What’s Happening?

NASCAR Cup Series veteran Erik Jones gave race fans a favorable review of NASCAR’s 2026 horsepower increase during a recent interview.

In 2026, NASCAR is introducing a highly requested horsepower increase for NASCAR Cup Series cars at all road courses and tracks less than 1.5 miles long.

This increase is not a major boost into the 1000, 900, or even 800 range, with the cars set to increase from the current 650-670 HP package to 750 HP.

Though this change was highly anticipated amongst NASCAR fans, there are those suspicious of how much this increase will improve the NASCAR Next Gen Car’s racing product on short tracks and road courses, and whether fans and drivers will feel it at all.

NASCAR has already tested these changes this past offseason, hosting a multi-team test two weeks ago at North Wilkesboro Speedway. This test saw many drivers from across the garage test out the increased horsepower and some minor aero tweaks for the first time.

Among these drivers was Legacy Motor Club’s Erik Jones, who told Eric Estepp of the Out of the Groove YouTube channel this week that the new horsepower increase is noticeable behind the wheel.

“It’s noticeable, I would say, on the bottom end a lot, but it does feel like you’re going a little faster down straight away too,” Jones said. “It feels like it’s just pulling better through the whole power band.”

While Jones doesn’t reach an exact conclusion about the new package in this interview, he did point out that he believes the change will benefit NASCAR and Goodyear’s recent short track tire changes.

Throughout the latter half of 2024 and during the 2025 season, NASCAR and Goodyear worked to bring softer tires, with more fall off, to short tracks.

In his opinion, Jones says that the roughly 100-horsepower increase could help these tires finally achieve that high level of fall off that Goodyear has pursued over the past two seasons.

“I hope it helps out. I think we’ve done a lot of work with the tires and trying to get fall off, but I don’t think we had enough power to kind of supplement that tire and how much it wanted to fall off. 
So I think it’s gonna help on that.” — Erik Jones

But not everything from this recent test was perfect, with Jones describing the aero changes as “nothing groundbreaking,” though there were some things the sport could try out in the long run.

NASCAR’s new horsepower increase will take center stage this weekend at Bowman Gray Stadium. However, drivers will likely get a better feel for things during races three and four of the season at Circuit of the Americas and Phoenix Raceway, when the package makes its points race debut.

What’s Happening?

NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell has confirmed the long-rumored increase to 750 horsepower for the NASCAR Cup Series at select…

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