What's Wrong With The NASCAR NextGen? 

The Gen 7 has been fantastic on mile and a half’s, pretty good on superspeedways (the Gen 6 superspeedway racing was better) but lacks a lot on short tracks and road courses. My only issues are the short tracks wish the racing was better on short tracks

Some of my favorite racing was in 2011. High horsepower, more action, more fun.

I think Eric said it best yesterday, the car is built for and is too good on road courses. Unless it's a mechanical problem or two guys fighting for one spot, the racing will more likely than not be perfect

Clearly the hardest thing with stock cars is making it good enough for strong racing quality at all forms of tracks. Here’s a few ideas that I hope would work. 1. Add horsepower as usual (~770-800 HP) and increase the RPMs in the gears to between 9,000 and 9,300 2. Make the brakes smaller for the short tracks and road courses for longer braking zones, definitely would make the drivers think about how hard to dive into the turns. 3. Let the teams add their own small adjustments to the cars, because like the old saying goes “The smallest detail makes a big difference”. 4. Make the tires/treads thinner so they can wear off big time. 5. Something Denny Hamlin mentioned on his podcast after Sonoma was that there were painted curbs before and at the passing zones that gave the cars a lot of grip that made it hard to pass there, so perhaps get rid of painted curbs at the road courses and let the cars race on their own grip, not the tracks grip.

i got a way to fix everything for every track… just bring back the 2014 aero package 🥱

In my opinion, one of the biggest problem with Watkins Glen is the drivers are now using every inch of those paved runoff areas. No close, bumper to bumper racing into turn one when you have an extra 400 feet of pavement to avoid each other every lap.

A warm January day in 2022 was the reason why the intermediate package is so good. It got to a high of 60 degrees and they were able to try out different set ups at Charlotte. The drivers agreed on a package that worked and the rest is history.

The car wasn’t designed to do one thing well, it was a ground up redesign to do all things well. When you give the worlds best stock car racers the same car, not much passing will happen.

CBell knows a thing or two about real racing. 💯

Fans will complain about anything and everything. I'm more worried these days about making knee-jerk changes ever since we had the 550hp disaster. I think Nascar needs to do more testing overall before changing the package.

It has less power than a show room sports car but it's a race car. That's the problem.

I agree, The Short Tracks and Road Course need improvements Big Time PS: Congrats on the collab with Stark Raving Sports

I really dont like when people talk bad about the next gen car because they are pointing out the things everyone knows, but think they can fix it easily. But you did a great job coving grey area's and logical fixes, and acknowledging the fixes NASCAR made to driver safety, Now I belive the Short tracks and RC racing can be fixed with enough testing/ Driver input. Loved the coverage and overveiw of the problems over the last 2 years with this new cars!

Firstly test a new aero package like removing the rear diffuser for short tracks, secondly try grooved tyres like F1 did from 1998-2008. AND FINALLY, MORE HORSEPOWER PLEASE!!!!!

Horsepower would help, but comparing the current Cup cars to both Xfinity and ARCA cars this weekend suggests going back to live axels would help more.

The car has more mechanical grip because of the independent rear suspension which in turn gives better grip in the turns which help preserve the tires because the tires aren't wearing down much. Go to a softer compound which will make the cars faster but will fall off a lot faster. This will call for different pit strategy which will lead to more passing

The next gen has solved mile and a half's, superspeedways still below the 19-21 gen 6 package. We got a HUGEEEE slap in the face of reality from that xfinity race.

NOT👏ENOUGH👏HORSEPOWER👏

One of the problems I’ve heard is that it’s partially a tire problem (also HP). The tires aren’t getting enough load on them on non banked tracks. Like a semi truck tire on a gokart. The dirty air isn’t strong on short tracks, but it is strong enough on to cause the effect. The drivers preferred racing in wets because they were soft enough to drive behind another racer (while also having less grip).

I think the immediate solution is to have mandated gear ratios. If we make 4th gear super short and have 5th be long, shifting can become irrelevant at short tracks, leading to the momentum-based action we got with the old 4-speed H-patterns.

I feel like this issue is a lot more fixable than people think. 900 hp on the short tracks and road courses would be great, but realistically I think just going back to the 750-800 range will do the trick. You don't have to completely redesign the tires, just have Goodyear make them a bit softer to allow more wear (or maybe alternate tire options on road courses like IndyCar and F1?). I do think the positives outweigh the negatives and this car is overall better than the Gen 6, but that certainly shouldn't breed complacency. NASCAR was able to fix the racing on intermediate ovals, I have faith they'll be able to do the same here without drastically overhauling the car

Ford and Toyota are happily building 900+hp sprint car engines right now (Chevrolet small block was the blueprint before those 2 jumped in within the last 5 years)…but it’s so difficult to get the modern cup engine to 800hp…suuuuure 🙄

I think CBell hit it right on the head. Use Xfinity series Chassis/Aero package with the Cup level HP of 850-900 and you will have some of the best racing out there.

I was going to post that they need to reduce the width of the tires and then Chase said it for me. Unleash the teams to build the best engines they can as well. Bring back the need for driver finesse

I'm upset the fact that NASCAR is stubborn on thinking 670 HP would attract more OEMs, but no new OEM had showed up since gen 7 began its testing phase in 2019. Almost 4 years.

The Next Gen is so incredibly close to perfection. It’s missing that last 10 percent of excellence missing at short tracks and superspeedways! Unfortunately, it takes a hell of an effort to get that last 10 percent.

The Superspeedway package is far from phenomenal. They're (and drivers agree) are stuck in a bump train where the third lane is almost impossible to make happen and looks like the iRacing draft model of 2017 to 2019 where it's just the two bottom lanes with the top or the bottom getting bumped ahead/back with no real passing. Road Courses, Short Tracks and SSWs have all severely suffered with Gen7.

There’s just lack of horsepowers (yes it’s more than 550, but still), barely any tire fall-offs, 5 gears on ovals ain’t it, crappy parts, and lack of safety features. I think they’ve added more safety features? Someone correct me if I’m wrong. But yeah the car needs some fixing and bump up some ponies and have tire fall-offs and bring back 4 gears for ovals and I think it’ll be better. I’m still hoping the Gen 7 does improve moving forward.

I don't want to see the number of road courses go down so hopefully it will come around.

Plain and simple they need to leave the tapered spacers at home and let these engines sing at full song. Bring in the element of throttle control with the slip and sliding take over like it did back in the early to mid 2000s. Most of use will look back as 2014 as the last great year because of this very reason. New manufacturers are not really interested (at the moment) to join the sport, so NASCAR's reasoning with that is totally thrown out.

6:44 damn…. He’s right tho

Short answer is too many gears, tires too thick, and a lack of inner-liners because "low profile tires are cool". I would argue that tire width is the biggest issue, as it makes the cars planted so well that anything short of a hard slam in the bumper makes it very difficult to upset the handling. The horsepower numbers are also hurting a lot. They just need to bring the numbers back up overall. 550 horsepower is way too little and needs to be brought up, particularly on tracks where acceleration is a major factor.

prediction: reliability forgot about the short track package

I think they should look at what Supercars have done and maybe plan on doing. For how similar the cars look, the racing (at road courses) tell a different story. If you haven’t watched V8 Supercars, basically they have the racing we’re craving for. I would really encourage people to look into the development and racing of the Gen 3 Supercars because they’ve done things that I really hope nascar can try in the off season. Yes I want 750hp+, but that’s not going to fix the issue alone. I got 3 ideas right now. 1, raise the rear diffuser and make it even smaller. There’s not enough rear end ground clearance which gives the car too much rear end security which leads to my second point. 2, find a way to get the car to have rake (rear of the car is higher than the front). 3, have the tray underneath the splitter hollowed out to make air less efficient going through the rest of the under tray (floor). I don’t have a 4th but Goodyear has a lot of homework to work on in general. But what I think fans need to understand is that a low profile tire will always have more performance. The fall off you see at Richmond is the best you’re going to get in my opinion. Instead of 3-4 second fall off in the 15in tires, you’ll at best see 2-2.5 seconds and there really isn’t a way for drivers to “save tires” like they did in the past. But while Goodyear finds a way to soften the rubber, they might need to work on soft/hard compound tires in my opinion or even let nascar invite a new tire manufacturers and not be a monopoly anymore. Yes, I’m one of the few fans (I watch other forms of racing as well) that believes tire wars aren’t that bad but can be good for the sport.

The soonest you could see more horse power is the 2025 season due to R&D and manufacturing. I think you could just put 3 grooves in the tires and vary the width of the grooves to see where the fall off vs grip levels can mimic more HP. Put three 1” grooves and you have reduced the contact patches by 25% and they will have a much harder time putting down 670 hp

Great video Darian! Nascar needs to listen to the drivers input. More horsepower!! 👍

The biggest problem is they turned a stock car into a sports car. The independent rear suspension has made the rear of these cars locked down if you notice when guys get bumped now the rear doesn't even move. The gutless engines, shifting, bigger brakes and big wide tires are also big drawbacks. Either way they definitely need to put the horsepower back in these cars there are street cars out there coming off production lines with more horsepower than the cup cars.

They should get rid of the entire defuser, increase the amount of horsepower to 800 minimum, introduce groved tires for more wear, widen the tires as well, and raise the body of the car further of the ground to have less effect from dirty air. Though it is not enough still, at least they are somewhat improving the Gen 7 cars. Also, despite the issues, I still want CGV and Road America to (re)join the Cup Series schedule. Milwaukee would also be a great track for the Cup Series.

Gen 5 was literally called the CAR OF TOMORROW. I think that was a bit more hyped than Next Gen has been.

i genuinely love watching these race shorttracks but mainly martinsville its something about martinsville that’s extremely special to me

Even with the downsides, overall I'm happy with this new car. I think the product as a whole has been much better.

I fell asleep on the couch after stage 1, didn’t wake up until two laps to go. Watched the highlights and seems I only missed McDowell blowing up and a two car spin on the last lap!😳

I have came here to comment that I ate a sandwich today.

Watch the video titled "Dale Earnhardt Jr Pole Lap Texas 2008" and just listen to the engine. That version of the COT was a total shitbox, but it had the power needed to be an actual racecar.

It just doesn't make sense why NASCAR will keep lowering the fucking horsepower. And if someone makes the argument of, "oh well its to slow the cars down so they don't flip in big wrecks", BITCH, HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THAT GRAVITY EXISTS? The cars will flip regardless if you hit them just right. I've said this for a long time, I want Dale Jr. and a collection of other like-minded individuals running NASCAR. Dale has done so much for the sport and he has a lot of great ideas, he just needs to be able to implement them. The current NASCAR leadership brass doesn't give a flying fuck, or they'll half-ass it to show they are "trying" when really, they ain't

Nascar can try as they might but it's clear they cannot keep up the reputation of taking the same kind of car to every track. Their either gonna have to make even more drastic package changes or start allowing drivers to give these cars the Gen 4 treatment which would allow them to make these road coarse and short track cars more bearable

I mean the Xfinity car has less horsepower (650 vs 670) and puts on a great show. The answer is reducing mechanical grip. This car has wide ass sports car tires, independent rear suspension (eliminates wheel hop), bigger brakes and the rear diffuser adding a ton of underbody downforce. The easiest changes would be reducing brake size, but that can also pose as a safety issue. Removing the diffuser is also a good move, but the giant tire and IRS is the stuff that makes the biggest difference and is the hardest to change financially.

I can tell you the exact problems with the short tracks and road courses. As weird as this may seem, the larger brakes are actually a problem (at least on road courses). You no longer have to be strategic with when, where, or how close to the turn you brake. This means that pretty much every car on the track is using the exact same braking zone, as saving your brakes is no longer necessary. The small spoiler certainly isn’t doing them any favors either, ESPECIALLY on the short tracks. I gotta say, the flatter short tracks such as martinsville and richmond are fairly boring by nature. Yet, despite this, cars such as late models and modifieds manage to have really good races on these tracks and similar race tracks. There are multiple ways they achieve this, but one of the main ways is with high downforce. This allows them to not only drive faster through the corners, but to run multiple lines even on the very flat tracks. People act like less downforce will make them slide around more, but in reality, they’ll slide around less due to having less confidence in the car’s ability to create grip. Adding horsepower may help passing at the beginning of the race, but ultimately once the faster cars reach the front of the field the action will be minimal. Plus, adding horsepower doesn’t do anything if you don’t have the traction to use it. As for the defuser, I do think removing it for the short tracks would help, as it is the main culprit for the dirty air. Yes, it does reduce the size of the air wake that the car leaves behind, but the narrower wake that it leaves behind is far more intense/turbulent.

"It feels like it has more horsepower" maybe add more horsepower next?

The main issue is the tires. Just use treaded tires. I thought we had proven this works at North Wilkesboro. I guess I was the only one paying attention.

I think the shorter wheelbase looks odd in terms of NASCAR’s historical lineage of body styles and dimensions

The gen 6 had better superspeedway, short track, and road course racing product. Essentially the gen 7 runs better just at intermediates, which NASCAR has started phasing out of the schedule. On top of this the gen 7 costs more for teams, i just don't get why they switched to it instead of staying with the gen 6.

NASCAR wanted a more modern car that would provide more parity across the series. I think that part you could say has been successful. However there has been a big backwards step with ovals and safety. Hopefully they aren’t stubborn and take the lessons they’ve already learned from this car and start working on the next gen or at least a major evolution of this car fairly quickly.

If we need multiple packages, so be it. Short tracks and road courses need less tyre (or way more falloff) and way more power.

I've thougth what Bell said about the Xfinity car and how if the Cup guys used those, the racing would be great everywhere. That said, perhaps that's a clue as to the direction the car could go. I personally believe that the "low downforce package" should be used everywhere. The 2 inch rear spoiler and the removed pieces from the underbody. However, they should also add horsepower too. No less than 800. The speeds really wouldn't change that much because of the off throttle time that would now be required in the corners. I might have an unpopular opinion about the "pack tracks." I would like to see them get away from the packs and take it back to the early 80s, when the cars would spread out just like at any other track and it came down to having the best car, not happenstance and not getting wrecked out in "the big one." Let the cars loose everywhere. If Indycar can run 240 at Indy, there's no reason a cup car can't hit the low 210-215. I get it, safety matters, but racing is inherently dangerous. All the drivers understand the risks. So, make the cars as safe as possible, but don't hold back what could be due to the fear of injury. On the other side of fear is freedom...

I gotta agree with Bell on the Xfinity Series. That's how I've felt for quite awhile is that it's old school. The cars are more like what the Gen4 was even though they're on COT (Gen5) chassis. I think it says something that those cars have only had cosmetic changes since they were introduced in 2010. That's 13 years and in that same time we've had 3 generations of Cup cars (COT, Gen6, NextGen). I saw an interview today with Joey Logano and I felt like he's thinking like NASCAR does. He said he thought we needed the stage cautions cause the race was boring. So he wants planned cautions to help fix the race. Well, the Xfinity Series didn't have stage cautions on Saturday yet they had some exciting racing. You still had cautions and restarts. So that right there should say it's not how the race is set up but how the cars race. It may not be perfect but the Xfinity cars are closer to what they need. But NASCAR wants to keep reinventing the wheel rather then just fix it properly.

We need more HP (850-900) on all tracks Remove the diffuser on short tracks

I’m going to deviate from the crowd and say NOT ENOUGH HP

Nascar needs to put the 2018 hp on the gen 7 car. I just find it funny that the gen 7 has the xfinity hp and yet we see two different products on track.....it's sad really.

I really don’t understand why fans/drivers are shouting more HP and nascar doesn’t seem to care. Just give us what we want

I've said this for awhile now, but adding more horsepower alone will not completely solve the problems with these cars on short tracks and road courses. I think its going to have to take NASCAR opening up the play book a little, like say, doing away with the gear rule, maybe give these guys some wiggle room on the suspension (not saying we should go back to having cars running sideways all the time like the COT days, just have some leeway on the shocks and springs), and maybe play around with the downforce package a bit. But here's another big one, bring back practice sessions, or at the very least, happy hour! That could vastly improve the product as well.

Nascar needs more horsepower

Rid sequence shifter and added sketchy Tires and lastly not only that added 850hp on all tracks

The short tracks and road courses have suffered immensely with this car. That “Gutless Engines” comment by Bell hit the nail on the head. These cars don’t have enough horsepower. NASCAR keeps taking horsepower away and the on track product is suffering as a result.

"My God, the dirty fuckin air" That is the best way to say it. Lmao. I've been to several races this year and you can actually see it in person. The trailing car will have a very good turn and exit and will be clearly catching the person in front and then once they get within a car or a half a car away, all that momentum falls off a cliff

Gotta say the Xfinity Talladega race was basically the cup series in the 2000s I mean flips that we haven’t seen that with the next gen all year ever since the 2022 Daytona 500 were if you want to be flipped the you just have to get double tapped in the right rear or just get turned more and done but we haven’t seen that ever since idk f**king 2021 . I know this really isn’t necessary but I’m just saying the 2000s cup series but with rookies that’s all

At Michigan they were snapping into full spins at 180mph. Not great. Oddball track, but still.

I’ve been lucky enough to grow up through the “golden ages” of nascar in the early 2000s with the Gen 4. What made that car great was high HP no shifting and just the right amount of downforce. NASCAR for some reason took a product that wasn’t broken and tried to fix it. Not sure why. To save the dying sport, they need to go back to that philosophy.

Saturdays have become the best show of the weekend

The Watkins Glen race was absolutely garbage. Love your channel because you have a non biased opinion and you’re usually pretty on point. That being said, if drivers think certain things will fix it like more horsepower.. then why aren’t they listening to the guys racing these actual cars? I’m tired of seeing boring races especially when I’m the only one watching them anymore among my friends. I love this sport but it’s really become a major problem for the fans. Once again, love your channel and hope they start listening more

Bump and grind on a short track is what Stock Car racing is all about. The children must be taught.

4 speed transmission, an upgraded B-spec chassis, narrower tires, 2 1/2 spoiler. Keep the step splitter and ride heights of the Cup cars the same, but remove the underbody and diffuser

6:43 everything he said is spot on

I like how the Next Gen car has disappointed on the very tracks it was supposed to be a hit at; yet kills it at tracks everyone thought it would be a dud at.

A better fuel package would be better for various types of tracks (The street/road courses, short tracks, intermediates and super-speedways would each get a slightly bigger or smaller fuel package).

No, the biggest issues with road courses are: 1) The inability of teams to modify important aspects of the cars. This not only creates silly situations, but also makes it so that teams can't effectively run different strategies, making everyone run the same way to win. 2) Related to number 1, the lack of tire fall-off making it such that teams, once again, basically having to run the same strategy. 3) The cars probably still make too much downforce and grip. The Aussie V8 supercars, which have a very similar amount of horsepower, only get 302mm wide tires (not quite a foot wide) compared to the 18 inches that NASCAR gets. So, as Chase said, you could very well lop 6 or 7 inches off the width of the tire if you wanted to. Perhaps grooved tires might be in order as a temporary stopgap? 4) At the road courses at least, track limits don't mean anything. I think that repaving the runoff areas with the coarsest, roughest asphalt you can find. Make it so that if you run off course, you shred your tires. You'll be able to make it back to the pits, but you'll lose a bunch of grip.

Come on. We're on the billet era, guys. 30 years ago some LeMans cars raced with 900hp+ for 24h straight and still competed on the remain WEC races. Today we can have an 1000hp "reliable" V8. With safer barriers and all other safety advancements since 22 years ago, NASCAR can go 220mph+ on Ovals with safety, and any race car with that much horsepower is fun to watch on any road course. Keep all those aero and grip advancements and just almost double the horsepower. i'm sure NASCAR would return to it's glory days

Honestly they need to bring back the 4th gen style cars and outright modernize them both safety wise and component wise. Classic 2000’s look with all of the modern technology? Yea, I’d be watching NASCAR races every Sunday. Bet you ratings would skyrocket as well.

I honestly think Chase Elliott hit the nail on the head there with tire width. I bet the racing would improve dramatically on short tracks and road courses with narrowing the tire, especially with the massive brakes these cars have. Opens up the door to more driver braking mistakes, creates a greater differential in corner vs straightaway speed, and creates more traction issues off of the corner. I'm really surprised that they haven't tried this at any of the tests and have been primarily messing with ticktack aero changes.

I really liked the 2016-2018 Low Downforce era as it allowed the cars to slip more

I feel like 5 speed would only work in road courses. Let 4 speed be one for the ovals. Or maybe just 3 for short tracks. My idea was that there's a unique package for road courses a la indycar but then we'd see disagreements due to more money needed to be spent for something only used 4-5 times a season.

Well. Dont me Wrong. The G7 Car has Produced some amazing Racing on the Ovals. And superspeedways But Not so much on Roadcourses and Short tracks. Often at times. Its not the Tracks which aren't at fault. Its the car. Tire wear isn't a factor For some Reason especially at Bristol Last season At North Wilksboro. Martinsville. How did Joey somehow someway Stayed out for that long.. Any other track and he would of Dissapeared in Seconds also. I've been Noticing at theese few Roadcourses that if you're behind someone you're gonna stay there for a very long time and only way to Pass someone is either By Muscling or Just dive bombing the person your behind also. The Factor Of Dirty air as well

More power would help, but there's another simple change that was overlooked in the designing of the specs that is also hurting the cars on short ovals and road courses: They're too heavy for what they've become. The Next Gen package should have included a 500 pound diet. While the drivers focus on the gutless engines for understandable reason, the weight is actually helping put the power they have down on corner exit by keeping the tires warmer and pushing them down more coming out of it. It might not be enough on it's own, but the car needs a weight reduction at least as much as it needs more power.

NextGen looks damn good at least, that's for sure...

The head people at nascar are living up to the old saying. "I don't know how to do your job but your doing it wrong. "

I like Bell idea Dalejr even said something along those line about the Xfinty car. I’m for it a 800 to 900hp car bring back the 4 speed. If you think the only two round track we might shift at is the Indy oval on hot tires or Pocono.

I feel like it really isn’t as simple as just adding horsepower, and I feel like a short track car shouldn’t just be an intermediate car with more power. 1. Decrease tyre width. Current tires are at 365mm in the rear. Decreasing that even by just 30mm goes a long way to decrease the amount of mechanical grip. 2. Institute an alternate gear rule on short tracks. Make it so the engine’s far out of the power band in 4th or 3rd mid-corner. Essentially gear it like an IndyCar so that there’s only a 500rpm drop from 3-4 and 4-5 3. Power bump to an even 700 horsepower. Xfinity cars are at 650 and the racing in that series is phenomenal on short tracks. 4. Remove the rear diffuser entirely and keep the spoiler height at 2 inches. 5. Decrease brake rotor radius and decrease maximum caliper clamping force. The brakes on the Next Gen are too good on short tracks. 6. Raise the maximum engine speed to 9500rpm so drivers have more leverage on road courses and short tracks. All cars seem to be equipped with a 9000rpm rev limiter.

I wonder what manufacturer is saying NO to more horsepower when thats one of the only ways to solve the nextgen problems.

I’ve been saying it since last year when we had this problem Treaded tire treaded tire treaded tires Too much grip is the problem and also the fact that the car is glued to the ground. Raise the minimum ride height and put tires with less surface area on them. Get them sliding around. The North Wilkesboro race was fantastic for about the first hour when they used grooved tires.

Gen 7 cars has done very well on 1 1/2 tracks for sure, but short tracks and road courses aren't great anymore, like I agree with Bell. A Xfinity car for the cup guys on short tracks would be awesome to watch, I remember last year in the Martinsville Spring race and was like I hope the racing is going to be more exciting but I wasted about 3-4 hours of my life away so I started playing games while the race was on next to me and every time Mike Joy or someone shouted something, I was like *gasp, then disappointed in about 3 seconds. Went to the Truck Race this year in the Spring where it ended under a rain delay but I didn't care because it was my first race back in 10 years so I was happy either way rain or shine and I will be heading back in the fall for the Xfinity series race on October 28th with my oldest brother so I'm hoping no rain and a damn good race.

It really comes down to the tires. NASCAR uses two tire compounds, and the teams can't choose which one they bring to the track anymore. It used to be up until... I think it was 1993? NASCAR would allow three different tire compounds. Then after 1993 they used only one for all races, as provided by Goodyear. Starting in 2006 with the Car Of Tomorrow's initial testing they started allowing the softer compound for the road courses, and it's stuck that way ever since. The tires at Bristol don't have to worry about what kind of conditions Talladega has. It's stupid to use the same compound at both when the cars are now spec racers. For the short tracks you need those harder compound tires that will last longer but give jack all for grip. That way if the driver brakes too hard, slips the clutch, shifts down at higher RPMs, or cuts in hard to block a line, it's going to cause the driver to battle for control. With the short tracks the hard tires may even wear just as fast as the current compounds because there'll be a lot more mistakes and thus possibly thread burning or flat spotting. If you combine those harder tires with narrower treads it adds a bit of strategy as well. Do you air down the tires to get a wider contact patch and better grip at the cost of a possible sidewall tear or even blowout? Or do you embrace the narrower tread and go all in on maximum oversteer so as to let the throttle sort it out, hoping the loose rear end will keep other drivers wary of trying to pass on the outside?

Honestly, I think the problem with the Gen 7 car mainly has to do with the marketing for that and how NASCAR used iRacing's model to describe what the car was going to be. Unfortunately that backfired. Austin Ogonoski has a detailed video describing it titled "NASCAR in iRacing is Faster than GT3 Cars". In fact, they got it so wrong that the Gen 7 cars in iRacing are 7 seconds faster than the real life counterpart. Allowing iRacing into the development of the Gen 7 car has hindered the performance of the car immensely and the drivers caught onto this as well. Even Kevin Harvick has caught on to the problems with NASCAR using iRacing for simulator work.

Less horsepower = more shifting. Yea, fuck shifting, get that shit out. Why that is still a thing in NASCAR during races is beyond me. NASCAR needs to grow a pair and bring the horsepower back up, among other things

750 HP Grooved Tire No Diffuser Flat Short Splitter Different Gear Ratios (Moore Specifically, for Martinsville, North Wilkesboro and Richmond) 2 in Spoiler (4 in Spoiler for Bristol) And possibly take some more weight of the car to make it more maneuverable ~ 200 lbs Leave the package for the intermediates alone, it is doing plenty fine as it is as well as Superspeedways.

It needs HORSEPOWER - Less Shifting - Raise it off the ground - More Tire Fall Off

I strongly believe these cars need more horsepower. 100% agree that it will massively help improve racing on short tracks and road courses

The intermediate racing has been great to watch and the superspeedways have been decent but the only short track that has been decent to watch was Bristol dirt. I got recommended some old gen 6 low downforce package videos and it was great racing. I think the lack of hp and wide tire ruins the product. I think the only way you get rid of shifting is to go back to 4 speed.

I think the biggest issue is what do we all know? We don't drive these cars 38 weekends a year and neither does NASCAR. To not listen to your drivers and also the most popular driver is not a wise decision. I agree the Xfinity races have been way better than Cup races and the Xfinity field is one of the weakest in a while. Overall I'm fine with a driver dominating here and there, its the lack of passing throughout the rest of the pack thats the issue.

The more we try to make these cars look just like the production models, the worse it gets. Gen 4 was still peak and that was 20 years ago

IIRC wasn't it the OEM that were pushing for less power because reasons though, the way I heard it, it wasn't NASCAR wanting less power but the OEM wanting to scale back from 700+ HP