Three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano recently opened up about the challenges that come with the Next-Gen era cars.
The introduction of NASCAR's Next-Gen cars has brought in new levels of competition and Logano has discussed the challenges that come with maintaining a competitive edge. The reigning champion explained:
"I don't know how to put it into words how hard it is. But I think anyone listening that has probably done anything in professional sports understands it probably as good as anybody. You put the best of the best at their profession doing the same thing with one common goal.
"The competition is always trying to get better, and everybody is wanting to win. It just gets harder and harder to do. The field gets closer and closer every year. It's tough. It's hard to find an advantage over anybody anymore."
These challenges are exacerbated by technical issues faced by the new cars. From wheel-related problems to modifications necessitated by heat concerns, the Next-Gen car keeps teams on their toes.
Logano isn't the only one to raise concerns about the Next-Gen cars. Denny Hamlin's crew chief Chris Gabehart commented earlier in the year, as quoted by The Express:
"When I look at the stated goal of parity, and that is every driver, every team can buy the same parts and have the same opportunity to go win a race, I think that's a great stated goal. The problem is physics gets in the way.
"The car that's leading is going to have an advantage over the car that's in second, and it's quantifiable, and then so on and so forth throughout the rest of the field. And if you can't overcome that disadvantage, then what you're actually doing is handcuffing all the drivers and all the teams into an execution battle. It simply becomes a race of QC, Monday through Sunday."
He added:
"So in my view, what we've got to do is make it harder. I think whether it's more horsepower or, you know, smaller footprint on the tires, which I think we could do, by the way.
"I mean, all the revisions that we've made to this car, how big a deal would it be to make a two inch narrow wheel from the inside and make the footprint of the tire smaller, right? We simply have a horsepower to grip ratio imbalance.
"We knocked out 100 horsepower, we went to a wider tire, went to independent rear suspension, we increased grip, decreased horsepower. That's too easy for you, right? That's too easy for the race teams. And therefore the physics disadvantage from however you line up on the track, given a scenario is hard to overcome."
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