“Not What NASCAR Stock Car Racing Is About”—1999 Cup Series Champ Frustratingly Blasts Off a Consequential Next Gen Demand Towards the Sporting Authority

In a recent conversation, former champion Dale Jarrett opened up about a problematic aspect of NASCAR’s modern era. Apparently, he is not too happy with the gear-shifting capabilities of the Next Gen car. Jarrett‘s primary concern was about how the car behaves while shifting at high speed on ovals. He admitted that there are some tracks where it is necessary, but not at most speedways. The 1999 Cup Series champion believes that shifting is unnecessary at ovals, where the speeds are fairly constant.

Jarrett told the NASCAR on NBC podcast, “Somehow, some way, shift it. Get it off. I’m sorry, that’s not what NASCAR stock car racing is about.

“I realize that the chassis is completely different. You can work around all of that. But having these drivers shift at Martinsville and all the other short tracks. Heck! All the tracks. It should be road courses and maybe Pocono because the layout of the track may require that. But everywhere else, it should not be done.”

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“I don’t know how you go about just eliminating it, other than the fact that every car has the capability of seeing inside there and saying that you can’t do it. It is not what NASCAR racing should be about and the driver shouldn’t have to be doing that,” he added.

What else did the former NASCAR champion say?

Talking about having more gears, the Hall of Famer said, “It gives the driver the feeling that you have more horsepower. In the end, it becomes a drivability part and the drivers have to do their jobs. Without knowing all the workings, I probably should.

“I need to make a call to Doug Yates and have a 20-minute conversation. Not that I would understand 18 minutes of what he was talking about exactly. He can’t help make me understand like he did for many years exactly the challenges they would face in doing that. It seems to be something, just thinking about it that it could be a fix that you could do.”

According to him, the Next Gen cars are not as fast as the cars during his heyday. Jarrett revealed that during his NASCAR tenure, the cars ran up at 10,000 RPMs. Especially with all the parts and pieces and the gears that they all ran. He confessed that there are some areas for improvement, particularly by adding more gears and more RPMs.

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