\u201cSometimes it\u2019s remembering what made millions of people fall in love with NASCAR in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last weekend, NASCAR raced on the 2.5-mile of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Since that race, the sport has seen criticism from both fans and drivers.<\/p>\n
Indianapolis Race Results: July 26, 2026 (NASCAR Cup Series)<\/a><\/p>\n Sunday\u2019s race marked the first race on the 2.5-mile track with the Next Gen car. In recent years, they have been racing on the road course. And, it brought major issues to light.<\/p>\n Indianapolis is a large, single groove race track. It\u2019s been well documented that the Next Gen car has positives but those positives tend to appear on tracks with multiple grooves.<\/p>\n After the race, drivers have been vocal on the flaws that come with the Next Gen chassis.<\/p>\n NASCAR has seen far more change than a car. Other changes from recent decades include stage racing and a playoff format. The sport thrived before all that.<\/p>\n Now, former NASCAR winner Jeremy Mayfield has added his voice to the conversation\u2026<\/p>\n NASCAR drivers continue to knock the Next Gen car after Indy<\/a><\/p>\n Jeremy Clements reflects on NASCAR<\/p>\n \u201cI was lucky enough to race when NASCAR was at its absolute best, and I\u2019ll tell you firsthand\u2026 it wasn\u2019t an accident,\u201d Jeremy Mayfield opened<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery weekend felt like a big event. The grandstands were packed, the broadcasts were second to none, the cars sounded mean, and every driver had their own style. Nobody needed manufactured excitement. You either figured out how to race or you got passed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSomewhere along the way we started trying to create entertainment instead of just letting racers race.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStage breaks\u2026 gimmicks\u2026 overcomplicating everything\u2026 meanwhile the fans are saying, \u2018Just let them race.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n Related:\u00a0Jeremy Mayfield details the raid on his house<\/a><\/p>\n Loss of creativity<\/p>\n \u201cAnother thing we\u2019ve lost is creativity,\u201d Mayfield added.<\/p>\n \u201cBack when I raced, the smartest teams found speed because they built it. Crew chiefs, engineers, fabricators, mechanics\u2014everybody was chasing something the next guy hadn\u2019t figured out yet. Every car was different because every team had its own ideas. Drivers spent time in the shop, worked on their own race cars, and knew exactly what they needed behind the wheel because they helped build it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cToday, everybody starts with basically the same \u2018kit\u2019car. The people in the garage are still talented, but NASCAR has taken away so much of the creativity that used to separate the great teams from the good ones. It used to be about out-thinking and out-working the competition. Now it\u2019s a whole lot more plug-and-play than it ever was.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFans don\u2019t care about aero numbers or the latest rule package. They want personalities. They want rivalries. They want to see drivers race each other hard. They want to see a driver willing to use the bumper in the last corner on the last lap to get the trophy. Funny how people are still talking about those moments decades later.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll\u201d always love this sport, and that\u2019s exactly why I say all this. I got to live through what I believe was NASCAR at its best. It wasn\u2019t perfect, but it was real. The drivers drove, the crews built race cars instead of assembling parts, and every Sunday felt like you were about to witness something you\u2019ll never forget.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes the answer isn\u2019t creating something new. Sometimes it\u2019s remembering what made millions of people fall in love with NASCAR in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n Related: Jeremy Mayfield knocks NASCAR after leaked messages<\/a><\/p>\n Links<\/p>\n Indianapolis Motor Speedway<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NASCAR<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSometimes it\u2019s remembering what made millions of people fall in love with NASCAR in the first place.\u201d Last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[21069,11573,49,48,3140,5904,3844,21070,21071,99260,634,3628,8354,10031,102254,100249,82],"class_list":["post-839468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-brickyard","tag-brickyard-400","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cup-series","tag-indiana","tag-indianapolis","tag-indianapolis-in","tag-indianapolis-indiana","tag-jeremy-mayfield","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-ncs","tag-next-gen","tag-nextgen","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839468","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=839468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}