Mark Martin has several concerns about the current state of NASCAR. He literally pushed the sanctioning body to make changes to the playoff format and has clearly stated his intent that he will continue to be a voice of the fans going forward, advocating for change he sees fit. One of the issues he has with the sport currently is with the aesthetics of the Next Gen car, and he made himself clear on that front.
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Introduced in 2022, the seventh-generation racer has suffered from a laundry list of issues, which NASCAR has addressed over time. The easiest and most convenient one to correct among them is how they look, according to Martin. He told Kenny Wallace on the latter’s YouTube show recently that he wasn’t a fan of how the car appeared and explained that it fails to awe the young fans watching.
His words went, “The aesthetics of these race cars are more important than people think. When you used to see a race car as a young kid, you’d be like, “Oh my god.” I don’t think people look at these cars now and say that. It could be so easy. People say, “Well, no, the car doesn’t race well.” I’m not talking about that. That’s a hard thing to fix. How the cars race is difficult. It’s easy to fix the looks of this car.”
He strongly believes that this relatively inexpensive fix would get younger fans more interested in the sport. What exactly does he not like about the car’s look? The position of the numbers on the door, for starters. He noted that it could be moved back by a foot and not be in the dead center of the door. Wallace, too, pointed out how he wasn’t a big fan of the car’s rear-end, and how it appears to be dragging, for the car’s aerodynamics to work at their best.
The biggest issue with the Next Gen car and its fix
Away from its aesthetics, there is another big issue with the Next Gen Cup car. Drivers and fans have been complaining for a long time about how the cars are massively underpowered and don’t let competitors pass each other, particularly on short tracks. This leads to boring and pointless races that ultimately harm the fan base’s interest in NASCAR.
To fix this, the governing body has urged the sport’s official tire supplier, Goodyear, to develop better tire compounds with higher falloff, while also working on track-specific aero packages for the Next Gen racers themselves, aimed at improving the racing quality at venues such as short tracks, with reasonable success.
While this has resulted in positive changes, there is still a lot of headway to be made. And a massive step towards that was announced a few weeks back. In 2026, the Next Gen car will feature a bump up in power to 750 horsepower, instead of this year’s 670 on road courses and tracks less than 1.5 miles in length. This is viewed as a big development in making the Next Gen car more suitable to the tastes of the fandom as well as the drivers.
