What they’re saying about newly unveiled Next Gen cars

NASCAR revealed what the Next Gen cars will look like for the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season Wednesday in Charlotte, North Carolina. See what drivers and representatives from the sanctioning body, Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota had to say after the big unveil.

"When I look at this race car, it looks exactly like the race car that I can potentially buy on Monday. Obviously the win on Sunday portion is important, so getting in Victory Lane for these guys is important for Chevy, Toyota and Ford, but I think absolutely getting back to our roots, getting back to kind of putting the 'stock' back in stock car will help sell vehicles on Monday. That's certainly what our expectation is." - Steve Phelps, president of NASCAR

"We have this history, all this time with this current car that we consider things to be normal. That might not apply here. I think that's what's going to be really challenging for the drivers. Just me looking at it ahead to next year, you might have to reinvent yourself. There might be things and habits that I do today right now that work, and you can get away with, that might not be an option next season. I think it's going to be tough, but I think the good guys will figure it out, as I think they always do and have over the years." - Chase Elliott, driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

"What I do know is we spent decades, multiple decades, of trying all types of different aero packages, drag level, trying to improve. Eventually you get to a point where a lot of it was how close the cars run to the ground, really getting some airflow under the car. As you start looking at it, we were like, 'All right, we got to kind of start over.' Really gave us an opportunity. What are important things that we feel like are ingredients? Until the cake fully gets baked, as Chase (Elliott) said, in traffic we want to see it, those types of things, we can only hope and think the car has a lot of potential. It's going to take time to learn about it. ... First couple years are going to be exciting to see who rises to the top. Ultimately, the good teams and drivers will always come out on top." - Eric Warren, director of NASCAR programs for GM

"The coolest part, all the other generations of the NASCAR race cars that have been released over the years, I've been around long enough to see a lot of them, it's like it looks cool, more like the car on the street. We've been saying this for years. This time it actually looks like it. We did a video shoot in Hickory, North Carolina. It had the race car right next to it, parked side by side. That's it, finally we got it. It looked like a GT 500. It looked mean, aggressive; the grille looked right. It looks like you can drive it down the road. The cops might pull you over, but it has the same look. To that point I say, 'Finally.'" - Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford

"Relevancy is important for us. I think it's important for the racing fans, for our customers. We wanted to make it look like the Mustang, but also the architecture underneath. It is a true story of relevance from an engineering perspective and from a styling perspective so that the racing fan can see a Mustang racing on track that will look like what they can put into their driveway or garage." - Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance

"We as drivers, the more things become similar on the race track, the more it comes in our hands to make the difference. We have to identify as drivers where can we be better, where do we need to up our game to be competitive. I know enough to know what I don't know. What I don't know is aerodynamics, schematics, all that stuff of race cars. I understand my job as a race-car driver is to give this team and Toyota all the information that I can early on to let them go out there and make adjustments to make my car faster. I think we have a lot of smart people within 23XI, Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota to make this product a winning race car very soon." - Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

"Hundreds of hours in the wind tunnel is really what it amounted to. At the very beginning of this journey, when we were trying to draw lines around what we wanted with Next Gen, one of the things that all three OEMs agreed on is more styling relevancy. We wanted to get away from that big, boxy greenhouse. To do that we had to accept the challenge that we're going to have cars that aren't as neatly in that aero box that we've been used to over the years. Once we agreed to that parameter, then we went to work collaboratively with our fellow OEMs. ... Certainly NASCAR is confident that we're going to have reasonable parity. We know we have great styling, so that's all good." - David Wilson, president of Toyota Racing Development

"It won't be easy. It's going to be more difficult to drive, especially as you get into the corners. But that's something that we're encouraged by. We want to put more of this back in the drivers' hands, so we'll judge that, especially on the intermediate tracks, what are drivers able to do for each and every lap, pulling up on cars and that ability to pass and not be stalled out. That's something we're really going to focus in on as we go throughout the '22 season." - Steve O'Donnell, executive vice president and chief racing development officer for NASCAR

"We went through countless iterations of the car, simulating all these different events that we've seen over the years just to evaluate how the cars performed. When you lean on a lot of our OEMs' experience in that world as well as we have a really in-depth database of our own, over 2,500 events now that we compare the cars to, I think that from a tool perspective, we're able to validate sort of as we go, and as all of the little bits and pieces validate themselves as we go through the design process, there really is an expectation for no surprises out the back end when we finally do the full entire car crash in June." - John Probst, senior vice president of racing innovation for NASCAR