NASCAR introduced rule changes, new stage lengths, and a revised aerodynamic package for Talladega Superspeedway, hoping to give the fans what they love: Full-throttle racing, aggressive overtakes, closed-pack running, and daring moves. Instead, fans watched a fuel-saving snoozefest for more than half of the race, until the RFK Racing pack decided otherwise. Now that the fans, drivers, and garages have expressed their resentment towards NASCAR’s dissuading ideas backfiring on them, critics, pundits, and veteran journalists too have taken a stand against it. Motorsports journalist Jeff Gluck has joined the fans’ camp and has clapped back at NASCAR with his take on the messy situation.
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In conversation with Jordan Bianchi, Veteran Journalist Jeff Gluck set the record straight by expressing his resentment towards NASCAR’s casual approach to racing at their Marquee Superspeedways, calling them out on his X post.
“This extreme is not what people pay to see. I’m sorry, it’s not what people want to watch. It’s not what people pay to see; it’s not okay. You can’t just be like, all right, this is just how it’s going to be, how it is, you have to do something about it. You can’t just settle for it.”
While NASCAR introduced new stage lengths and an aerodynamic package to reduce fuel saving and improve passing, the field ignored the rule changes and ran closed-pack racing at 25% to 40% throttle. With stage lengths revised to 98-45-45, drivers chose to take the position battle to the pit road instead.
However, RFK Racing’s Brad Keselowski, Ryan Preece, and Chris Buescher, who sat outside title contention, decided to switch their strategy to execute a one-and-done masterclass. The trio’s 40-second lead over the field helped them secure a dominant top-three finish in stage one, while the fuel-saving pack couldn’t maximize their strategy.
While Jordan Bianchi expressed that there’s nothing that could be done and fuel saving is just a part of racing, Gluck was quick to counter his fellow’s journalists statement.
“I am going to push back on saying there’s nothing you can do about it. If NASCAR says, you know what, that’s just how it is now; the toothpaste is out of the tube, we figured it out, and the teams are just going to fuel save no matter what, I’m still rejecting that because, again, the reason they’re fuel saving is because you get track position because you can’t pass.”
“If you were able to continue to work on the package, or whatever you could do with this car, you can’t show up to Daytona every year for your Marquee event, the Daytona 500, and be like, all right, well, I mean, we’ve kind of done all we can do; we’ll just let them save fuel at 25% throttle for a while.”
“No, sorry, you have to keep trying, whether it’s incentives, whether it’s different stages lengths, whether it’s different packages, different tires whatever you have to do; you cannot settle for this. NASCAR cannot just be like, you know, this first part of the race is just going to be the fuel saving part…”
Gluck built on the ideas of Ryan Preece and NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. as he injected the idea of incentives and rewards into the mix of suggestions he offered.
The No. 60 RFK Racing driver Ryan Preece, who secured a second-place finish with his teammates Keselowski and Buescher, revealed how he texted Steve O’Donnell about introducing leading laps and most laps led rewards for drivers to risk positions and fight at the front of the field lap after lap.
A month ago, Preece was on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s DirtyMo Media podcast, where the latter suggested how NASCAR should restore bonus points.
Superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega are the most anticipated races of the Cup Series as thousands of fans look forward to high-speed racing and chaos beyond just crashes like the ‘Big One’. While fuel saving has always been a thing and is still very crucial to executing a clean race from start to finish and to maximize the points secured, NASCAR modifying rules only for the paddock to ignore them and do the opposite has left the fans furious.
With the authenticity of pure racing compromised by the introduction of external factors to control how the race progresses from one stage to another, fans do not want Marquee races to turn into a strategic game by losing its high-octane spectacle.
But with the Chase format disrupting the championship standings after each round, fans still have a title fight to look forward to.