Christopher Bell led all but one lap to bag the race win at Atlanta Motor Speedway last Sunday. While the community is split on the controversial call by NASCAR to call it a race with caution, the No. 20 JGR camp is busy celebrating their win. Just like William Byron was graced by lady luck on the final lap at the Daytona 500, something similar happened with Bell. And he certainly wasn’t waiting for the NASCAR officiating call to decide his fate, instead, he went hard on the peddle and got the job done.

Take out the controversial ruling bit for once and you’ll see that the racing in Atlanta was just miles better than the high banks of Daytona. Although both the tracks have a similar configuration in terms of the car package, the 1.5-mile quad oval track allowed drivers and teams to have control over their destiny. And that is exactly what Adam Smith and the #20 JGR team pulled off in the final few moments of the race.

This isn’t the first instance that Atlanta delivered a blockbuster finish. Last year we witnessed a three-wide finish with Daniel Saurez edging out in front of Ryan Blaney by a mere 0.003 seconds. It seems like ever since the repave the hybrid track keeps getting better and better. Bell’s crew chief Adam Stevens was certainly delighted with how the race panned out and called out NASCAR to take note of it in improving the superspeedway race at Daytona and Talladega.

The Daytona Dilemma: “Buffoonery” By Design

“Everybody’s running around like bunch of buffoons.” Adam Stevens’ description of what is wrong with Daytona racing today is reduced to these seven words. Immediately this phrase resonated across the NASCAR world, no less than Dale Earnhardt Jr. got openly behind the critique, saying: “I agree to all of this. Thanks, Adam for articulating it that clearly.” When figures of Earnhardt Jr’s stature are allied with such sharp criticism, it means there’s a growing consensus on what is wrong with Daytona.

“The length of the runs is outside of the fuel window,” said Stevens, straining to critique a structural problem of the format’s race. He also focused on how this misalignment forces the teams to prefer fuel conservation over racing. It results in the bizarre spectacle of NASCAR’s best drivers doing so much in not racing. It leads to intentionally holding their pace off, not going for it on the straights, at its showcase race, running way down on horsepower at 50-60 % throttle for extended periods rather than competing at full capacity.

The Christopher Bell’s crew chief’s comparison between Daytona and Atlanta couldn’t be more telling. “You saw that in stage one today where you didn’t see a bunch of people limping around scared to make a green flag stop. You saw a bunch of people running hard,” Stevens noted of Atlanta. The redesigned Atlanta track, which is nearly a mile smaller than the Daytona track, actually creates more opportunities for true racing by squashing the fuel-saving imperatives that plague the Florida venue.

Steven’s opinion resonates with every hardcore NASCAR fan who wants to see better racing at Daytona. The crown jewel event was indeed a hard watch to see drivers just float around in the draft at half throttle, all of this for ending up in scraps during a “Big One.” Surely, this is not how NASCAR would want to continue on superspeedways, there has to be a remedy for this recurring issue.

Now we have heard both Denny Hamlin and Dale Jr. chimed in with their solution to improve racing at speedways. And joining them is now Adam Stevens and his solution is rather a logical one, that wouldn’t require NASCAR to make a major overhaul.

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Christopher Bell’s Partner Reimagining Superspeedway Racing

Stevens’ proposed solution is astonishingly simple: races should be organized around race segments so that conservation is no longer necessary. “The simplest thing we could do to change it is change the run length to match the fuel cell,” he said, a change that would replace long fuel stops with constant competition. Imagine, drivers going wide open forcing each other into strategic pit stops rather than biding their time on the track in the draft.

The successful reconfiguration of Atlanta plays to the fact that Daytona has had trouble. Stevens felt that Atlanta had created an authentic racing product by making a hybrid superspeedway. The one that doesn’t favour the manufacturers because it’s not a pack-style race. Although the track is closer and more exciting than some would like, it does not require someone to slam on their brakes at every opportunity. And hence, leaves much more space for individual decision-making and skill expression.

With NASCAR looking ahead to future seasons, with which schedule and even racing packages to assess, Stevens is not alone in his outspoken criticism. The time may have come for NASCAR to admit the emperor of tracks fits no clothes. Even the most hallowed of the tracks may have to undergo significant format changes in order to produce the racing experience that competitors and fans demand.