NASCAR Driver Outcry and Safety Concerns Overshadow Cup Playoffs

• NASCAR is reaching the end of its 36-race, 10-month season with attention focused more on its beleaguered new car than on its championship-deciding Playoff Series.

• NASCAR spent several years developing a new car it felt would be racier, safer, more competitive, and more affordable than its previous model.

• The problem is that drivers say what once seemed like “routine” crashes are more violent than usual.

It is perhaps surprising that during the recent kerfuffle about NASCAR’s controversial Next Gen car someone hasn’t publicly stated, “we wouldn’t be in this mess if Dale Earnhardt were still alive.”

Something to think about.

The late seven-time Cup Series champion held such sway over NASCAR for two decades that it’s reasonable to assume he wouldn’t have let things get this far over the cliff. At the first or second sign of trouble, “Ironhead” would have planted himself squarely in Daytona Beach and/or Charlotte and simply said, “you guys fix this crap and fix it now.”

And thus, it would have been done.

Instead, NASCAR is reaching the end of its 36-race, 10-month season with attention focused more on its beleaguered new car than on its championship-deciding Playoff Series. Four more drivers will be eliminated this weekend at the Charlotte Roval, trimming the original 16-driver field in half. While that’s happening, many of the sport’s stars will be seeking answers to their understandably valid questions about the future of the car.

In review: NASCAR spent several years developing a new car it felt would be racier, safer, more competitive, and more affordable than its previous model. Scheduled for rollout in time for 2021, the so-called “Next Gen” car was held back until this year by COVID-related supply, delivery, and personnel issues. The estimated cost for the three years of ongoing R&D stretches into the hundreds of millions. (Dare we suggest a billion)?

At first, the new piece was everything NASCAR hoped it would be. There was a three-way photo finish in the season-opening Daytona 500. All told, three drivers—Austin Cindric, Chase Briscoe, and Ross Chastain—got their first-ever victory within the season’s first six races. Eight different winners went to Victory Lane in the first 10 races. A record-tying 19 had victories by the final weeks of the season. Five of those 19—Tyler Reddick and Daniel Suarez had joined Cindric, Briscoe, and Chastain—were first-time winners.

Hardly was heard a discouraging word.

But suddenly, all was not well.

Drivers began to complain that what once seemed “routine” crashes were more violent than usual. Denny Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 winner, was surprised at the pounding during his August crash at Daytona Beach. “The hit was massive,” he said of the incident that didn’t look extreme. “It’s my first one in this Next Gen car and it was legit.”

Earlier in the season, former champion Kurt Busch backed into the wall during Saturday qualifying at Pocono. The impact didn’t seem extreme, but doctors ruled him out of the Sunday race with “concussion-like symptoms.” He hasn’t raced since, and his chances of getting back in a car this year seem remote.

More recently, Alex Bowman backed into the wall during the Playoff race at Texas. He recovered enough to finish the race, but doctors later grounded him from racing at Talladega and Charlotte. With his Playoff hopes dashed, it’s questionable whether he’ll race again this year. The Texas crash, most will agree, didn’t seem all that serious.

(FYI: It should be noted that Busch and Bowman aren’t the first to miss races or quit the Cup Series due to concussions. Jerry Nadeau, Ernie Irvan, Steve Park, and Larry Pollard were forced to quit because of head injuries. More famously, Dale Earnhardt Jr. finally retired from full-time racing in 2016 after suffering at least two concussions).

The primary issue has been that Next Gen cars are more rigid and unyielding than previous versions of Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Camaros, and Toyota Camrys. The new cars were designed to be more resistant to impact directly into the driver’s workspace. That’s all well and good, but cars with that much protection create situations where drivers are enduring more physical force from minor impacts than in the past; for example, impacts into the rear end of the Next Gen car, which is where Busch and Bowman crashed.

The recent outcry also has focused on NASCAR’s rule that parts and pieces must come from an approved third-party vendor. Long gone are the days when creative mechanics and crew chiefs were free to hand-make whatever they needed for their cars. Most were designed and built from scratch on a jig or template, and then finished in each team’s garage. What NASCAR has now is more like an IROC Series, with cars (in theory, anyway) built to identical specs. The famous “gray area”—where masters like Smokey Yunick and Bud Moore and Leonard Wood found speed—is gone for all time.

Listen to what some of the sport’s top stars have to say about the Next Gen car:

“I’m sure it’s just crappy-ass parts on the race car like we’ve seen so many times. They haven’t fixed anything. It’s kind of like the safety stuff. We just let it keep going and keep going. It’s completely unacceptable that those in charge have let things get to this point. I remember (Hamlin) in the presentation of the new car pleading that the car was too stiff. Data didn’t agree. TIME TO LISTEN TO THE DRIVERS CRASHING THEM!

—Former champion Kevin Harvick after a fire last month at Darlington Raceway ended his Playoff race.

“When me and Kevin are gone, someone has to step up and be the voice of reason and call things as they are. I know all of these young guys are just happy to be here. They ain’t going to be happy to be here when their brains are scrambled for the rest of their lives. I feel like my jaw is (from) one of those boxers that gets their whole face demolished.”

“The main goal right now is for NASCAR to change the rear clip. The car needs a full redesign — front, rear, everywhere. We threw up red flags over a year ago, and they just didn’t respond. They just kept pushing that this race car had to be on the race track (in 2022) at all costs.

“It’s pretty disappointing that our sanctioning body refuses to acknowledge or accept any responsibility for drivers getting hurt. It’s the same THEY said, but WE knew better. It’s wrong for these drivers to continue to get taken advantage of by the system.”

—Hamlin, among the most outspoken drivers when it comes to safety issues.

“You have all of these years of experience, knowledge, time of racing, crashing these cars and teams working on them and building them (but) it just blows me away that we can have something new in 2022 that offers all of this technology and all of this time and experience of so many super talented people in this sport, and we allow it to go backward, especially with safety.

"I don’t feel like we should have ever been in this position to begin with, to need to go forward. We should have gone forward with a new opportunity and a new car. It’s just super-surprising to me that we allow that to happen.”

—Former champion and current points leader Chase Elliott, a five-time winner this year.

Not always as quickly as drivers want, but NASCAR has taken steps to answer most of their concerns. They made a safety-related rules change in September to lessen the possibility of fire in areas where rubber accumulates. A recent simulated test at a facility in Ohio is among the steps taken to solve the problem of why seemingly minor rear-end crashes end up putting drivers on the sidelines. Some changes will be put on hold until next year.

NASCAR executive Elton Sawyer says the idea that officials aren’t listening to drivers and owners is totally false. He said much of the dialogue is outside the public eye, leaving outsiders to think nobody cares about the drivers. There were driver-official meetings last weekend at Talladega and more are scheduled leading into this weekend at Charlotte.

“There will be some dialogue this week with the drivers that will update them on the development with the Next Gen car,” the former Xfinity and Cup Series driver said recently. “Safety is never going to end. It’s a journey, as you’ve heard us say before. Every day there is something they are working on to make our sport safer. It’s an inherently dangerous sport, but there are things we can do and we are doing (to make it safer).

“There’s ongoing dialogue (this week) to get them fully up to speed on where we’re at, what we’re doing, how we’re going to progress, how we’re going to get better and continue to build on this Next Gen car that’s had a phenomenal roll out. It hasn’t been without some challenges, which in any new project you’re going to have. There are things we’re working on behind the scenes now, and we’ll get the drivers and teams up to speed on those projects this week.”

Earnhardt might not be happy, but at least he might be more understanding.

Have thoughts on the Next Gen car, the complaints from drivers, and the response from NASCAR? Share them in the comments below.