Kyle Petty Predicts Pushback From NASCAR Team Owners Against Superspeedways With Jimmie Johnson’s Track Record Referenced

Arguably, amongst all the types of circuits and racetracks we have on hand in NASCAR, none compare to superspeedways when it comes to the quality of racing. For the last few years, it was only Daytona and Talladega, but after last week’s race at the newly reconfigured Atlanta Motor Speedway, it’s safe to say we have a third such track on our hands.

There’s no doubt that the race in Atlanta was a successful one. So successful, in fact, that it might tempt NASCAR to perhaps use the same formula on some other tracks as well, juice them up a little bit too.

However, should this be the case in the future, the teams might retaliate. At least that’s what Kyle Petty thinks.

In a recent episode of NASCAR on NBC podcast, Petty spoke about this very thing.

“I think some of the fear and loathing might be though that, ‘Hey, this worked at Atlanta, there might be some mile-and-a-half racetracks that we might wanna try this with,'” he said. “There could come a point when the owners, and we know that drivers, perhaps their say should be limited, but owners, they’re foot in the bill and they’ve got this Next Gen car this year that has this limited inventories.”

“Do you think at some point, I don’t know, say, they’re paying for it, they push back and say, SIX of these types of races, is enough?” 

“They could do so because they have the numbers to back it up.” 

The price NASCAR team owners have had to pay due to shift in the type of racing

Kyle Petty described how during the 1980s, teams would simply bring back a car from Daytona and use the same one in Talladega, without even the need of a repaint job, let alone damage control.

But Kyle Petty suggests that those days came to an end sometime in the 1990s.

“So think about it for Rick Hendrick, sat down and said, ‘Okay, 1998 to 2022, how many cars have I tore up at Daytona?’ Let’s go back and remember Jimmie Johnson and those guys, they’d tear up 3 or 4 a year sometimes,” Petty described.

“I bet those numbers will shock a lot of people.” 

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