“The cars just drive in a line, and they just run. And they run and they run. Looked like a pace lap every time.” Richard Petty, one of NASCAR’s top legends, said these words after the 2025 Talladega race. Although there were 67 lead changes among 23 drivers, the cost was too high. The chaotic race witnessed 4 cautions, including a multi-car wreck that inflicted heavyweight drivers. Such a lack of maneuverability did not exist in Petty’s time, as Dale Earnhardt Jr recently said.
NASCAR’s Next-Gen car debuted in 2022, and for the past three years, it has been in the middle of a controversy. It never seems to end, with hot debates around horsepower, downforce, and dirty air. All of those can be solved if the sport looks back at a race 45 years ago, according to Dale Jr.
Dale Jr misses the flexibility
The 26-time Cup Series race winner has immense experience. Winning twin Daytona 500s and dominating Talladega are part of Dale Jr’s golden resume. But what he misses is a Coca-Cola 600 victory – he had a heartbreaking loss in the 2011 race after his car sputtered on the last lap. However, Dale Jr’s attention is always on a 1980 rendition of the Coca-Cola 600. He was a child, and his father, the legendary Dale Earnhardt, was in the race. The iconic event lasted over seven hours thanks to rain delays and 14 cautions. Tire issues took out notable names like Earnhardt, Bobby Allison, and Cale Yarborough. But what Benny Parsons and Darrell Waltrip executed on the final laps still mesmerizes Dale Jr.
In a recent ‘Dale Jr Download’ episode, the NASCAR veteran reflected on this race. In the last 20 laps, Parsons and Waltrip exchanged the lead about 15 times, and even in the last lap, they did it two or three times. Dale Jr reflected on that flexibility, something which is missing in the Next-Gen era. “Benny Parsons and Darrell Waltrip are battling for the lead, and they’re by themselves…Look at how these two cars can move around in proximity to each other all the way around the track, and how one gets the lead and the other gets it back…These cars can get right in each other’s door and are right on each other’s bumper, and they all over each other in the corner.”
In this age, if drivers mimic what Parsons and Waltrip did, that would be the perfect recipe for disaster. Just consider the wrecks in Atlanta last month or Carson Hocevar’s antics against Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Dale Jr lamented, “You don’t see anybody get bad out of shape or suffer from any kind of like arrow push or loose or tight…Why can’t we, with everything we have technology-wise, take those two cars?” So he urged NASCAR to take a leaf from the 1980 Coke 600: “We need to know what we need to know is all right? What’s the overall downforce? What’s the drag? Where is the lift? What’s the front? …If you watched those two cars in that 1980 600 in the last 20 laps, you can’t tell me that you would not love to see that in a modern form.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr is clearly invested in reforming NASCAR’s Next-Gen troubles. Meanwhile, he knows that things are going well in his Xfinity Series team.
Tipping his hat to a teenager
Well, Connor Zilisch just turned 19 this year, so he is barely an adult. What he performs on a weekly basis, however, probably rivals all the adults in the NASCAR garage. The JR Motorsports prodigy is all over the Xfinity Series headlines. Zilisch clinched his third back-to-back victory in Indianapolis last weekend. He warded off hard charges from Taylor Gray and Sam Mayer in the last lap, winning by a margin of 0.339 seconds. In doing so, Zilisch clinched the fifth victory of the season and the sixth of his career. What is more, he also delivered JRM its 100th team victory, eliciting a jaw-dropping salute from Dale Jr. “He has the potential to do incredible, incredible Hall of Fame worthy things.”
The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi also praised Connor Zilisch recently. He said, “He is the young guy who is coming in and showing it, and it’s the maturity and the poise …. He’s really smart. He’s really patient. He’s about putting himself in a position to be there at the end and then makes the moves and capitalizes. That, to me, is a guy whose race craft supersedes his age. He’s not racing like a 19-year-old.” Jeff Gluck chimed with this opinion as well, dazzled by Zilisch. “He’s just so mature. It’s crazy. When you listen to him talk and his mental approach … he must have had great parenting growing up.”
Dale Jr has things to be proud of in the Xfinity Series. But in the Cup Series, he has qualms about NASCAR’s Next Gen car.
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