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NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer has heard your critiques of short track racing the current Cup Series aero package, and he wants you to know that the series is doing everything it can to address it. Sawyer went on Sirius XM’s Morning Drive on Tuesday to address the matter after Kyle Larson led 411 of 500 laps in Sunday’s race at Bristol.
“We’re all in this together, and we all want the same thing. We all want the best product and the best racing on the racetrack, and if someone has an idea, we’re all ears,” Sawyer said.
At one point, Bristol was considered one of if not the premier track on the NASCAR calendar. But that has change in recent years after significant changes to both the track – which switched to progressive banking in 2007 – and the car The latter of which has drawn the ire of fans, who claim that the 670-horsepower engines combined with a wider tire and more powerful brakes have made for stagnant racing with limited passing.
Denny Hamlin, who currently sits second in Cup Series points and has often been critical of NASCAR in the past, yet again voiced his displeasure on the most recent Actions Detrimental podcast.
“You’re not going to pass when the field runs the same speed. So again, and I’ve said this week after week, I don’t know what we expect,” Hamlin said. “This is the car we built. This is what ownership of of NASCAR wanted. They wanted to build a sports car and we’re going to race this sports car on all these different tracks and it just doesn’t race well. I mean, I think there are fixes we can do to it but I’m not in charge.”
Elton Sawyer And Denny Hamlin Disagree On Gen-7 NASCAR Cup Series Car
Sawyer, however, doesn’t think that things are as dire as Hamlin would have people believe.
“What I would say is what we talk about every week: If you look at our product that we put on the racetrack every week, we’re constantly looking at that and what we can do to improve,” Sawyer said. “I don’t want our fans to lose sight that we have great racing and our superspeedways, we have great racing at our intermediate tracks, and we have seen great racing at short tracks and road courses.
“We will continue to look at our short track package, we’ve worked closely – the industry that is, our drivers, our teams, our NASCAR folks here at the R&D Center, working with our good friends at Goodyear and continue to work on the tire and trying to get that fall-off we’re looking for on those short tracks.”
Ultimately, NASCAR is, to some degree, at the mercy of its manufacturers. Right now only Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota compete in the top three series’. NASCAR has teased additions in recent years. But none of those have come to fruition. Until or unless that happens, things aren’t likely to change.