{"id":169147,"date":"2025-09-25T20:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T20:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/169147\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T20:56:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T20:56:07","slug":"brad-keselowski-strongly-hints-at-horsepower-increase-for-2026-nascar-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/169147\/","title":{"rendered":"Brad Keselowski strongly hints at horsepower increase for 2026 NASCAR season"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been talk of NASCAR<\/a> increasing horsepower for the 2026 season. Brad Keselowski indicated earlier this week on Corey LaJoie\u2018s \u201cStacking Pennies<\/a>\u201d podcast that it looks like that will, in fact, happen. <\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you know, it looks like NASCAR is going to change the rules next year to where we\u2019re like 740, 750 [horsepower],\u201d Keselowski said. \u201cIt\u2019s not quite 100, because, you know, right now, technically, they\u2019re at 670, but realistically, they\u2019re like 685, 690, so.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far back as 2015,\u00a0NASCAR\u00a0has incrementally decreased the horsepower of engines capable of producing over 900.\u00a0NASCAR has capped engines at 670 horsepower since the introduction of the Next Gen car in 2022.<\/p>\n

NASCAR has argued against a horsepower increase for years. They have mainly claimed that the 670-horsepower package is set up to attract new manufacturers to the sport. There\u2019s also concerns of cost.\u00a0 Elton Sawyer, NASCAR\u2019s senior vice president of competition, said in May that more horsepower was \u201con the table<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

He followed up last month with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio<\/a>, saying that increasing horsepower in the Next Gen car at short tracks is a priority for the 2026 season<\/a>. Sawyer added that the biggest challenge is determining which racetracks would get the short track increase.<\/p>\n

More horsepower on the way in NASCAR?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re always trying to make our racing \u2014 whether it\u2019s short track, road course, intermediate, superspeedway \u2014 we want to make it better. We feel like we have a really good product right now, but we want to build on that. We still have some work to do,\u201d Sawyer said. \u201cWe\u2019ve discussed many times about horsepower on the short tracks and that\u2019s something that\u2019s an ongoing discussion with our industry stakeholders, Toyota, Ford and Chevy, as well as our engine builder and our race teams. Feel like we\u2019re having positive conversations; there\u2019s still a lot that goes into that. Obviously, that\u2019s a 2026 initiative to get that across the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we still continue to have very positive conversations around that and some of it boils down to if you look at a Martinsville, you look at a Richmond \u2014 it\u2019s pretty straightforward because that\u2019s a short track. But then, you look at a Loudon, and Loudon is a mile, but it races like a short track, so does it fall into that same bucket? We have to look at racetracks like that \u2014 Dover \u2014 it\u2019s a mile racetrack, but speeds are up there. Is that also in that engine package that may be on the short track? \u2026 We\u2019re optimistic that we\u2019re going to get there, but still a little bit more work to do on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASCAR could look and feel quite different next season. More horsepower appears to be on the way. Beyond that, however, a possible new way to decide a champion. According to\u00a0Jeff Gluck of\u00a0The Athletic<\/a>,\u00a0a member of the playoff committee, a full 36-race season championship is back on the table<\/a>. Gluck added that a tweak to the current elimination style format \u201cmay still win out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There has been talk of NASCAR increasing horsepower for the 2026 season. Brad Keselowski indicated earlier this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-169147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}