As it stands, the 2026 NASCAR season kicked into high gear three weeks ago, and a recurring topic of conversation keeps rearing its ugly head each race weekend.
That topic happens to be the lack of driver experience from some of the newest entries into the sport.
From YouTube and social media sensation Garrett “Cleetus McFarland” Mitchell making his first Truck start at Daytona with O’Reilly Auto Parts Series starts on the horizon to young dirt phenom Corey Day who is running full-time in NORAPS this year for the legendary Rick Hendrick after just a handful of starts over the past year and change. Both these drivers have had their struggles.
Mitchell qualified well at Daytona, starting 12th in the 37-Truck field. Unfortunately, it all came undone in the first handful of laps when an overcorrection on the exit of turn 4 would end his Niece Motorsports effort on sixth lap of a 100-lap event.
Day has not had a race without incident so far this year as he struggles with the adjustment from the smaller dirt cars to the bulky and sometimes unwieldy stock cars. This remains a common issue as many drivers over the past two decades faced similar struggles with varying degrees of success.
Why was there such a stark change?
After the 2014 season, NASCAR eliminated private testing for teams entirely. NASCAR implemented this policy largely as a cost-saving measure for teams; however, its ramifications are being felt across the lower tiers of racing.
Drivers from other disciplines as well as drivers with minimal experience exacerbate this issue because they lack the requisite stock-car pedigree to enter a top-three series event
The lack of track time costs not only the drivers in these cars but also those around them being collected as collateral damage, all for the sake of “education” and “maturity”.
O’Reilly stalwart Ryan Sieg stands out because — just over a week ago at the time of writing — he found himself firewall deep in the wall in Atlanta off of the nose of Day’s Chevy, ending his hometown race early in a car before reaching the fifth lap.
Since Sieg is an owner-driver, the veteran racer doesn’t have the sponsor backing that Day has to replace wrecked cars, so the damage done gets multiplied exorbitantly by incidents like this.
I’m here to offer a solution to at least put better guardrails in place to help these less-experienced racers get accustomed to stock cars and how they react to not only being on a track but racing around other cars.
It would take a collaborative effort between NASCAR and the OEMs to make it happen, but I believe it would be a benefit to not only these drivers but the rest of the field and the racing product as a whole.
Something I’ve tentatively coined “The NASCAR Driving Academy”
First, NASCAR and the OEMs would put together 12-16 “Academy cars” per series: four cars per OEM with room to expand should Stellantis (Dodge/Ram) continue to work its way up the ladder.
This saves money by paying the larger teams to build these cars using outdated parts and rebuilt engines that would otherwise be discarded or sold to be rebuilt anyway.
Once the “fleet” is assembled, the OEMs would each be tasked with designating a “trainer” for each series. This driver would be experienced in their representative series, with the position evolving over time as drivers retire and move up the series ranks themselves.
Once the table is set, the sanctioning body would require these prospective drivers to do at least four of these tests before they could be approved to race.
These four tests include one test at each of the representative track types: superspeedway, intermediate, short track, and road course.
These trials would first consist of a “follow test” in which the trainees take turns following their trainers around the track at a gradually increasing rate of speed.
The trainers and trainees would have linked radios, so the trainer could explain in real time what to expect as they learn how their car reacts to the track without the fear of wrecking at speed.
After the follow test is complete, they would do the traditional single-car test that includes live pit stop practice to apply what they have just learned.
Following that would be the penultimate test, which would consist of all four OEM cars/Trucks running together to work on how to set up and make passes on their trainer and each other.
The final test would be bringing all the groups together to run a “simulated race” which would consist of going the distance on a fuel run in the pack to understand how the car changes under race conditions as well as a live pit stop to simulate enough hallmarks of the real thing to give these drivers a baseline to compete on race day.
Once the trainees have completed each “course” (being the 4 different tests on each track type), the graduated trainees would be presented with their NASCAR license and become graduates of “The NASCAR Academy”.
I firmly believe that the initial investment into this will pay dividends in cost savings to the teams on race weekends as incidents like the ones we’ve seen this year would be less likely to happen if these drivers could just get more seat time and applicable experience.
Simulators remain a great tool for drivers to get an idea about how to get a handle on their car, but it clearly doesn’t replace the benefits of seat time in a real race car that these drivers will be handling on race weekends. This is an experience that can’t be replicated in a sim alone.
Of course, the biggest question behind doing this — besides costs — is logistics; luckily, the logistics are baked right into other cost-saving moves already made by NASCAR.
In recent years, NASCAR limited the amount of backup cars that multi-car teams can bring in an effort to save the teams money.
While doing this, the haulers themselves failed to shrink with the load, so a lot of these bigger operations drive from track-to-track with enough space for an extra race car in a few haulers.
I suggest we utilize this space to transport these “Academy Cars” to and from the tracks chosen for testing. Teams already stay a day after Cup events for tire tests for Goodyear, so this could be done in a similar fashion.
Thus, the only things that would need to be supplied are the fuel and tires.
Goodyear supplies all tire tests, meaning NASCAR could use the same parameters they use for those and bake the logistics in with minimal overall cost compared to having these tests on a standalone basis.
As far as potential damage to the “Academy Cars” goes, NASCAR simply has to invest the money into the folks that will fix and prepare these cars. This whole effort would be an investment by the sport that could lead to its long-term benefit.
It requires a bit of time, money, and effort from all parties involved to make it happen.
NASCAR could do what FELD Entertainment does with Monster Jam where NASCAR hires a group of recent tech-school graduates or those soon-to-be graduates to get hands on training on cars they went to school to work on without consequences or pressure impacting results.
This training sets these graduates or soon-to-be graduates up for success as a proving ground to test and hone their skills before going and working for the race teams themselves.
This would obviously be a huge initial undertaking and would take quite a bit of effort to get the proverbial ball rolling.
However, I firmly believe that these efforts would greatly improve not only the success of these newer drivers with minimal to no stock car experience but the overall quality of the racing and lower the frequency of wrecks across all three national series.
(Top Photo Credit: The Daytona Beach News-Journal)
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