There’s one sound in NASCAR that fans are incredibly well-versed with. Is it the roar of the crowd? Or is it that iconic phrase, ‘Gentlemen, start your engines’? No, that’s not what we’re talking about. It’s the sound of the V8 engines coming to life every single time a car hits the track. Going as high as 130 decibels, NASCAR engines have long been the highlight for fans, drivers, and teams.

Going back through the years, you think of the iconic Hudson Hornet, the Chrysler 426 Hemi, or even the Smokey Yunick 366. But cut to the Next-Gen, and the product is not making the community happy. We’re talking about the engine’s ability to generate power, and it has been reduced in the last few years.

Ever since Next-Gen was introduced, drivers have complained about the problem of equal competition. “The competition is always trying to get better, and everybody is wanting to win. It just gets harder and harder to do. The field gets closer and closer every year. It’s tough. It’s hard to find an advantage over anybody anymore,” 2024 Cup Champion Joey Logano said. It wasn’t about it getting harder to compete, but the fact that there was very little room to make a difference.

And this became visible on short tracks, where the limited engine power of these cars made it difficult to overtake, and some blamed the engines. They believe if NASCAR went back to its old formula for engine power, things would change. However, Doug Yates dropped a reality check for the community.

He said, “For engine builders, more power is better for us but as a sport we gotta be careful. There was a time when we had qualifying engines only. We got out for a couple of laps, we put a practice engine in, and we would have a fresh race engine in for Sunday morning. Back then engine programs were 4.5 million dollars per car quite a while ago. Then NASCAR started to work towards multi-race engines and lowering then power and lowering the RPM. It’s not something we wanted to do but if you remember cars were entering the corner at Michigan at 220 mph and it got to a point where we got to do something to kind of back these down a little bit and we need extend the life of them. If we were to extend the power from 650 horsepower to 750 horsepower that probably won’t be much of a change for us today. To go back to the 900 horsepower engines that would be quite the project and it would decrease the life of the engine.” 

Yates’ point is clear. For teams, it’s not financially sound to bring the old engines back. If we do the math, the cost could put teams out of business. Moreover, NASCAR rules dictate 16 engines must last a minimum of two race weekends, with 20 engines being used in total for the season before incurring penalties. We saw what happened with Stewart-Haas Racing when finances became a talking point, with the team closing down eventually.

Just recently, when NASCAR suggested the Run What You Brung concept, Denny Hamlin was one of the biggest opponents, citing the financial difficulty it would put on teams. Who’s going to pay for it? It’s because the teams don’t have enough money,” Hamlin said. “This is what we’re fighting for. This is what we’ve been talking about. If you continue to lose money year after year, why would you just raise your hand and say, ‘Sure, I’ll take another million loss, give me a million? I’ll take a million loss.’ You can’t do that. It’s not sustainable.” 

And from a more practical perspective, it’s about driver safety. As Yates discussed, the Michigan test back in 2014 showed some dangerous aspects of the engine power. Ever since the track was repaved back in 2012, drivers have consistently broken speed records at the track. Logano, at the time, set the average qualifying speed record at 203.949 mph. When Greg Biffle hit 220 mph at the track, there was a genuine concern raised. What would happen when drivers reached that speed in full traffic? The concern was obvious.

Yates rounded it on a hopeful note. “John Probst and his teams have a tough job because they want to make the racing better, specifically the short track racing. They want to be open-minded about those things, but the balance is being open-minded and not driving the cost to where it was before. Not an easy but I would like them be open-minded and try to some things and be nice to see what that looks like, especially on the short-tracks.” 

NASCAR’s short-track problem will take time to solve, and as much as fans would want an increase in engine power, there is a degree of balance required, as Yates pointed out.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at the heated All-Star debate.

Denny Hamlin tangles with NASCAR over All-Star plan

Now, the Run What You Brung concept was a big part of discussions ahead of the All-Star race. From a pure racing perspective, it seems like a good idea right? Even Hamlin thought so. “Generally speaking, if you’re just talking to me, the racecar driver and the fan, I’m gonna say, ‘Damn, I wish we had this.’ This would be fantastic. There could possibly be something that gets learned for the short-track package that could make it better.”

Imagine the action at the track if teams brought different aerodynamic packages. We could certainly have seen a lot more entertainment, right? Different components are being experimented with. More importantly, it could bring new solutions to NASCAR’s short-track problem. While they have experimented with tires, perhaps this could be the solution that is needed.

However, as Hamlin explained, the financial burden is obvious for teams. And with the JGR driver being vocal about it, NASCAR’s Mike Forde took notice. On one podcast, he said, “I think his math was off by about two million dollars. It could cost zero. I did text with Danny… you can hear all the goods on our hottest new podcast.” 

Hamlin didn’t hold back either, hitting back with, “Oh, it cost us nothing to run a race team now. Whew, this business is easier than I thought. BTW, Great stats on Sunday!” 

Only time will tell how the All-Star race unfolds.