Tony Stewart says NASCAR’s promise to cut costs with the current Cup Series car hasn’t materialized.
The Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner and three-time Cup champion sat down for an interview with NBC Sports this week after SHR announced that Josh Berry would replace the retired Kevin Harvick in the #4 car. Stewart addressed a number of topics in the interview and made it clear that teams are spending more on cars.
“For partners getting into the sport now, it’s a financial risk,” Stewart said. “It’s not cheaper to run a NASCAR team the way this new car was designed. It’s costing us more money than it’s ever cost us to run these cars.”
The car that NASCAR calls the “NextGen” was introduced in 2022 and is built from specification parts supplied by a list of approved suppliers. One of the main selling points of the new car was its potential cost reductions for teams as they would not manufacture as many parts in-house.
But the car has undergone significant changes since its introduction as NASCAR has made modifications both to improve safety – several drivers have been injured in 2022 – and to improve racing on short tracks and on the road. These changes cost money, even though NASCAR said it was footing the bill for some safety-related changes ahead of this season.
Stewart also said NASCAR has done a “good job trying to discourage teams from going beyond” the rulebook when it comes to finding speed advantages with the current car. SHR driver Chase Briscoe was penalized 120 points and the team was fined $250,000 for a counterfeit part earlier this season in Charlotte. The team said after the penalty was announced that the part on the car was a “quality control fault”.
Briscoe’s penalty is one of several major inspection-related penalties that have been issued over the course of the season. Hendrick Motorsports were penalized several times, while Kaulig Racing and Richard Childress Racing also received significant penalties.
Why so many penalties this season? Stewart, the 2002, 2005 and 2011 Cup champion, also noted the role he thinks racing betting plays in NASCAR actions and rule enforcement thanks to the changes that have been made. over the past 30 years to the way races are umpired.
“It really comes down to one thing,” Stewart said. “You’ve been part of this sport, we’ve all been part of this sport forever. It’s all about control. Before we had timing lines on pit road, they had two people in the check-in booth with a timer in each You can only control four out of 43 cars on pit road If you ruffle their feathers and upset them, you were likely to receive a speeding penalty on pit road next week You could guarantee it It was NASCAR’s way of keeping everyone under control.
“Now they’ve backed into a corner with greed on the side of the game. They can’t manipulate the race. They can’t call someone for a speeding penalty if they haven’t done the wrong thing. act. They can’t control that. They can’t issue false warnings to regroup the peloton. … How do you control everybody then if you took that ability out during the race? How do you do it? do at the R&D Center after the races. If someone ruffles you, that’s where they’ll get you.
Debris warnings have declined since NASCAR instituted stage racing with two guaranteed warning flags per race in 2017. The legitimacy of some debris warnings – especially after a long period of racing to the green flag when cars were far apart on the track – was long met with skepticism by many in the 2010s.
Pit road speed is now monitored via a sequence of timing lines and each track is equipped with a camera system to allow NASCAR to monitor each team’s pit stop violations rather than relying solely on to an official on pit road monitoring a pit stop.
And Stewart may have brought up the gambling aspect because of NASCAR’s embrace of race betting. There are several NASCAR “authorized” gambling operators and no sports series wants to have the slightest hint of impropriety when money is legally wagered on an event.
“So that shouldn’t be a surprise. … They’re going to find things like they always have in the history of the sport, and they have to control the sport,” Stewart continued. “You can’t blame them for that. Some of the ways they tried to maintain balance and control, some of their decisions – the fans aren’t stupid, you guys in the media aren’t stupid – it’s very clear how they’re controlling it and how they’re trying to keep everyone under control.
“I think it’s important that they control certain aspects of this. You can’t lose control of this. If you do, it becomes free play and they lost everything they built in 75 years. . Some (of the penalties), I think, have gone too far this year.”