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day of the dalek [soylentnews.org] writes:

NASCAR's first points race of 2025 is the Daytona 500, which is on February 16. The Daytona 500 is NASCAR's most prestigious race, with a unique style of racing known as pack racing. This is characterized by many cars running at very high speeds in large packs, and often massive wrecks [youtube.com] referred to as the "Big One" [wikipedia.org]. However, many drivers and fans have been critical of rules changes in recent years leading to racing at NASCAR's biggest oval tracks that they describe as boring.

Bobby Allison's 210 mph crash at the 1987 Winston 500 [youtube.com] forever changed how NASCAR races at superspeedways. Allison's car became airborne, severely damaged the catch fence along the frontstretch at Talladega, and almost flew into the stands. NASCAR decided the speeds had become too fast at their two largest and highest-banked ovals, Daytona [wikipedia.org] and Talladega [wikipedia.org], and implemented restrictor plates at those tracks starting in 1988. Restrictor plates reduce the air intake into the engine [howstuffworks.com], reducing both horsepower and speeds.

Although drafting had always been powerful at superspeedways, the changes caused the cars to race in large packs, often with 20 or 30 cars within a couple seconds of each other. Although NASCAR says that this is necessary to prevent the worst wrecks, often leads to large multi-car wrecks [nytimes.com]. Drivers also complain that winning restrictor plate races is influenced too heavily by luck, though this is disputed [substack.com].

When a car drives forward, it displaces the air with its nose, creating high pressure at the front of the car, and low pressure behind the car in its turbulent wake. The combination of high pressure in front and low pressure behind the car creates a rearward pointing pressure gradient force (PGF) [youtube.com], which is drag and slows the car down. If another car rides in the wake of the lead car, it experiences lower pressure on its nose, reducing the drag and allowing the car to go faster. However, if the trailing car puts its nose right behind the rear bumper of the lead car, it increases the pressure behind the lead car, reducing the lead car's drag as well. When the cars are in close proximity, both leading and trailing cars benefit from the draft [howstuffworks.com] When NASCAR reduced the horsepower at superspeedways, the draft became particularly powerful, and the fastest way around the track was now in a group of cars driving bumper-to-bumper.

The result is often a large pack of cars, two or three wide, driving around the track at full throttle with speeds around 190 mph. One of the best ways to pass in pack racing is for a car to back up to the bumper of the car behind it, get pushed forward to increase its speed, and then get out of line to try to move forward. For this strategy to work, either that car has to get back in the draft soon before drag slows it down too much, or it needs other cars to also get out of line and start a new line. The result is a style of racing that leads to cars making aggressive moves at high speeds, and it can be spectacular to watch. However, in recent years and especially since the introduction of NASCAR's next-gen Cup Series car in 2022, the racing at superspeedways has been criticized as boring.

Although it's difficult to find detailed historical engine specs, for much of the restrictor plate era, cars might have 750 horsepower at most tracks but be limited to 450 horsepower at superspeedways. More recently, NASCAR has been increasing the power at superspeedways while adding more aerodynamic drag to slow the cars down. However, this means the drag is more severe when a car gets out of line, and a single car will drop back quickly. This makes it much more difficult for cars to pass without multiple cars getting out of line at once.

Driver Denny Hamlin also said that higher drag in the next-gen car leads to poorer fuel mileage [youtube.com], leading to slower speeds to conserve fuel, and less passing [nbcsports.com]. Instead of making aggressive moves to pass, cars tend to ride around in line for much of the race leading to a style of racing that many describe as boring. Suggestions to improve the racing include reducing drag, lowering horsepower in the engines, and either adjusting the lengths of race stages [on3.com] or eliminating stage racing altogether at superspeedways.

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