Chris Gabehart and Denny Hamlin combined on Sunday to bring the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE home in tenth place in Talladega. The result has put Hamlin in a comfortable spot heading to the Roval this coming weekend but Gabehart wasn’t pleased with what he saw on the 2.6-mile superspeedway from a race quality standpoint.
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He spoke to Frontstretch after the race and explained his views on how superspeedway racing in the Next Gen has created a scenario in which drivers can’t display their racing abilities. He said, “I just don’t see any greatness. There’s qualifying up front and there’s a little bit of a tussle after an event. A green flag falls off or a pit cycle just completes and there’s a little bit of flustering.”
“But once they all get lined up, you’re just stuck. There’s no more driver ability. No more driver talent to speak of.” These views are in line with what many other key players in the sport like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Chase Briscoe, and Hamlin himself have said in recent times. Driving to save fuel and the inability to make passes on such tracks make the Next Gen car a far from ideal one.
Gabehart continued to note what sets the Cup Series apart from other racing disciplines. Drivers compete over different types of race tracks ranging from short tracks to road courses and superspeedways. This requires them to be good on multiple fronts. But how can these issues be fixed and driver racing discipline be brought to importance once again?
Gabehart’s solution to fixing superspeedway racing product
The chief said, “If we want driver racing discipline to matter again at these tracks we have to do something. I am a proponent of making the stage lengths the length of the fuel tank. So, all of the pitting that’s necessary to be done is under caution. We will all have fuel to make it to the caution that we care about.”
The entire length of the race is something that he’d change as well. He concluded by noting that NASCAR would look at things in the offseason and figure out if there’s space to make things better. Changing the lengths of stages to suit the fuel tank capacity is something that Dale Jr. had previously proposed.
Every race in a superspeedway brings forth the same conversation. And most of that is on the flaws of the Next Gen car. Plate racing used to be a highly intriguing matter back in the day when the Gen 6 car was in use. One can only hope that NASCAR will see similar days again.
