Chris Gabehart has voiced serious concerns about the Next Gen car’s performance on superspeedways, calling for urgent changes to the racing setup. The crew chief of Denny Hamlin’s comments come in the wake of a challenging race at Talladega, where the driver narrowly escaped a major crash. As seasoned veterans well-versed in drafting races, both Gabehart and Hamlin have witnessed a downturn in performance, raising alarms about the current state of Gen 7 racing.
Reflecting on the Talladega race last weekend, Gabehart complained in an interview with Bryan Nolen of Frontstretch (below).
“Largely with this racing the way it is now, you just gotta get lucky at the right times and we got lucky for once.
“We’ve been Gen 7 racing this platform for a while now at speedways and been swept up in so many messes that weren’t of our own doing and just get unlucky kinda in those instances.”
This reliance on luck has pushed Gabehart to ask NASCAR to make modifications to the cars that would restore what he expects from the sport.
“With Gen 7 speedway racing, I just don’t see any greatness. There’s qualifying up front, there’s a little bit of a tussle after an event.
“So, green flag comes out or a pit cycle just completes and there’s a little bit of flustering.
“But once they get all lined up, you’re just stuck. There’s no more driver ability, not more driver talent to speak of.”
It’s fair to say that what Gabehart loves about superspeedway racing seems lost in a cloud of pit strategies and fuel efficiency rather than pure driver skill.
“I mean, we’re talking about very small things. So, it’s all about green flag pit cycles and strategy and fuel mileage and stuff. To the point of can they fix it? I mean, if we’re looking for racing to be what we care about.”
Gabehart elaborated on his vision for reviving the side of the sport he knows.
“If we want – racing purists want to see so many different disciplines of racing throughout a Cup Series schedule. That’s what sets Cup Series apart, right? [That] there’s so many different types of racing these guys have to be good at and it’s the only schedule in the world where that’s true. If we want driver racing discipline to matter at these tracks, we have to do something.
“I am a proponent of making the stage lengths the length of the fuel tank. So, all of the pitting that’s necessary to be done is under caution. Because we all have fuel to make it to the caution that we care about. There’s some race length challenges that we’d have to work through there as an industry, but I’m confident we can do it.”
Denny Hamlin has historically excelled on superspeedways, boasting three Daytona 500 victories. Yet, recent performances hint that he’s finding it harder and harder.
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