Insider rips NASCAR after Iowa, demands two changes to improve product

The NASCAR weekend at Iowa Speedway was not as thrilling as many had hoped. The fuel mileage racing is getting stale this season. It was another obvious reminder about the flaws the Next Gen car still has, three years into its existence.

While there were moments of good racing, things ended up being a bit of a disappointment in the end. At first, the cautions in the final stage were seen as interesting. It spiced up the race and the strategy calls. Then, by the 6th of the stage, it was old.

William Byron stretched his fuel to win. His tires didn’t give out. Everyone actually made it on fuel thanks to those caution laps. The tires held up too, unfortunately.

Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic broke down their feelings about the NASCAR Iowa Corn 350. They were left feeling very lukewarm about Sunday’s event.

“I thought it was, again, very Dover-esque. I mean, it’s sort of like – I think anybody that’s watched these races … But we all know by now that clean air and track position mean a ton. And you could see there that even though William Byron is in extreme fuel savings mode, extreme, they’re screaming at him. ‘Back up even more, back up even more,’ right? In the end, he had to save 144 laps of fuel, and now he got a ton of cautions, that really helped,” Gluck said on The Teardown. “But Chase Briscoe still can’t get there to make the move on him. Which is, again, familiar story, we’ve seen this before.

“Then Brad Keselowski is driving as hard as he can, he can’t get there. Now, had it played out a little bit longer, you know, Blaney made a lot of ground up. He got into the picture there. But he was suddenly in the, he was going to be in dirty air with the rest of them. So, how long would it have taken him to pass? It’s just very, very hard to pass with this car. The track only got half paved last year when they did it. So, you, you can’t run the full track, you know what I mean? So, I mean, this was just, just exactly what you would expect, I guess.”

Jordan Bianchi chimed in on the NASCAR race at Iowa afterward. He pointed to two changes that need to happen for these short track problems to be solved.

“I say this over and over again, and it, the car is the car,” Bianchi said. “You may get more horsepower at some point, you may not. Who knows? But it isn’t too much to ask that you have softer tires, and even if you end up getting more horsepower, which, it seems like it’s going in that direction, and most people would be in favor of it. Even if you get that, I still want softer tires. That’s what matters. It would help the product a lot. More horsepower, more tire wear.

“Those are two big things that I think would go a long way. And if you can’t do the first one on the horsepower for various reasons, I don’t see a reason why going in the direction of softer tires can’t be a thing.”

NASCAR has talked about a horsepower increase before Iowa. However, that hasn’t manifested into any serious change. Drivers and teams have continued to ask for more horsepower to no avail.

So, is it too late to change the Next Gen? NASCAR did not have a great show at Iowa. At least, not in the Cup Series race on Sunday. When the Xfinity Series continues to put on better races at these tracks, it is not the best look. That is the reality that NASCAR has created by not fixing this car, the tires, or the horsepower.