Last Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway featured one of the best overall races and finishes of the 2026 season, so far. Yet, after the race weekend, race winner Denny Hamlin and several other podcasters and media personalities within the industry called for NASCAR Cup Series events to be shorter.
On this week’s episode of The Final Lap Weekly Podcast, Toby Christie calls out the odd timing of the complaint that NASCAR Cup Series events are too long.
“I feel like everybody is calling for shorter races this week randomly for the wrong reason. We had a weather delay, and it was already scheduled to start late. Those are two things that are not this race’s fault,” Christie explained. “And the other thing I find really funny about it, particularly this week, all of a sudden, it seems like the talking point was handed out before this race even began because when you look at Jeff Gluck’s ‘Was it a good race poll,’ this race scored an 89.5% yes [this was a good race] from the fans.”
Kerry Murphey explains that to cultivate the Gen-Z audience, the sport will have to have shorter races, but Christie fired back that the proposed changes aren’t enough to even pull that off.
“So, now, instead of a three-hour race, you’re going to have a two-and-a-half, two-hour race, right? You’re still not going to catch that Gen-Zer, who has a 10-second attention span, right? So, why not cater to the people who are watching this sport, which are the people, who like to watch a full race? I don’t understand why we keep doing things to chase away those people, and why we keep talking about those things to chase away those people,” Christie seethed.
Christie continued, “I feel like everything, every big media blurb, and sound bite is geared towards doing the opposite of what every hardcore fan in this sport wants, and I’m tired of it.”
In this era, where NASCAR is trying to get fans to once again have a reason to say “hell yeah” when they think about NASCAR, it’s time for the sport to get back to what caused fans to scream the words in the first place.
Gimmick-free stock car racing, contested over 400-to-600-mile events.
Toby and Kerry also talk about their disdain for Stage cautions, which they note have started to take more laps away from green flag racing than legitimate cautions for crashes.
Embedded below is an audio player so you can listen to this week’s entire episode of The Final Lap Weekly Podcast, which also includes Rowdy Dragon’s Fantasy Racing segment, where our fantasy racing savant lends his advice to help you maximize your performance in NASCAR.com’s Fantasy Live game.
