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Carl Edwards says downforce spoiling NASCAR spectacle

Carl Edwards believes the best option for improving NASCAR Sprint Cup racing would be to remove downforce altogether

The Daytona 500 was criticised for offering processional racing, with the majority of the field sticking to the outside line for most of the race, prompting concerns about the spectacle with the new Gen 6 cars.

"I am 100 per cent for taking all of the downforce away from the race cars and just racing mechanical grip and maybe having a couple stagger options for the tyres to help change the balance," Edwards said.

"But that's been my take forever, just because I really enjoy the mechanical grip aspect of the racing.

"If I could wave my magic wand, we'd have cars with no downforce and half the grip that we have and you'd have cars out there running three wide, sideways, fighting for track position and making spring adjustments during pitstops and all that.

"NASCAR wants that same thing, it's just we haven't been able to nail down the parameters of the race car that you'd change to get it. I think they're on their way to doing that, we just have to keep trying."

With restrictor plates having been used at Daytona, and Phoenix being a shorter circuit, Las Vegas this weekend will be the first large oval where the cars run at full power.

Edwards, who won at Phoenix last Sunday, believes that Vegas will demonstrate where the new cars really stand.

"After the Vegas race, you are going to have all the opinions that you want on that subject because that's going to be the first race where we see huge speeds, huge reliance on downforce, and I think that we're really going to know where we stand after that," he said.

"NASCAR [has done] all this testing, they've run cars with tonnes of downforce and a little bit of downforce, and this is the package they came up with.

"So what our job as the drivers is to do, and the teams, our job is to go out and tune these cars the best we can, see how they work, and then NASCAR told us that after Vegas, we would kind of take a look at where we stand and there still might be more changes coming.

"I think it's a moving target, and it will really be up to all to us to decide what we want."

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