Chris Gabehart blasts NASCAR Next Gen car: 'No more driver talent to speak of'

Chris Gabehart, crew chief for Denny Hamlin, has had about enough of the NASCAR Next Gen car’s superspeedway package. This duo knows a thing or two about drafting races, and lately the results and actual racing on track have not added up.

On Sunday at Talladega, Denny Hamlin got lucky for once. He was able to avoid the big one while his damaged car struggled to keep up in the draft.

The veteran crew chief spoke with Bryan Nolen of Frontstretch after the race. He hopes that NASCAR can make changes.

“Largely with this racing the way it is now, you just gotta get lucky at the right times and we got lucky for once,” Gabehart said. “We’ve been Gen 7 racing this platform for a while now at speedways and been swept up in so many messes that weren’t of our own doing and just get unlucky kinda in those instances.”

This was not the only thing Gabehart had to say about the Next Gen car. He is hoping that NASCAR will be able to make changes.

Chris Gabehart doesn’t see greatness in NASCAR superspeedway package

Long gone are the days of Dale Earnhardt driving from 18th to 1st in a matter of three laps. It just doesn’t happen anymore. From Chris Gabehart’s perspective, that is because of the way this car races at these tracks.

“With Gen 7 speedway racing, I just don’t see any greatness. There’s qualifying up front, there’s a little bit of a tussle after an event. So, green flag comes out or a pit cycle just completes and there’s a little bit of flustering. But once they get all lined up, you’re just stuck. There’s no more driver ability, not more driver talent to speak of. I mean, we’re talking about very small things. So, it’s all about green flag pit cycles and strategy and fuel mileage and stuff. To the point of can they fix it? I mean, if we’re looking for racing to be what we care about.

If we want – racing purists want to see so many different disciplines of racing throughout a Cup Series schedule. That’s what sets Cup Series apart, right? [That] there’s so many different types of racing these guys have to be good at and it’s the only schedule in the world where that’s true. If we want driver racing discipline to matter at these tracks, we have to do something. I am a proponent of making the stage lengths the length of the fuel tank. So, all of the pitting that’s necessary to be done is under caution. Because we all have fuel to make it to the caution that we care about. There’s some race length challenges that we’d have to work through there as an industry, but I’m confident we can do it.”

Denny Hamlin has a long and storied history on superspeedways. Three Daytona 500 wins speak for themself. Lately in NASCAR, it feels like the old veterans have lost their magic.