Before a Horsepower Increase, NASCAR Wants to Determine What Tracks are Eligible

What’s Happening?

Though there is growing optimism that NASCAR will increase horsepower for its short track package, the sport still has a few things to sort out before making such a change, including deciding which tracks will receive this increase.

Leaving this past weekend’s race at Iowa Speedway, most NASCAR fans assumed there would be a conversation about the sport’s lackluster short track racing product.

While fans, drivers, and industry members have suggested countless ideas to fix the NASCAR Gen Seven cars’ short track racing, most agree that increasing horsepower is a step in the right direction.

Currently, the NASCAR Next Gen car puts out 650 to 670 HP. However, comments from Doug Yates, CEO of Roush Yates Engines, in early May suggested that an increase to roughly 750 HP would not be that much of a change for engine manufacturers and would have little effect on an engine’s lifespan.

On Tuesday Morning, NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that NASCAR officials believe an increase in horsepower “is the right thing.”

While it may disappoint fans, this change will likely not come until 2026, as, according to Sawyer, the sport and its stakeholders still need to decide which tracks will receive this increase in horsepower.

Sawyer says this will mostly come down to looking past the black-and-white definition of a short track as a track less than a mile long, and examining how those tracks on the schedule that are at or slightly above that one-mile mark race despite their length.

“You look at a Martinsville, you look at a Richmond, it’s pretty straightforward that that’s a short track… We, as fans and industry stakeholders, view that as ‘that’s a short track.’ But then you look at a Loudon. Loudon is a mile, but it races a lot like a short track, so does it fall into that same bucket? So we have to look at racetracks like that.” — Elton Sawyer on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

The former driver turned NASCAR official even uses Dover Motor Speedway, the one-mile high-banked oval, to counter his comments about New Hampshire. He says that the concrete track in Delaware is at the one-mile mark but that “speeds are up there.”

Of course, most fans would like to see the horsepower increased at all tracks; however, increasing it for just the short tracks could give NASCAR time to analyze the effects these changes will have on engine life and apply that to some larger tracks.

Nonetheless, in a time when fans expressed that they did not feel heard by NASCAR, the sport seemed focused on finding some increase in horsepower to help the short track racing product.

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