The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series (AKA: NOAPS) is on fire this season. The racing is consistently excellent and the TV ratings continue to grow following its move to the CW last season.
Drivers and fans love the cars, but they’ve been racing for a long time. The basic chassis design is more than 15 years old and the last major update came in 2019.
There’s some pressure to fully redesign them to keep pace with the all-new Cup Series cars that launched in 2022 and NASCAR is already looking at its options, which go beyond using hand-me-down cars from the Cup Series.
NASCAR EVP and Chief Racing Development Officer John Probst recently spoke to Sports Business Journal and said that a switch to crossover utility vehicle-style bodies, like the ones used the experimental electric cars NASCAR debuted in 2024, is under consideration.
“I’m not sitting here saying today we’re breaking news it’s going to CUV, but these are the things that are on the roadmap to consider, so you’d have a Truck, a CUV and a Cup, that’s three very different bodies that are relevant to our OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] today to create that brand identity for each series.”
The electric prototypes are based on the same chassis as the Cup Series cars, which was engineered to accommodate a variety of bodies and powertrains. NASCAR has also continued to research hydrogen combustion as a possible way to go zero carbon emissions in the future, while continuing to use V8 engines.
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“There is certainly a needle to be threaded there along the line of entertainment and sport, and maybe you can even go beyond sport and just say pure engineering,” Probst said. “I think for us, I feel like we don’t need to be on the absolute bleeding edge of powertrain technology to be relevant to our OEMs and also be entertaining to our fans.”
Probst also revealed that the series is having ongoing discussions with potential new manufacturers, including one that called “out of the blue” just before the interview took place.
“There’s a lot of energy in that same direction toward a Cup entry hopefully very soon. There’s some other names that we have been chasing that have come back and are gaining energy again.”
Any major changes to the NOAPS or any other series would still be years away, as the transition to a new chassis would require a substantial engineering and manufacturing effort, but it and the Cup Series may be seeing a least one new car body as soon as next year.
Chevrolet has reportedly shown a new Camaro to its NASCAR teams that’s based on an all-new production car that is slated to go on sale late next year. The vehicle will share its chassis with the redesigned Cadillac CT5, as did the previous generation Camaro that was discontinued in 2023.
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Chevrolet was allowed to update its Cup Series car body for 2026 in order to keep pace with Ford and Toyota, which introduced new designs in 2024, and created a Carbon Performance Package body kit for existing Camaros to give it production relevance.
