Kevin Harvick calls for NASCAR to increase horsepower

“I think there were a lot of things that were positive about the package this weekend. I still think it’s gotta have more than 1000 horsepower,” Harvick said. “For the life of me, I cannot understand why we wanna keep spending millions and millions of dollars on CFD, and wind tunnels, and changing parts and changing pieces.”

“The engine cost hasn’t changed since we changed the engine rules. I don’t understand why we just don’t want them to blow the back tires off the car. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Is increasing horsepower on the table for NASCAR?

NASCAR debuted a new short-track package at Phoenix designed to create more green flag passing. In total, there were 2,813 green flag passes at Phoenix. That broke the record for green flag passes at Phoenix in the Next Gen car era, surpassing the 2,584 passes in the spring 2023 race. In addition, 19 lead changes occurred in Sunday’s race.

While this year’s spring race at Phoenix was an improvement, Cup Series managing director Brad Moran said they’re “never done” in looking to make more adjustments to the package. Moran added that adding more horsepower could cause some issues.

“Once we open up the horsepower, we have to have all three manufacturers on board,” Moran said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, via Racer. “As soon as you open that up, there’s going to be development, there’s going to be reliability issues and putting that cost back into the engine builder’s category, where they certainly will develop the engine. As soon you open any horsepower, they’re automatically going to do that. They’re the best at it, and that’s what they do.

“The number we’re at seems to be where we want to be to potentially get new manufacturers interested. And if we start getting away from that number, it can create problems in that area. But we’re always open to everything and we do consider everything, but there’s a lot of different parties that have to agree before that can happen.”