Criticism

Fans of other racing series, such as Formula One, often have low opinions of the series and its fans. They regard the drivers, cars, and fans as interesting relics of less sophisticated times, with the restrictive regulations removing any possibility for technical innovation. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that stock car racing is less technically sophisticated than many other forms of motorsport, the relative equality of the machinery makes the racing closer and results much more of a test of driver and pit crew ability than more technically-oriented motor racing series that are often decided in wind tunnels and on CAD terminals well before any actual racing takes place.

Whilst the challenges of driving and setting up the cars around near-identical banked ovals are probably fewer than learning varied road circuits, the aerodynamic factors giving advantages to a tactically-savvy driver lead to interesting contests which bear some resemblance to some forms of track cycling, particularly at large oval superspeedway tracks such as Daytona and Talladega.

In particular, the aerodynamics ensure that cars that are following each other both have less drag than either car alone. Therefore it is in the drivers' interests to cooperate in forming chains of cars with low drag. Yet a driver must at some point end cooperation in order to win the race. The combination of cooperation and non-cooperations leads to some very sophisticated strategic decision making.

It should also be noted that the tracks, at least those used by NASCAR, are not identical, with some being oval, some being tri-ovals, one being essentially triangular, and two of them in fact being road courses that are also used by road racing series. At many of these tracks, the drafting tactics described above play little factor. More so, at the grassroots level, most stock car races take place at short tracks, where these aerodynamic effects are almost negligible.