It’s hard to argue that the introduction of the NextGen vehicle was not a success for the NASCAR Cup Series. There have been 15 different race winners through 23 running races so far this season. Although the rule book is new and new teams have been able to find their way to victory – the NextGen’s regulations are built on a foundation from nearly 75 years of competition. NASCAR recently released a short video to illustrate how the sanctioning agency got to this point, as told by the sport’s leaders on and off the track.
The 17-minute video features archival footage, on-set footage of surviving historic vehicles, and interviews with prominent figures in NASCAR’s history. With these installments, viewers are guided through seven generations of NASCAR classic cars and indirectly, the sport’s brief history. The first part of the video somewhat romanticizes the first two decades of NASCAR, but it’s pretty good-balance when discussing the two generations of classic cars before NextGen. Although produced by NASCAR, Car of Tomorrow and Gen6 were heavily criticized for their flaws. CoT gets ridiculed for originally having hind wings and fuselage essentially uniform across manufacturers. Gen6 has ignited a costly war fueled by the search for marginal advantages.
The video ends by contextualizing the NextGen vehicle in NASCAR’s history. Hey cemergency generation of machines continue to drive the bodywork similar to road cars starting in the sixth generation – Hardened back to the early days of antique cars. But underneath the bodywork, the NextGen car is actually a purpose-built race car that achieves the ultimate goal that Cup Series teams have been unwittingly aiming for for decades.
