The Daytona 500 is on the horizon and NASCAR’s 2025 season, which could be critical to the future of the sport, is already off to a roaring start with The Clash at iconic Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston Salem, N.C., once a regular stop on what was then called the Grand National Division and is now the Cup Series.
Looking at the competitive side, teams are continuing to adjust to the Next-Gen car, introduced in 2022 and bringing radical changes to how stock cars are constructed and put together. Before Next-Gen hit the track, everything was pretty much built in house.
Now, everyone gets their parts and pieces from a single source distributer and nothing can be modified, meaning that all the teams, from powerhouse operations like Hendrick Motorsports to tight budget operations like JTG Daugherty Racing, now Hyak Motorsports, have the same equipment. The goal here was to improve competition and decrease costs, but whether that will work is debatable.
Teams like Hendrick, Joe Gibbs Racing and Penske will just spend more money to find ways to break away from the field, and it might be something as simple as how the body is mounted on the chassis.
When a car goes into a corner, the wheels and chassis turn but the body wants to keep going straight, which is called yaw. To compensate for this, the rear of the body is shifted slightly to the left, which reduces the air flowing over and around the right side. With less air hitting the spoiler on the right, the car gets lose with the rear drifting up toward the wall and following the wheels and chassis through the corner.
We are only talking fractions of inches here. If the rear is shifted too much, the car will be slower down the straights and if it isn’t shifted enough, it will be slower through the turns, so getting the exact angle can give you an edge. This is where the big teams have an advantage because they can spend more on analytics to get it right.
Another critical component will be making sure you run the correct tire pressure. Low tire pressure gives you more grip and makes you faster on short runs, but if there are no cautions cars with high tire pressure, while slower at the start, will reach peak grip faster because they don’t have to build pressure and be be faster over the long run. And again, because they have more money to spend on technology, the top tier teams are more likely to hit the correct tire pressure than those which are underfunded.
So, heading into 2025, where do we stand? Using the Old Guy Sport competition index, we can determine which drivers and teams will be the most competitive and which ones are struggling. The OGS competition index is a better indication than the NASCAR point standings because the NASCAR system is essentially based on where you finish, while OGS measures how you compete on the track. For example you can lead half the race, crash and finish 30th or worse in NASCAR, which essentially gives you no credit for how well you performed.
Another difference between the OGS system and NASCAR is that OGS does not use results from the super speedways, Daytona, Talladega and now Atlanta as well, because they are irrelevant in determining the quality of the teams and drivers.
Two things decide whether you win or lose at these tracks, and both are determined by pure luck. The first is avoiding the “big wreck”. You don’t know when it’s going to happen and you don’t know whether it will occur at the front of the pack, the middle of the pack or the back of the pack, so you can’t do anything to stay out of it.
The second is being in the right line on the last lap. Again, this is pure luck. At super speedways, cars form long lines nose-to-tail because of the draft. When a trailing car pulls up to a car in front of it, the trailing car can run as fast as the lead car without going full speed because the lead car is pushing the air out of the way. At the same time, the trailing car is squeezing the air between the two cars pushing the lead car and making it faster.
The more cars you get in line, the faster everybody goes. This makes it virtually impossible to pass because if you pull out of the draft, you immediately lose speed and the line will reform and shoot by you. But on the last lap, more people are willing to gamble.
If three or four cars drop out of the lead line that breaks the draft, and as more cars form up with them, the new line can become faster than the old one. So, you might be leading the race coming out of the fourth turn at Daytona and end up 15th because the new line is faster.
Then there are the NASCAR playoffs, a pathetic attempt to imitate the so-called stick-and-ball sports. This simply doesn’t work in NASCAR because first of all, you have no chance to redeem yourself. If Pat Mahomes throws a couple interceptions early in a game, he can come back and throw for the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter. If a baseball player strikes out with the bases loaded in the first, he can win the game with a base hit in the ninth.
Not so in NASCAR. If you wreck, you’re out. No second chance.
Another problem is that in stick-and-ball sports, the team that plays best will win 99 percent of the time. In NASCAR, you can have the best car in the race and still lose because a slower car won’t let you pass or for some other reason beyond your control.
So, now that we’ve set the criteria, in future posts we will examine which teams and drivers are likely to succeed in 2025 and why, which teams and drivers are trending up – or down, emerging talent and other relevant information about the upcoming season. Stay tuned.
