The debate surrounding adding more horsepower to the NASCAR Cup Series car has been fading in and out over the past couple of seasons. Earlier when NASCAR introduced the new Next Gen cars last year, there had been hopes to see a higher power output from the racecars. Instead, the cars showed up with 670 horses under the hood. It was still better than the 500 horsepower package NASCAR wanted to bring in earlier.
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However, recently the seven-time Cup Series champion, affectionately referred to as the King of NASCAR; Richard Petty spoke up on the matter once again. He explained what NASCAR was required to do in order to improve the racing at the Cup level for the near future.
Richard Petty suggests NASCAR’s next course of action
While engaged in a conversation with Dale Inman, Petty mentioned, “To make racing good today, they should give all of these cars 800 horsepower. If they did, then you wouldn’t see the pack of cars running together. That would separate the men from the boys or whatever it be.”
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The King of NASCAR added, “I’m big on horsepower so that when you do catch somebody and they mess up a little bit, you are able to get by them. The way it is now, if somebody in front of you messes up a little bit, he can change in another gear and accelerate just as quickly as you can. So when you take the horsepower away, there’s no acceleration. To me, that messes up racing.”
Petty has not been the first person to ask NASCAR to add more horsepower to the cars. In fact, several people from the community have suggested such in the past. Considering how heavy the new Next Gen cars have become, it would make perfect sense for NASCAR to consider increasing the power to make the racing a bit more interesting.
Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano have also echoed views similar to Petty
Earlier into the season, prominent drivers such as Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano had also shared their wish to have more horsepower in the cars to improve the short-track racing experience.
Following the race at Martinsville Speedway back in April, Logano spoke with NBC Sports and mentioned, “You got 30-something cars out there that run within a tenth… I was racing cars that I didn’t think I’d be racing, cars that in the past you would pass with ease. I couldn’t do that. … There’s just not enough speed difference in the cars. They’re almost the same. There’s not much fall-off. We need more fall-off, and we need a lot more horsepower.”
Similarly, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver also stated, “We’re in a box with these engines, and NASCAR’s leadership wants us (with these) engines, they keep lowering horsepower, which makes us have to shift…” He further mentioned that the only way to fix this would be to add additional power into the cars, but remained doubtful if that would ever happen.
Considering all of these suggestions, it would only make sense for NASCAR to try to bring in a better engine package with additional power output for these Next Gen cars in the near future. Hopefully, that would improve the racing in some of these tracks significantly.
