- NASCAR will raise Cup Series horsepower to 750 for road courses and ovals under 1.5 miles next season.
- Officials say the change aims to improve racing, reward driver skill, and encourage tire management.
- The increase comes after months of consultation with engine builders, teams, and manufacturers.
NASCAR will increase the target horsepower for its Cup Series cars to 750 at road courses and short ovals beginning in 2026, officials confirmed this week.
The move, announced by NASCAR president Steve O’Donnell on The Dale Jr. Download podcast, marks a significant jump from the current 670-horsepower setup used across the series. The decision follows growing demand from drivers, teams, and fans for more powerful cars that place a greater emphasis on throttle control and racecraft.
“I would say, like any other change that we are considering to the cars, we listen to the fans a lot,” said John Probst, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer. “We listen to the drivers. We have stakeholders in the broadcast, OEM (manufacturers) and team competition and team business folks, so there’s always no shortage of feedback that we get. Our fans are very passionate, they provide very candid feedback, so that all is very important to us.”
Tracks adopting the 750-horsepower setup include:
• Road courses: Circuit of The Americas, Watkins Glen, San Diego, Sonoma, Charlotte Roval
• Ovals: Bowman Gray Stadium, Phoenix, Darlington, Martinsville, Bristol, Dover, Nashville, North Wilkesboro, Iowa, Richmond, New Hampshire, World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway
Officials said a full competition update for 2026 will be released during the offseason. The announcement continues NASCAR’s effort to fine-tune the Next Gen platform, introduced in 2022, with an eye toward more compelling racing.
“I am definitely Team Horsepower,” said RFK Racing driver and co-owner Brad Keselowski, who hinted at the upcoming change two weeks ago on the Stacking Pennies podcast.
Probst said NASCAR will monitor early results closely. “That gives us an opportunity to sample some of the short tracks, road courses early in the season, get a look at the engines after we’ve raced them at the new power level,” he said. “If that all looks good, I would not rule out looking at increasing that horsepower at the mile and a halfs and above. It’s just something that we kind of want to crawl, walk, run with this, and so this is the start, looking at the increased power at the short tracks. If that looks well, and I’m not committing to this today, but we will consider expanding the use of that as we go forward.
“Now, some of the best racing we have right now is at our intermediate tracks, so it’s a scenario we’ll tread very lightly to make sure that we don’t upset something. It is a package. It’s the downforce, it’s the drag, it’s the power, it’s the tire wear, all together that’s creating those good shows. So don’t want to just change one for the sake of changing it and then find out later that we did something bad there and hurt the on-track product. So we’ll proceed with caution.”
Roush Yates Engines CEO Doug Yates also weighed in, saying that 750 horsepower strikes the right balance between performance and reliability. “If we were to increase the power from 670 horsepower to about 750 horsepower, that probably wouldn’t be much of a change for us today,” Yates said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio in April. “But to go back to those 900-horsepower engines, that would be quite the project and would definitely decrease the life of the engine.”
Probst explained that the updated configuration would use a larger tapered spacer to increase airflow and power, without requiring major engine redesigns. “Once you go above that, you start crossing into very short-mileage engines, because you’re actually pushing them harder and harder. A lot of inefficiencies come in real quick,” he said.
He added that officials debated implementing the change sooner but opted to wait for further durability testing. “We had a lot of conversations around that,” Probst said. “We wanted more time to test the package’s durability with load testing on engine dynamometers.”
O’Donnell said that input from automakers continues to guide NASCAR’s decision-making process. “It’s not as simple as just upping the horsepower,” he said. “You better be ready for all your OEs to be on board. It better make sense for any potential new OEM and technology. It’s not just a short-term answer.”
Probst confirmed those discussions are ongoing. “I think that the interest from the OEMs in NASCAR right now continues to be very high,” he said. “We have ongoing discussions with multiple OEMs right now. I don’t want to get into specifics of where particular OEMs would be with respect to horsepower, but we regularly talk with our existing OEMs, listen to potential new OEMs, and are always trying to thread the needle of broadening our OEM base and maintaining the ones we’ve got. So it’s not trivial, but it is one that’s ongoing.”
