Daniel Suarez’s Team Believes Horsepower Is Not the Answer to NASCAR’s Problem at Short Tracks

Denny Hamlin‘s recent comments about NASCAR not increasing horsepower despite it not requiring much extra cost has blown the whole debate back open and several insiders and drivers have had their say. Kyle Larson sided with his title rival as did spotter Brett Griffin and they both slammed the organizers for giving poor reasons to not go toward higher power. Also joining the conversation was Daniel Suarez‘s crew chief Matt Swiderski. However, his views failed to align with the rest of the pack.

The Trackhouse Racing man does not believe that just increasing the power will be enough to improve short-track racing with the Next-Gen car. The reasons for this are the strict NASCAR rules about the cars being the same and their intense scrutiny against anyone trying to innovate something to give themselves an advantage.

Trackhouse Racing crew chief pins the blame on NASCAR’s intense scrutiny

Making the cars equal for competition is one thing but imposing the strictest of rules on how the cars should be built is another. Today, crew chiefs hardly have any room to bring in their innovations and improve their team. Last year alone saw several penalties being handed out to crews who tried to do so and that has left a sour taste in the mouth of not just Swiderski, but others as well. So naturally, NASCAR has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism because of it.

However, that does not mean that Daniel Suarez’s crew chief is against higher horsepower in the stock car racing competition. One of the reasons he wants the cars to have more power is nostalgia. Like a lot of fans, Swiderski grew up at a time when NASCAR was at its peak, and cars with a lot more power than today roared around the tracks. It may be a selfish reason but the #99 crew chief did not hesitate to speak about it on SiriusXM Radio.

“Selfish reasons I’d love to do it…grown up watching the sport and when I first got in in the early 2000s, the technology, the power, the sound and the RPMs, they were incredible and I’d love to see that again. Am I convinced that it will fix everything and make the racing perfect? Absolutely not. There’s a lot more that goes into it and with all the tools and technology and everything we have and the rules being as tight as they are right now, we end up with cars that are built very similar. There are not many areas that me and the other crew chiefs in the garage can play with so when all the cars are built within the tighter rules package, they tend to run pretty close to the same speed. Adding a bunch of power is probably not gonna help that. But would I love to have more power? Absolutely,” he said.

While more power seems to be the need of the hour as per members of the racing community, Swiderski’s driver Daniel Suarez might not have been able to write his name into the history books if the cars had high horsepower. And former Cup Series driver Mike Wallace pointed out this exact thing recently.

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Daniel Suarez might not have made history with higher horsepower

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The Cup Series race in Atlanta saw a historic 3-wide photo finish which saw Daniel Suarez take the checkered flag and cement his name in stock car racing folklore. A three-wide at a superspeedway was unheard of as they usually did not last very long and were indicative of a big wreck coming. However, a lot of the older NASCAR fans and ex-drivers were left shocked at how things turned out in Atlanta. A couple of them were Mike and Kenny Wallace and the former explained that the reason the three-wide happened without a major wreck was the low horsepower.

“They did. I think it’s just the track’s newer, it’s got more grip, the cars are different and everybody wanted to win. It is a wide-open race track anymore. Everybody says what’s different in Atlanta. Well, they made it and they have taken so much horsepower away from the cars that they run wide. That’s why I think a lot of people hear that wide-open, it’s like well can’t you run at Atlanta wide-open from now on,” the motorsports veteran said in an earlier episode of The Kenny Wallace Show.

Increasing horsepower may take away from superspeedway racing but, according to many, seeing the state of short-track racing in the Cup Series today, it seems like a small price to pay. Will NASCAR go through with what the racing community has been calling for anytime soon? Let us know your thoughts.

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