It’ll be a little while before the NASCAR Cup Series visits another short track, and right now, that’s a good thing.
It gives the sanctioning body time to evaluate the state of its short-track product and identify what steps need to be taken to stop the bleeding.
It’s become glaringly obvious over the opening trio of short-track races (Tennessee’s Bristol Motor Speedway, Virginia’s Richmond Raceway and Martinsville Speedway) that NASCAR has yet to produce a short-track package for the NexGen car that lends itself to competitive racing.
Though the excessive tire wear that occurred at Bristol was cause for excitement, the lack of passing was difficult to ignore during NASCAR’s stop at Richmond and last Sunday’s race at Martinsville.
Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s VP of competition, acknowledged this during a Tuesday appearance on SiriusXM.
“We, as NASCAR, want our short-track package to be better. We want that racing to be at the level of superspeedways and our intermediate racetracks are today,” Sawyer said. “I promise you we are working as hard as we can with Goodyear and we need to work harder. That’s the bottom line.”
The series may be working to find a fix, but it hasn’t stopped drivers from communicating their frustrations.
While at “The Paperclip,” veteran driver Kyle Busch made his feelings clear, saying the slight changes NASCAR made to the package for the 2024 season should not be considered an improvement.
“I didn’t think we could make it worse, but by golly we did…for me anyways. Maybe it’s just because we don’t have it quite figured out like others do, but I cannot follow anybody in front of me whatsoever. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the bottom lane, the middle lane, the top lane,” Busch explained. “If there is a car in front of me, I am terrible. Really bad.”
The only positive he drew was that it’s somewhat easier to slide around the rear end of the car without crashing, but the constructive feedback ended there.
“The front ends are just ungodly not working,” Busch said.
When asked what direction he’d like to see NASCAR go in regarding further development of the package, he scoffed, “It doesn’t matter because they’re not going to do it, so it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to paint myself in a bad spot to get in trouble.”
Busch finished 16th at Martinsville after starting 11th.
The next short track on the Cup Series schedule is the All-Star Race, which will be held May 19 at .625-mile North Wilkesboro (N.C.) Speedway.