Jared Thomas

I proposed to SO and others that we do this: Keep the current car, but made with new parts from NASCAR specified companies. The general concept of a NASCAR cup car is a mid 1960s Chevrolet Chevelle front clip and a mid 1960s pickup truck suspension in the rear. NASCAR teams spent decades refining this technology. Keep all of the general concepts and theories. Similar mounting points and such, all parts made by a Nascar mandated manufacturer or two or three. Trailing arms, upper and lower control arms, spindles. You name it. Have designated companies produce it all. We could phase these parts in over the next 5 years and continue to race into the future a car we all have an extremely deep connection to. The truck series could use these same parts. They could trickle down to ARCA, Late Model Stock. There is enough racing going on between all levels of "stock car racing" that this could be lucrative to the specified manufacturers of said parts. It would be cost affective toward teams. It would create a pipeline of parts trickling down toward the grassroots levels of racing as they too are concerned over current parts and current and future scarcity. This is doable and maintains a key identifiable element to our industry. My fear is that the industry needs to create a trickle down model for the current Cup Next Gen car. Hubs, front and rear suspension, drivetrain. All these mileaged parts used to have a place to go and compete until the Next Gen was introduced. So there may be some who feel it's common sense for the other 2 national series to adopt literal framework to utilize these pieces. No doubt Cup teams would like to have a marketplace for these parts. Time will tell but I have a feeling it'll be really challenging to convince the league to keep the O'Reilly vehicle on its current architecture long term.