Chase Elliott weighs in on NASCAR horsepower debate

“Uncle Ernie [Elliott] certainly talks about it all the time. Yeah, I do think it would make a really big difference for sure,” Elliott told Pockrass, regarding adding horsepower. “In the grand scheme of what the races might look like, I think anytime you introduce off-throttle time is probably a good thing for drivers having the ability to be different. I think the more we’re pushed into the box being the same, the harder it’s going to be for guys to stand out or, you know, drive from the back of the field to the front of the field. You kind of become tightened down to one, whatever the optimum line is, and when we’re all kind of running the same throttle percentage all the time, it’s difficult to branch out and and make a wider radius work with more success or, or whatever.

“But, you know, I don’t work in the engine shop, but I do know, just from what little bit of knowledge I have on engines, is the way that we run these engines with, you know, a tapered spacers, we’re making them about as inefficient as you can possibly make them. You know, these things unrestricted would have had more power as they sit today. I think with that, you know, you would certainly have to have different parts. I don’t think those parts would cost any more than what they cost now, if you bought the right ones to withstand that type of horsepower from a reliability standpoint, but I do know that we run them extremely inefficient with with the spacer that we put on them.”

Chase Elliott on NASCAR’s horsepower debate: ‘Goodyear is in a tough position’

Continuing, Elliott also sees the problem from Goodyear’s point of view, believing the sport’s tire manufacturer is dealing with a lot on their plate, trying to please fans along with the teams.

“I’ve always kind of stood on the side of a Goodyear is in a tough position over the years because you know, they don’t want to have tire failures, you know, at the racetrack, so I understand their side,” Elliott added. “And, you know, the teams push them to have to build a tough tire because they, you know, we try to make the cars go as fast as we can. I think one thing that gets lost in translation a little bit in that is, you know, having a failure or tire on the chords or whatever, it seems like we’re really quick to make a change, when if you kept going in that direction, I think the teams would naturally figure out what the limitations are themselves, because none of — we don’t want to tear up cars or crash or whatever. So we’ve just got to figure out what that box is that, you know, that a tire can live in.

“I think the teams and drivers will, we’ll figure out where that boxes and and kind of adjust from there. But we are really quick to make make changes from that standpoint, but I do think Goodyear’s in a really, really tough box, to make a really durable tire that doesn’t make them look bad, and and have it do all the things that, you know, NASCAR wants them to do. We’ve made the sidewall as small as we’ve ever had it before. Cars are heavier than they’ve ever been. So you’re just you’re asking a lot out of them, in my opinion.”

Alas, it remains to be seen if the show at Bristol was the start of something new, or if we’ll regress to the mean in the coming weeks. Regardless, Chase Elliott made some fascinating points, and they’re even more poignant after Bristol.