“Maybe They Wouldn’t Cry as Much”- Livid Mark Martin Sounds Off on NASCAR’s Next-Gen Abomination With Fiery Rant

Another day, another Next-Gen bashing. NASCAR probably dug its own grave in 2022, as waves of criticism have not ceased since. People have scrutinized the Cup Series car for various reasons—safety issues, single-source parts to raise parity on racetracks, and the difficulty of passing due to low horsepower. But some have simply pointed out that they dislike the car’s look.

Veteran driver Mark Martin is one of them and has jumped aboard a fresh round of Next Gen criticism. The 40-time Cup Series winner has witnessed the evolution of NASCAR Cup cars and is particularly disappointed with the current one. He vehemently calls for a fashion revolution.

NASCAR gets rapped yet again

In 2020, the sport experimented with the Cup car’s number placement. The All-Star Race is the testing ground for all of NASCAR’s quirks, just as in 2024, Goodyear tested its tires. But as the tire experiment was a terrible failure, moving car numbers from the middle of the door to the rear quarter panel also failed to attract public approval. Similarly, the Next Gen car featured an evolved rear bumper—one that compromised driver safety. For example, Kurt Busch suffered a concussion after a rear impact on his Next Gen car.

However, Mark Martin chose to focus on the basic look of the car. In a recent interview, the NASCAR Hall of Famer was aggressively clear about his demands, starting with the number placement. “Move the numbers to the middle of the door. I don’t care who likes it, or who don’t like it…It’s ugly! It doesn’t look like a race car. It looks stupid.” NASCAR’s objective was to make space for sponsorship, but Martin would have none of that. “The sponsors were there…and they’re still there on the Xfinity cars, still there on ARCA cars…It doesn’t make that much difference. They spoiled them by giving’em what they gave. Put the number back where it’s supposed to be.” 

This is going to piss a few people off but 🤷🏼 pic.twitter.com/PuFxN8MGku

— Mark Martin (@markmartin) September 23, 2024

Then Mark Martin had some more inputs: “Get rid of the damn underbody – they don’t need that stuff.” The narrow bumper also annoyed him, as he compared the Cup cars with its subsidiaries. He fiercely declared: “Then, widen the back bumper out some…It looks stupid – doesn’t look like a race car. ARCA cars…Xfinity cars look like race cars…Too narrow, sucks in behind the tires. And by the way, that would make the drivers drive a little bit better if they widen that out. Then when they take the downforce off, maybe they wouldn’t cry as much about it.”

However, even before the Next Gen car was a thing of reality, NASCAR’s back bumpers were not so popular.

Bumper trouble was a big thing

The early 2000s marked a time when NASCAR revolutionized safety in the sport, but it also marked a time of huge risks and high-impact crashes. Many of them were caused by rubbing bumpers—when a driver uses their car to move an opponent out of the way at dangerously high speeds. Dale Earnhardt was an expert at this but tragically lost his life in the 2001 Daytona 500 race. Tracks like Bristol Motor Speedway posed even greater risks. In 2005, Jimmie Johnson bumped Jeff Burton, who narrowly escaped neck injury when he was hit head-on by Kurt Busch soon after.

These bumper accidents occurred well before the Next Gen car’s introduction, but Jeff Burton pointed out the track’s notoriety as a factor: “If you want to talk about how close the cars are, how competitive they are, put 43 cars at Bristol, separate them by three-tenths of a second, you’re going to have wrecks.” He also bashed inexperienced drivers (although Jimmie Johnson went on to become a 7-time Cup champion) as the cause. “At the end of the day, what we do is competitive, and what we do is exciting to watch, and what we do borders on craziness, and that’s why it’s fun to watch.”

Yet that fun characteristic has evaporated with the Next Gen car’s arrival. Let us see if NASCAR moves towards some positive changes to appease fuming veterans and fans.