For the past few years, modern superspeedway racing in NASCAR has been plagued by one thing: fuel saving. But after years of criticism from fans and drivers alike, the sanctioning body recently introduced an important measure. But despite that, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. openly admitted to continuing to do what was the problem.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wants to continue fuel saving at Talladega in 2026

During a recent interview, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was asked whether his opinion on fuel saving at superspeedways from 2025 had changed after NASCAR’s new measures. “I think I’ll probably still save fuel, because you’ve still got to make a pit stop after the stage is over, and so you’re still going to want to put as less — especially the second stage going into that third stage — you’re still going to want to put the least amount of fuel in as possible,” he said.

He mentioned that a driver has nine seconds to change his tires. And if the stop requires four ties to be changed, then it’d take nine seconds to put the gas in. Because of this, he wondered if a lot of time would be saved, but drivers would still be pursuing saving fuel.

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With the problem of fuel saving in superspeedway racing, NASCAR recently introduced the measure of having shorter final two stages. Speaking about it, John Probst, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief racing development officer, claimed that the sanctioning body has been working with a lot of teams to find two solutions to the problem.

The first was to change things like stage length, and the other was to make changes to the car.

“Generally, how a lot of our speedways were laid out, it was a short stage, a short stage and then a long stage to the end. Going into Talladega, we’re going to flip that,” Probst said.

It’s worth mentioning that last year, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. claimed that what matters when it comes to fuel saving, shortening the stages wouldn’t work because drivers would be ‘still trying to save’ to shorten the stop between stages.

He claimed he doesn’t mind the side-by-side racing or the three-wide as it ‘puts on a show.’ “Then you always get the top lane, so that if they want to go to the front, they can, and they generally do. Then they will drop down and start saving fuel on the bottom and kind of stack the bottom line up,” he mentioned.

Stenhouse concluded that there are ways for drivers to get to the front, even in fuel saving.

Talladega could be where Stenhouse’s 2026 season turns around

In 2025, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finished the season with two top 10 finishes. Reflecting on it ahead of the 2026 season, Stenhouse claimed this year he wants to make sure he’s in contention for the top 16 in points with the new Chase format.

“We’ll take that third and then we’ll do the next third and make sure we are still in that same position. I feel ready to go I feel like I’m well rested. I feel like I’ve done a really good job of kind of resetting everything this off-season,” he described.

However, the season hasn’t turned out for Ricky Stenhouse Jr. the way he aimed to. Since his runner-up finish in the Daytona 500, he has one finish outside top 30 and five finishes outside top 20 in a row. Because of this, he is currently ranked 31st in points.

But Talladega could be the race where it all changes for Stenhouse, considering all four of his Cup wins so far have come at superspeedways, with two of them coming at Talladega.