A hot topic among NASCAR teams and fans in recent seasons has been the amount of horsepower in the engines powering the Cup Series cars. Roush-Yates Engines has now weighed in and provided the best answer yet.
Doug Yates, CEO of the company powering Ford Performance teams, appeared on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio this week and said power is important. However, he noted that the industry needs to be careful based on costs.
"If we were to increase the power from 670 horsepower to about 750 horsepower, that probably wouldn't be much of a change for us today," Yates said.
"But, to go back to those 900 horsepower engines, that would be quite the project, and it would definitely decrease the life of the engine."
How did NASCAR account for increased horsepower in years past? As Yates explained, the teams would qualify with one engine. They would then put in another engine for practice. They would use a third engine for the race.
The engine programs in this era, according to Yates, were about $4.5 million per car. The situation changed when NASCAR began working toward "multi-race engines" and lowering the horsepower numbers.
Yates is well aware that this is not simply a situation where NASCAR can say, "Increase the horsepower" before the next short track race. NASCAR Senior VP of Racing Development John Probst has to account for the costs of development and decreased engine life.
However, Yates indicated that he would like NASCAR to remain open-minded as it tries to deliver a better product to the racing fans.
"Not an easy job, but I would like to see them be open-minded and try some things," Yates added. "And it'd be nice to see what that looked like, especially on short tracks."
Will NASCAR make any horsepower changes in the near future?
That answer remains unknown, but NASCAR SVP of Competition Elton Sawyer said after Kyle Larson's dominant win at Bristol Motor Speedway that NASCAR "would not sleep" on the issue of short track racing.
Sawyer said that NASCAR would continue to examine its product while meeting with drivers, teams, Goodyear, and the people working at the R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina. It would look at tire falloff and other factors that play a role in the quality of the on-track product.
"We're all in this together. We all want the same thing," Sawyer said in April. "We want the best product, the best racing on the race track. If someone has an idea, we're all ears."