At Daytona International Speedway this weekend, there’s a bigger mystery than which drivers will secure the final three positions in the Chase.
The greater unknown is how the NASCAR Cup Series cars will behave with a new, untried competition package that features reductions in both horsepower and downforce.
The engines in the Cup cars will generate roughly 465 horsepower, down approximately 45 horsepower from the car Tyler Reddick drove to victory in the season-opening DAYTONA 500.
The seven-inch spoiler has been trimmed to four inches, thus reducing both downforce and drag.
With no practice and single-car qualifying planned for the weekend, drivers won’t learn what to expect from the new package until they start drafting in Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at the 2.5-mile superspeedway (7:30 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“It might look the exact same; it might be totally different,” said Chase Briscoe, who is sixth in the series standings. “I don’t know. I honestly have no guess. I think we’re still going to see drafting, for sure, but outside of that, I don’t know. (The cars) could be extremely loose. They could be out of control where the field’s spread out a little bit more, but I could also see us going there and it being the exact same.
“I think they’re going to definitely be harder to drive. You’re going to see more guys have issues, probably in the pack, especially off of Turn 4 where you always see issues—we haven’t had that as much with the Next Gen car. You’ll probably see more ‘moments,’ but up front, I don’t know if it’ll change that much.”
Series leader Denny Hamlin thinks the new package will make a difference in race traffic, but the specifics are elusive.
“It’s going to change a lot,” said Hamlin, who will start the Chase as the top seed after clinching that position last Sunday at New Hampshire. “Talking to our aero guys, we think it’s going to be a significant change in traffic.
“I don’t know. I’m going to learn with the rest of them, but it sounds like it’s going to be something we’re going to notice in the car.”
Austin Hill, announced this week as the full-time driver of Richard Childress Racing’s No. 33 Chevrolet next year, has found a reason for optimism as he tries to win his first Cup race.
‘You’re going to have guys that are fully trimmed out for just straight raw speed, and you’re going to have guys that are full downforce and want to have a lot of balance in their car,” Hill said. “We’re not going to know until that green flag drops on Saturday night what’s going to be the right-case scenario.
“The only thing I am a little bit excited about with the Cup package is that from everything that I’ve been told and all of the data that I’ve gotten from GM, it seems to be as close as it can get to the O’Reilly side, and that makes me really excited. So, I’m hoping that’s how it all is. But until the green flag drops, none of us are really going to know.”
If the new package approximates the O’Reilly cars, Hill may have reason to celebrate. He has won four times at Daytona in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, where 11 of his 16 career victories have come on drafting tracks.
- Daytona is about to become NASCAR’s latest science experiment - August 28, 2026
- Ryan Preece faces NASCAR’s strangest Chase math problem - August 28, 2026
- Shane van Gisbergen was supposed to get swallowed by the ovals - August 28, 2026