From the dusty bullrings of the South to the modern-day coliseums of Bristol and Martinsville, short-track racing has always been the gritty, chaotic heartbeat of NASCAR. It’s where rivalries ignite, bumpers get bent, and underdogs have a shot against the sport’s giants. Who could forget Jeff Gordon and Rusty Wallace trading paint at Bristol in 2002, or Carl Edwards’ infamous bump-and-run on Kyle Busch in 2016? These tracks pack drama into every corner, offering the kind of door-to-door action that made stock car racing a national obsession.
But lately, something’s changed. While the short tracks still look the same, what happens on them feels different, and not everyone’s happy about it. The action has lost its pace, and the excitement is long gone. Why? Well, Dale Jr. and Denny Hamlin have answers.
Dale Jr. exposes NASCAR’s burdening short-track issues
Short-track racing exists because it strips NASCAR down to its bare essentials. The 2025 Bristol Night Race proved why it matters. Kyle Larson’s 411-lap domination masked a minefield of cut tires, angry bumpers, and relentless traffic. The drama? Pure NASCAR theater.
Dale Jr. expressed his opinion, “I don’t mind the dominance.” He cited the example of the 2016 Coca-Cola 600 race. “He led all but like six laps or something.” Contested over 400 laps, Truex Jr. led 392 laps, eventually winning the race ahead of Kevin Harvick. However, Dale Jr. shared another side of that coin. The lack of real racing deeper in the pack! “What stood out to me was the lack of excitement and drama throughout the field,” he admitted. While Larson cruised up front, mid-pack battles stalled.
Dale Jr., a self-admitted Josh Berry fan, gave an honest account of how lifeless the racing looked from 12th on back. “I’m watching Josh, right? Kind of paying attention to where he’s at the whole race,” he said. Dale explained that Berry ran roughly from 12th to 16th place all day. His average running position was 14th. But, most importantly, for long stretches in the race, neither Berry nor the other drivers in the midfield made any passes. Nobody could move!
It wasn’t a strategy. It wasn’t driver error. Sadly enough, it was the car, and it has been the problem for quite some time now. He added, “The car has a lot of physical characteristics that will make a majority of the short track races look a lot like what we saw on Sunday.” A sobering thought for fans who turn up for door-to-door action, not single-file parades. When one of the sport’s most beloved voices spells it out so plainly, you know it’s an issue that can’t be brushed aside.
Denny Hamlin, too, had shared similar opinions on his Actions Detrimental podcast. He called out NASCAR for creating a product where every driver is running the same lap time throughout the whole field. This strips short tracks of the unpredictability and chaos they were built for. Hamlin specifically blamed the car’s underbody down force setup, which forces tight, aero-dependent racing with limited passing opportunities. “Dirty air is the number one issue,” he emphasized. It’s the car. And unless that changes, neither will the racing.
Denny Hamlin’s no-holds-barred reality check
Denny Hamlin didn’t mince words about the state of short-track racing. He pointed out that the difference in lap times, from first to last, was just one-tenth of a second. This made overtaking difficult, with drivers running in the same place for most of the race. It exposed how the Next Gen car has compressed performance windows so tightly that even daring moves mean little.
Frustratingly, Hamlin admitted change isn’t even on the horizon. “There’s really no talk about any big change coming down the line,” he revealed. Even though Hamlin knows about half a dozen things that could immediately improve the racing, nothing is moving. But financial strain on team owners and a reluctance to tinker have stalled progress, leaving short-track loyalists disillusioned.
He also floated adjustments to tires and horsepower as potential fixes, but it’s the Next Gen’s fundamental design that’s choking the action. “They just got to get with the drivers, get in a room and figure out what do you fight,” Hamlin proposed a simple solution.
However, for fans hoping for the old-school, elbows-out Bristol nights to return, Hamlin painted a grim picture. “I’ve been in those rooms, those conversations, and it’s all quiet,” he confessed. Unless decision-makers finally prioritize entertainment over balance sheets, expect more single-file marathons disguised as stock car races. Looks like Dale Jr. and Denny Hamlin (and others) will just have to keep voicing their frustrations while hoping someone in power listens.
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