It isn’t surprising to see NASCAR teams go to great lengths with little tricks in their cars to make them faster on the track. However, the sport can sometimes take a wild turn, and with this theory that one of the Ford drivers from the field revealed, it is hard to believe whether it is true or false.

Noah Gragson and the crescent moon

“Something to do with like the gravitational pull. Like we have to adjust the car and raise the ride heights because of the gravitational pull, like the moon phase; it just puts more load into the car, and then we have more grip.” Although it sounds a bit odd, Ford driver Noah Gragson does believe that there is an overall change in grip and how the car performs when racing under a waxing crescent moon in Texas.

In fact, he even mentioned that it was common knowledge, “I’m surprised this hasn’t been talked about before,” and claimed that the team lets them know about the moon phase in their emails to tune the car accordingly. “It’s in our email. In the same way as our weather report and forecast report, note from NASCAR all that stuff. I’m not allowed to send it, but if I could send it, I would send you all the details.”

This has apparently been a long-time belief amongst some of the drivers and teams, but it recently gained traction after Noah Gragson and Chase Briscoe discussed it on the Door, Bumper, Clear podcast. In fact, when Freddie Kraft refused to believe the claim, they ended up calling Riley Herbst, who confirmed that the grip is significantly high with a waxing crescent moon over Texas.

Theoretically, if the track has higher grip, the cars will need to have a stiffer suspension because of the lateral force they will generate in the corners. This can also affect the overall tire durability, with more grip degrading the tires faster.

While it seems a little hard to believe that a crescent moon can affect the overall grip of a track, this isn’t the first time that NASCAR drivers have come up with such a strong theory. In fact, there were quite a few followed back in the day.

NASCAR and superstition

The moon has never left the sport alone, as Gragson (and seemingly a lot of others) claims that a crescent moon can affect the car’s grip during a race. There was a very prominent superstition back in the day, with the drivers claiming that drivers racing on the night of a full moon on a short track tend to be a little more aggressive and ‘racey.’ Although it sounds like something coming straight out of a werewolf film, many used to believe in this.

But this wasn’t the only one. In fact, at one point, drivers believed that shaving before a race brought bad omens, connecting it to the death of George MacKenzie in 1936, who, allegedly, shaved before his race. While it is not uncommon to see a few beards on the field right now, it is tough to say if the drivers still believe in it.

However, these superstitions are not always linked to the old days. In fact, Kyle Larson is known for driving with a small ladybug sticker on his car. Many might not consider it to be a ‘superstition,’ as he claims that it is for good luck.

Throughout the years, there have been many such incidents where the teams and drivers have followed practices that might seem to be a little uncommon for a sport. But as Noah Gragson described, the crescent moon theory seems to be something more than that.