Richard Petty Throws Shade at NASCAR for ‘Fooling’ Fans With Major Cover Up After Nashville

Ryan Blaney finally overcame his setbacks to snag his first win of the season at Nashville Superspeedway. Leading the race high 139 of the 300 laps, he managed to keep both Carson Hocevar and Denny Hamlin at bay. It wasn’t the barn burner affair that Next Gen car delivers on the intermediate tracks. Although as the lights came on, drivers were able to make passes, it wasn’t something out of the ordinary. Fans had their say online, with Jeff Gluck’s poll revealing that 32.9% of fans didn’t like the racing on Sunday.

But there’s reason to be optimistic right now with Elton Sawyer dropping a major update about the increase in horsepower on the Gen 7 car. Well, Richard Petty, who has seen the ebb and flow of NASCAR racing, has now shared his take on the debate. And if we are to go by his prediction, even a bump in power isn’t going to change on-track product, highlighting the major flaw in the Next Gen car.

Richard Petty isn’t sold on NASCAR’s horsepower experiment

Time and again, we have seen drivers complain about dirty air and how aero-sensitive this new race car is. “This car is worse in traffic than the previous car,” Kyle Busch opined. And another element that has changed the racing is the flat underbody design and big spoiler on the superspeedway. While the horsepower is expected to create separation in the field with drivers having to make tough choices, Petty believes that isn’t likely to happen.

“They run fast enough to run and catch them, to lap them,” said Petty. “But the air is so bad that I think the surprise of the whole race was the 77 car.” He acknowledged that the #12 car was the best, but even a bump in HP isn’t likely to solve the aero problem the car has.

“Yeah, they were the race, okay,” continued Petty. “Everybody else had to work around their strategy and the speeds and stuff that he had. You know, they’re talking about maybe giving these cars a little bit more horsepower, but I don’t know that the horsepower is going to overcome the aero in these cars.”

In his weekly race recap video, after the Talladega race in April, Petty said, “Would horsepower help anything? I don’t know.” He continued, “They got these cars so draggy that if a car’s leading the race and a car comes up behind him with a good run on him, all he does is pull over and he just stops that car…. To me that’s not racing. You can go out here and stand on the side of the interstate and watch cars go down the road. That’s what it looked like. It looked like basically it was under a caution flag the entire time.”

The conversation that is brewing behind the scenes is that NASCAR is willing to bump the horsepower to 750, which currently stands at 670. This is seen as a sweet spot in allowing the teams and drivers to have what they have been demanding for a long time. At the same time, they are hoping to keep the lifespans of the engines intact to ensure this change doesn’t lead to additional costs for racing operations.

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Richard Petty breaks down the evolution of Nashville’s racing legacy

Known to fans simply as “The King,” Petty racked up 200 wins during his career, including 9 at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. Back in the 70s, especially during races like the Music City USA 420 in 1974, Petty dominated on the traditional asphalt surfaces that defined that era. But times have changed. The modern Cup Series now battles at the Nashville Superspeedway, a concert track with a character of its own, and one that Petty admits he didn’t run much on during his time.

“Cement tracks are more consistent. I didn’t run that many of them. They started doing a lot of cement, but for me to watch a race, and I think for me to run a cement track, is going to stay more consistent because the weather doesn’t affect it like it does asphalt,” said Petty.

The transition from Fairgrounds to the newer Superspeedway in 2001 marked a significant shift in Nashville’s motorsport identity. Though the track initially only hosted Truck and Xfinity races, it earned a Cup date in 2021. Since then, the concrete surface has delivered no shortage of action, from Chase Elliott’s commanding win in 2023 to the chaos of the 2024 quintuple-overtime finish claimed by Joey Logano. But for all the spectacle, the track’s true challenge lies beneath the tires.

Even Dale Inman, Petty’s long-time crew chief, pointed out the historical shift toward concrete in NASCAR. Recalling tracks like Martinsville, he said, “We didn’t run that many concrete tracks, I think. Martinsville was probably the first one that just concreted the corners because they couldn’t get the asphalt to hold (to stay down). That’s the reason they done it.”

For Petty, it is not just about tradition, it is about how the surface transforms the sport, adding a technical wrinkle that today’s drivers must master. Apart from Nashville, Bristol Motor Speedway and Dover Motor Speedway have a concrete surface.