Joey Logano: NASCAR needs to do 'something big' to fix short track racing package

Joey Logano is calling on NASCAR to “do something big” to fix the short track package following this past Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway, in which drivers struggled to make passes on the racetrack.

Logano, appearing on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday, said that if the sanctioning body won’t add horsepower to the Next Gen car, then it’s time to “groove the tire.”

🗣️ “We gotta swing the bat. We gotta do something big as a sport to fix it.”

2-time champion @joeylogano weighs in on the current state of short track racing in the #NASCAR Cup Series.

More with the @Team_Penske driver on the @siriusxm App 🎧 pic.twitter.com/VROzmPVfkd

— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) April 9, 2024

Joey Logano picks apart NASCAR’s new short track package

“We had 180-something laps on our left sides and it finally started chunking apart at the end,” Logano said. “The last 20 laps, the left rear started coming apart, but it wasn’t because it wore off. The wear pins were still there. It started delaminating, like the tread started coming off. It didn’t wear down to the cords. The tire was fine outside of it chunking apart. That’s not OK.

“… I’m warming my tires up under caution and my tires are fine, I don’t need to pit. It’s not going to do anything for me. And it didn’t. Denny put tires on from … [fourth]. He didn’t go nowhere. He actually went backwards. It’s just crazy that that’s what it is right now. We have to do something. My suggestion, the thing I think we should do is we need to get a smaller tire on this car, and I know we can’t do that with the wheels on it.

“Groove the tire. Try something. In my mind, there ain’t much to lose. If we cannot produce tire wear, I don’t know how we can’t because we used to — for whatever reason that’s harder to do now, I don’t know why that is because we used to do that at Martinsville. All the time. It’s pretty clear to me that NASCAR does not want to give us more horsepower. I want that, but it does not seem like that’s going to happen. So, do something and do it now. Hurry up. Do it now. Try it. At any point, I think any of us would be willing to go test anywhere and do some crazy stuff and try it. We’ve just got to do something big now.”

What is NASCAR’s new short track package?

NASCAR debuted a new aero package for short tracks and road courses in the Cup Series this season. The new package includes a simplified diffuser on the Next Gen car, the elimination of engine panel strakes, more simplified diffuser strakes and a 3-inch spoiler. Thus far, three racetracks have used the package: Phoenix Raceway, Richmond Raceway and Martinsville.

The one short track race this season which didn’t use the new short track package, was the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. In that race, tire wear was extreme, which drew favorable reviews from drivers and fans.

“Bristol was good because the tire came apart,” Logano said, via Dustin Long of NBC Sports. “And that was good. Richmond and Martinsville, gosh, we got to swing the bat. We’ve got to do something big to fix it. I hate saying it, but we’re not an aero package away anymore. We’ve tried that. We’ve hit that button a few times. Got to do something to make the tires fall off. I get it. Listen, here’s the deal, Goodyear has built a tire that is too good. If you’re looking to buy a tire on the street. That’s the tire you want. You want the tire that is going to last forever. … But that’s not what we want as racers.

“It’s a fine line. Think about it. If you are Goodyear and the storyline is these tires are coming apart or they’re wearing out quickly, well, then you would say ‘I don’t want to put that on my car.’ We have to somehow separate our street wants vs. our racecar wants.”

Elton Sawyer says NASCAR needs to ‘work harder’ to improve short track racing package

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, admitted Tuesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that the sanctioning body needs to “work harder” on improving the racing at short tracks.

“We’re not naive to this,” Sawyer said. “We as NASCAR want our short track package to be better. We want that racing to be at the level that superspeedways and our intermediate racetracks are today. I promise you we are working as hard as we can with Goodyear, and we need to work harder. That’s the bottom line. We need to work harder to come to a place, whereas I said a couple of weeks ago, we need to figure out how to bottle up what we learned at Bristol and also what we learned the first 30 laps at Richmond last week on how that race unfolded. The tires and the way they wear and the way the drivers have to manage that tire wear and the tire fall off is really what we’re trying to achieve.

“When you can go out on any track, especially short tracks, and you can run it at 10/10ths and the equipment will take it and the tire will take, then you’re taking all the skill set out away from the driver. I promise you, I promise our fans that we are working daily to continue to try to come up with a tire that will give us the short track racing that we’re all looking for. … It’s not a one-tire fits all type solution, so we have to continue to work. We’re not resting on anything that we did yesterday. Today, we’re going to be digging on this again and working on solutions and trying to get to a better place.”