NASCAR: What’s wrong with NASCAR? Part 2 – The cars

Check out part two of ‘What’s wrong with NASCAR?’ as I discuss the topic of the cars themselves. Find out three main issues with the modern-day race cars!

Howdy, NASCAR fans! Welcome to part two of my summer series titled “What’s wrong with NASCAR?”. If you happened to miss part one, click here to catch the intro to the 10-week series coming out over the summer months. Today, we discuss our first concrete topic of the series, the race cars themselves. I have three central issues with the cars, so let’s get to it!

The central piece of any racing series is the race vehicle itself. It controls the look of the sport, the drivers’ abilities to showcase their  talent and the style of racing we see on the track. Add these things together, and you find the reason why the cars are atop the list of problems in modern-day NASCAR.

Let’s take a step back to understand where the issues began. Back in 2007, NASCAR introduced the “car of tomorrow”, or COT as fans remember it. This car was built with the idea of safety in mind and completely changed the look of the cars on the track.

Cars looked like a flying bricks around the track, and they included a rear wing unlike anything NASCAR had seen previously. The COT brought decent racing, but its major knock was that it took all authenticity from manufacturers.

Cars had no identity, which fans didn’t like. This model of car also introduced the front splitter, which eliminates almost all air from getting under the cars, something I’ll hit on later.

Moving forward, NASCAR started tweaking the cars again to give them more of an identity. The generation six car was introduced with major body changes in 2013. Cars looked more like street models, but the racing seemed to take a downhill turn.

This model is what is still used in 2018, and in this post, I’ll highlight its issues.