Last week, NASCAR released the full 2026 schedule. Freddie Kraft and Tommy Baldwin had some issues with the schedule, particularly when it came to the Truck Series.
Kraft, spotter for Bubba Wallace, noticed that of the 25 races on the schedule, five are scheduled to take place on road courses. He believes that’s entirely too many, he said on Monday’s “Door Bumper Clear” podcast. Kraft called for more short tracks in the future.
“The one thing that drove me insane about looking at this schedule is the number of road courses — not so much for the Cup Series — but the Truck and Xfinity. Trucks are running more f*cking road courses than they are short tracks. We have a problem here,” Kraft said. “… The Trucks run four short tracks, and five road courses. It was two or three years ago the trucks didn’t run a road course race, and now they’ve got five of them.
“The Truck Series should be on short tracks every week, in my opinion, and they should run Daytona and Charlotte once. But now you’re getting so far away from what the grassroots of what we’ve done, especially with that entry level — why do these guys run so many road courses? … It’s like 20 percent of the schedule is road courses.”
NASCAR 2026 schedule draws mixed reviews from DBC crew
Along with Watkins Glen, Lime Rock and the Charlotte Roval, two street courses were added to the 2026 schedule: St. Petersburg and San Diego — both of which are street courses. Baldwin, Rick Ware Racing’s competition director, isn’t happy to see NASCAR getting further away from its roots.
He said that the Truck Series was “built on short tracks.” Now, it’s moving in a direction he doesn’t like.
“I’m pretty disappointed in that schedule, to be honest with you,” Baldwin said. “From one point I am, but I feel that the Trucks are closer to the Cup cars, so with getting more experience running the road courses and the speedways and stuff, it will help in the Cup Series, but that’s two to three years down the road. That division was built on our short tracks. Our Cup Series was built on racetracks being at those dates that we’ve always had. Things just keep getting shuffled and moved around.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of meetings in my lifetime with NASCAR, but I wish I could sit down and listen to the thought process on what they think with this. Why do they think it’s better? … They need to get back to the roots a little bit of bringing back some of these short tracks that they originally started at. Kind of like we’re doing with Cup — North Wilkesboro, Bowman Gray — the Trucks needs to start doing that a little bit.”