Team Penske left the Daytona 500 with a sour taste. The Toyotas, led by Bubba Wallace, Corey Heim, and Christopher Bell, locked down all three lanes for most of the final stage, tiptoeing through lapsto save fuel. That left Ryan Blaney buried in P27, while Joey Logano clawed his way to P3 by the checkered flag. The outcome left Logano’s crew chief, Paul Wolfe, frustrated to say the least.
Fuel saving has stuck in Blaney’s craw the most. Even at a drafting track like Daytona, the pack at the front slowed the pace and shut every door, covering the track from wall to grass so no one behind could thread the needle.
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Wolfe, speaking on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, said the sport can make tweaks, but every lever comes with a catch.
“You could always probably change things and make it look different as far as fuel saving and knowing what we know now on that,” Wolfe said.
“I think different scenarios, you’re still going to see that. But could they make the racing different or stage length? Sure. I mean, there’s ways to change it, but does that mean it’s going to be better or are we just going to create another situation that somebody doesn’t like?
“I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a way, but it’s not simple, I can tell you that. There’s so much to this, and it’s hard to make changes and not maybe screw something else up along the way. So we’ll just have to see where it goes. Like I said, I don’t know that what we’re doing is bad. I think it really depends on the viewer and what they want to see,” Wolfe added.
Denny Hamlin, though, floated the idea of a fix not long ago. In his view, the cure was simple on paper, and it would require turning up the wick. More pace could stretch the field and ease the concerns drivers like Blaney keep raising. He even tossed out the idea of testing it soon, opening the taps on engine speed to head the sport closer to its roots.
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The push toward fuel saving goes back to the rules tied to the NASCAR Next Gen era. The formula bunches the field and makes clean passes hard to come by, putting track position in the driver’s seat. Meanwhile, the teams respond by trimming fuel use, hoping to steal time on pit road before stage breaks and at the finish.
That is why drivers spend long stretches lifting off the throttle on superspeedways. Burn less fuel, spend less time on pit road, but then overall it drains the pulse from the show.
Fans end up watching laps go by without tension, without swings, and without urgency. The early stages often drift into a holding pattern, with the real scrap saved for the closing run. This time at Daytona, however, even the start of the last stage followed the same script, as drivers kept their eyes on the fuel number.
The post Joey Logano’s Crew Chief Sounds off on How There Is No Simple Solution to NASCAR’s Superspeedway Tactics appeared first on The SportsRush.
