 2024 season. It either needs to come in the form of fewer road courses or a better package because this isn’t a problem that was just present at Watkins Glen. It simply capped off the major road course stretch of the 2023 NASCAR schedule in a disappointing and alarming fashion.
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