Maybe we should start by getting this one out of the way first…
“NASCAR has made it very clear that the Cup Series, as we know today, is going to be the Cup Series for a long time.”
Those are the words of David Ragan, the main development driver of NASCAR’s electric vehicle project that it’s working on with electric engineering company ABB, speaking to RACER at the Miami E-Prix where the car made its latest public appearance.
Putting the words “NASCAR” and “electric” in the same sentence is often a pretext for an angry mob to form, but it needn’t be. If an electric ruleset is in NASCAR’s future, it won’t be taking the place of what we have now.
If you’ve had your sigh of relief and are still open to learning more, then read on.
NASCAR first unveiled its EV prototype at last year’s Chicago street race. Above all else, it was a technological showcase, sharing what an electric NASCAR stock car could look like. Almost a year on, that remains the case, with ABB only going as far as to say, “Even though NASCAR has not made a commitment to an electric racing series, the ABB NASCAR Electrification Innovation Partnership will explore high-performance electric racing and create strategic opportunities for electrification in the sport, including race vehicles, electrification infrastructure, and energy education.”
But with this exploration, it’s likely that an electric NASCAR series will arrive sooner or later. And while it might appear to go against the very ground-shaking ethos of stock car racing, Ragan suggests it’s not a million miles away from what we’ve seen the sport do before.
“NASCAR has always been on the leading edge of technology, of speed and safety,” he says. “75 years ago, they were racing cars that were literally the family daily driver they would bring to the track and race and then drive home. And as that evolved, teams learned how to build a better car, a faster car, more efficient car, and that went hand in hand with what the OEMs were selling to their customers.
“NASCAR found that that model worked really well. It’s become the biggest sport in North America and it has been for a long time. I think this is no different.”
“It’s a double-edged sword, because the NASCAR fan is a very traditional fan; but you think about how the evolution of our car has come, there was a point where a NASCAR race car just had a shoulder belt, had very limited roll bars, had a carburetor and had drum brakes probably at one time. Now our Next Gen race car has electronic fuel ignition, it’s a very safe car, a five-speed sequential gearbox. It has evolved to mirror what the automotive industry is selling to their customers and I think this is just the next evolution.”
It would be easy to assume Ragan is saying all this because he’s paid to — nobody has driven the NASCAR ABB EV prototype more than he has, and with ABB and NASCAR emblems embroidered on his shirt, it’s easy to assume which camp he’s in. But this is a guy who made his name racing big V8s and comes from a family with a rich history in American stock car racing.
“As a student of the sport, a guy that has made a career in motorsport for 20 years — my family has been involved in motorsport since NASCAR wasn’t even formed,” he says. “My grandfather owned a car that raced on the Daytona Beach road course before NASCAR was even NASCAR. I’ve got close ties to the sport, and the sport does mean something to me and my family, so I would love to see an EV division in NASCAR.
“A lot of people forget NASCAR is a big motorsports umbrella that is involved in a lot of different types of racing. It’s not just the Cup Series — Cup is the pinnacle of NASCAR holdings, but you’ve got the ARCA Menards series, you’ve got the IMSA series, obviously the Truck Series and the Xfinity Series, local short track racing. NASCAR even has partnership with the quarter midget and USAC series that six-year-old kids are out there racing, so I think this would complement NASCAR’s motorsports umbrella here in North America.
“Look, I’m as a traditionalist as they come,” he continues. “I still have some 1950s and 1960s cars sitting in my garage that leak oil and leak air out of the tires, that are as old school as they come, but I embrace this too. I love it.
“In the 1970s when electronic fuel ignition was becoming more popular, I’m sure there were some old school people who thought, ‘I don’t want that, I want a Holley carburetor on my engine.’ Things just evolve, and we can have both. It’s not an either or.”
Adding to NASCAR’s portfolio could bring other benefits beyond pure expansion, too. We’ve all had as many hot meals as we’ve had conversations about the elusive fourth manufacturer, and while an EV series won’t bring that to Cup or Xfinity, it could bring one to the organization as a whole.
“Any motorsport is more healthy when more manufacturers are involved, whether it’s Formula 1 or IMSA,” Ragan says. “Big races around the globe always talk about how many manufacturers are involved, and even walking around the paddock here and the Formula E race, you see some pretty impressive manufacturers that are involved in this series, from Jaguar to Nissan, Maserati, McLaren.
“NASCAR would love to have a couple more manufacturers, because I know how much Ford loves motorsport, and how the Ford family, Ford employees and the customers love to see their cars winning on the weekends.
“You could bring some new fans, new manufacturers and new partners — I mean, a company like ABB would not be here if it wasn’t for this EV car. So I think those are all positives.”
And while a vocal portion of the current fan base might be dismissive of EVs racing, the new fans that could be attracted won’t be, Ragan suggests.
“As the consumers start to buy more EVs, I think NASCAR sees a demand that the consumers want to see that car racing on the racetrack,” Ragan says. “And it is still a stock car series. The U.S. is a little behind some of the European countries and some of the other parts of the world that have made that EV shift a little quicker — it’s been a little slower here in North America, but I see manufacturers coming out with new models and some pretty cars that they plan on selling a lot of in the future. So it’s only appropriate that NASCAR learns what that might look like to help the manufacturers out. NASCAR certainly couldn’t do any kind of a series if it wasn’t for the manufacturer support. You’ve got to have manufacturer support that says, ‘Hey, we want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars supporting our race teams so we can market to our customers and show them how our cars perform.’
“There are more EVs that are driven to NASCAR races today than there were five years ago, and I would think in five more years, there’s going to be a lot more. So I think it’s just a matter of time.”
Ultimately, regardless of noise or smell, racing is still racing — it’s a point that is often forgotten, and one that Ragan is keen to stress.
“Motorsport fans want to see good racing, they want to see the guy they’re pulling for win, and the guy they don’t like, lose,” he says. “You could still do this with an EV. You’ll always have the overdramatic fans that just like to hear themselves complain. But I bet they’re doing that from a smartphone, sitting in their car with heated and cooled seats. It’s not like they’re going back to the 1950s.”
Admittedly, it seems like a whole new world. That means it’s only natural that fans used to one thing will find it hard to accept, but for the drivers, the differences might not be too massive.
“It is more comparable than I thought,” Ragan admits. “When I looked at it I thought, ‘Man, this thing’s going to be different, it’s going to feel different,’ but really, when you get over not hearing the engine noise — and oftentimes drivers, they drive off of that sound of the engine and how the RPMs are changing and the deceleration — I feel like you can drive this really, really hard. all-wheel drive, it has a lot of traction off the corner, the braking capabilities are incredible with the regen and the mechanical brakes. It has a lot of adjustability.
“We didn’t really even get into a lot of shocks and springs and setup stuff — you can change how the car handles with just some of the power adjustment, the torque curve and the regen adjustability. So I enjoyed having that, because it does make it more important for the driver to get feedback on what he needs to go faster.
“Mid-corner, you really can’t tell the little bit of additional weight. I felt like it hooked up pretty well. Goodyear made a special tire for this car to handle the extra load and extra weight. I feel like they did a good job.
“But we’ve only scratched the surface on what the potential could be. When you get 15 of them with different drivers, different team engineers, they really can work through the small issues pretty fast.”
An all-electric NASCAR series remains a prospect for the mid- to long-term future, but in the meantime, Ragan says a different type of electrification could be brought into stock car racing.
“The top divisions of motorsports all around the world have some form of electrification,” Ragan says. “Formula 1, IndyCar has their new hybrid system, the cars that are going to win the Daytona 24 Hours, 24 Hours of Le Mans all have some type of electrification, and I believe that NASCAR needs to go that direction at some point.
“I don’t know how they do that — with some type of energy harness and a boost function, while still having the ICE engine under the hood — but every other major motorsport around the globe has already done it, and it’s about time, and I challenge NASCAR to look at that and work in that direction.”
