NASCAR Is Finally Looking At Increasing Horsepower For Cup Series Cars As Early As This Season

Better late than never I guess.

Horsepower has been a big topic of discussion in NASCAR for the last few years now, but especially since 2022 with the debut of the Next Gen car.

For a little bit of backstory here, NASCAR runs an electronic fuel injection V8 engine in their race cars, engines that are capable of producing over 1,000 horsepower on their own. And not too long ago, NASCAR Cup Series cars produced around 850-900 horsepower on most tracks.

But a few years ago, NASCAR began limiting the horsepower that Cup Series cars could run on tracks shorter than 1 mile to 750hp, while limiting the cars to 550hp on tracks longer than a mile. Then in 2022, when NASCAR introduced its new Gen 7 (or “Next Gen”) car in the Cup Series, horsepower was limited to 670 hp on all tracks except for superspeedways, where it was limited to only 510 hp.

The result is, obviously, cars that don’t go as fast, and as a result, it’s harder for drivers to pass.

Now obviously horsepower is only one of the elements involved, but as the 2025 season has produced several lackluster races, the calls have grown louder from NASCAR fans and drivers alike to increase horsepower to help make the product better on the track.

The issue has been especially apparently at short tracks since the introduction of the Next Gen car. Tracks like Richmond, Martinsville and Bristol have produced some borderline unwatchable races, where passing was nearly impossible and drivers were forced to play follow the leader for hundreds of laps. And it sounds like NASCAR is finally willing to try using horsepower to solve some of their problems – at least, for now, on short tracks.

Over the past couple of years, NASCAR has argued that they can’t increase horsepower because it would be too expensive for the teams at a time when the sport is hoping to attract a new manufacturer (like Honda or Dodge). But over the past few weeks it seems like NASCAR has softened their stance on experimenting with more horsepower, with the change no doubt exacerbated by the reaction to several boring races this year.

And yesterday, NASCAR VP of Competition Elton Sawyer opened the door to increasing horsepower for Cup Series cars:

“It’s on the table. We’re working closely with all the stakeholders in the industry…

As we talked about before, there’s the efficiencies that come with our rules and regulations that we have today, and if you look at engines and sealed engines, there’s a lot that goes into it and it’s a tall mountain to climb, but we’re willing to do that and give our race fans the best product.

So again, behind the scenes right now, there are a lot of conversation going on. How can we do that? Where do we do it? Is it across the board? Obviously that’s not going to be on superspeedways. It’s just a lot to digest. But what I will say it is on the forefront, it is on the table, and something that we’re discussing daily.”

Well that’s encouraging, but as NASCAR fans know, change is often slow to happen in the sport. So even with Sawyer’s comments, it seemed that fans weren’t willing to get their hopes up that any changes would be on the immediate horizon.

On NASCAR’s Hauler Talk podcast today, though, which features NASCAR Managing Director of Racing Communication Mike Forde and Sr. Director of Racing Communications Amanda Ellis, it sounded like the changes could be coming sooner than we think:

“There was a driver advisory council and a team owner council meeting last Wednesday. Horsepower was a topic. I believe it was something we proactively brought up to have a further discussion of improving the short-track package. Obviously the drivers all embraced that topic and requested more and more horsepower.

So that is something that we said, ‘You got it. We’ll look into it.’ We are working with engine builders on that exact topic… and we’ll see if this is something that’s put into place this season.”

First things first, it’s funny that NASCAR’s trying to act like this was their idea by saying it was something they “proactively” brought up with teams, when drivers and teams have been begging for more horsepower for years. But I don’t really care who gets the credit for it if it’s something they can get done to improve the on-track product.

Obviously it sounds like the plan is to start with increasing the horsepower to 750 hp on short tracks, because there’s no doubt NASCAR is most concerned about the product that they’re putting out on short tracks right now.

But any increase is a good start, and hopefully it can lead to improvements – and more horsepower – across the board at some point down the road.The post NASCAR Is Finally Looking At Increasing Horsepower For Cup Series Cars As Early As This Season first appeared on Whiskey Riff.