From the moment a driver first steps into a kart or quarter midget, they are tasked with driving as deep into a corner as humanly possible before having to lift.

Some would argue that is the very definition of racing.

But NASCAR seems poised to alter that definition next season with a drafting package that resembles the one used in the Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race back in May at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Earlier this month, teams were sent a proposal for a rules package that included up to 14 races with reduced horsepower designed to slow the cars down to group them into packs. That dynamic would be achieved by preventing the drivers from having to lift in the corners, producing a much slower version of the races seen four times a year at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.

The reasons to do this were best summed up by veteran David Ragan over the weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.

"We have a racetrack problem, not a race car problem," Ragan said. "These cars are awesome and put on awesome races at Bristol, Darlington, Dover and wore out tracks like Chicago and Atlanta. You can identify the tracks where racing isn't as good, based on the size and the condition of the asphalt."

So why can’t NASCAR simply alter the schedule, removing one race from Kansas, Michigan and Pocono, respectively, giving them to road courses and short tracks instead? Contractual obligation. NASCAR is currently halfway through a five-year sanctioning agreement with tracks that runs through the 2020 season.

But even beyond 2020, two companies in International Speedway Corp. and Speedway Motorsports Inc. still own 31 of the 36 points-paying dates, and lawsuits would surely erupt if NASCAR decided to take dates away without approval.

So, NASCAR is trapped with the same schedule, with the same racetracks that have saturated the Cup and Xfinity Series schedules for over a decade.

And unable to leave these racetracks at present time, NASCAR has all but decided instead to alter the racing product featured on those tracks. Instead of challenging drivers to outdrive the competition in the corners, it will task them to stay wide-open all the way around the track, a form of moderate-speed bumper car racing.

---

Drivers are generally opposed to this direction:

Rookie Bubba Wallace

"You always dream of being at the cup level and getting [to] that superior level of the sport...

"If you had the need for speed and car control, anybody could have drove it. And it shouldn’t be like that. You shouldn’t be able to get up to the big league and, 'Oh I can play with Lebron. I can match him.'"

Veteran Kyle Busch

"People are complaining about it that there is a lack of competition. I don’t know what you expect to be competition – you want the last-place guy to be able to be the first-place guy. There’s always going to be a last-place guy."

Xfinity championship leader Christopher Bell

"We’re all race car drivers; we want to show we’re the best. You can’t (show) that when you’re not pushing the issue of the tire and you’re not grip-limited. Whenever you’re not getting the most out of your race car, it’s just a different style of racing. It almost becomes more of chess racing, so to speak."

Retired NASCAR legend Tony Stewart

"I'll put it like this, I'm not in favor of anything that makes these cars easier to drive. It started with the splitters and the other crap they pulled from sport cars and installed on the Car of Tomorrow and it's gotten worse from there.

"That doesn't mean we don't have good racing right now. We do. We've had some very good races. I just don't want the drivers to mean way less than some engineer in front of his computer. That's not what we're about."

---

Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoff points leader Kevin Harvick won the All-Star Race back in May but that hasn’t been enough to get him totally on board. The 2014 series champion has been very political in his assessment of the drafting package for next season but there are hints that it’s not his first preference.

On his SiriusXM NASCAR radio show, Harvick suggested that moving to a pack racing platform hurt IndyCar in the 2000s, regardless of the closer intervals and weekly photo finishes produced by piling on downforce at the same intermediate tracks that are the bane of NASCAR fans’ current experience.

"Don’t do the same thing they did just because IndyCar was at a peak and things went downhill when things started to split up and rules started to change," Harvick added when asked about the topic at Bristol. "It was just a mess, and it's taken them a long time to get back to where they are today. Those are the types of things that you just don’t want to see."

This is the same Harvick, by the way, that said before the Michigan Cup weekend that he has removed himself from the rules package conversation with the sanctioning body because it has left him feeling "frustrated."

Brad Keselowski, the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion, has warned that such a direction has the potential to encourage the best drivers to eventually take their talents elsewhere.

"I think a lot of the drivers in this sport are in a position where they chose Cup racing because of the demands that the cars take to drive," Keselowski said. "I think there are a lot of fans that come to our races expecting to see the best drivers.

"I think if you put a package like this out there, like we had at the All-Star race on a consistent basis, that the best drivers in the world will no longer go to NASCAR. They will pick a different sport. That won’t happen overnight. It would happen over time and be a tragedy to the sport. They want to go where they can make the biggest difference to their performance, and there is no doubt that the driver makes less of a difference with that rules package."

All of this speaks to a growing contrast that in every professional motorsport in the world, the goal is to be a better driver -- to drive harder into a corner and beat the other driver out of it with greater regularity.

NASCAR Hall of Famer Mark Martin has been a vocal critic of the proposed direction since it was first used in the Xfinity Series at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2017. He called the package a fundamental disrespect to the legends that came before him.

"Wide open racing is for the kids," Martin told Autoweek over the weekend. "To me, it's a poor decision. Wide-open racing is what you do in karts to teach kids how to drive next to each other. This whole thing flabbergasts me.

"There are so many smart people against this. This should be the hardest stock car to drive in the world. This is a disrespect to every great driver that came before this point and what they did to make this sport great. That's just how I feel."

NASCAR employees say this direction is a response to metrics that indicate this is what the majority of their fans want.

Martin takes umbrage with that, too.

"The fans shouldn't dictate the sport," Martin said. "Bill France Jr. and I never got along. I never agreed with him about limiting technology and a whole bunch of other things, but in hindsight, he was right 90 percent of the time and I was wrong. One of those things is that he made the decisions and not the fans. I’m probably going to take grief from fans on this, but I want them to understand I’m not a driver anymore. I’m a fan. As a fan, I want to see a challenge and not something that anyone can do.

"So, with that said, why do we need to do something? I understand trying to make the sport more exciting. But this is changing the sport into something it never was. This isn't what racing is supposed to be."

Team owner Chip Ganassi stopped short of saying the same thing.

"I'm okay with any package as long as it keeps the talented drivers in front of the less talented drivers."

So, will this package accomplish that if drivers are largely wide-open all the way around the track?

"That’s all I’m saying," Ganassi said.

NASCAR says the 2019 package has yet to be finalized and that some of the driver concerns are being addressed -- especially the matter of horsepower levels.

"Discussions with the industry concerning the 2019 rules package continue as planned," a statement provided to Autoweek says. "There’s a clearly defined process, and we’re following that process with the industry. We look forward to sharing information once the rules have been finalized."

Meanwhile, Martin says NASCAR has nearly outgrown mile-and-a-half racing, just like it outgrew Daytona and Talladega in the 1980s. However, he is adamant that the answer isn’t restrictor plates or tapered spacers -- the same sentiment he shared back then too.

Ragan suggested that the proposed rule package would be something akin to a stop gap until some of the bigger tracks’ surfaces start to show their age and until NASCAR could make subtle schedule changes after the 2020 season -- something the sanctioning body has said is very much on the table.

"The biggest challenge we have right now are the big tracks with too much grip," Ragan said. "So, that's Michigan, Kentucky, Pocono, Kansas and Indianapolis.

"It takes time for those tracks to mature, but we don't have time. Our viewership is down. Our attendance is down. We don't have six or eight years for these tracks to mature, or for Goodyear to bring good tires. So, I think the only option we have on these race tracks, and it's not the best option, is a different downforce package until we can go to Iowa, Indy Raceway Park, Nashville, Memphis -- the five-to-seven tracks that are realistic after we eliminate a Michigan, Pocono, and these tracks we go to twice a year."

AJ Allmendinger won the Monster Energy Open to make the All-Star Race and advocated going further that direction because it gives his JTG Daugherty Racing team a greater chance to contend with the traditional powers of NASCAR.

The Cup Series has seen a drastic reduction of downforce over the past half-decade, making the cars harder to drive, but also creating a larger divide between the haves and have-nots.

"You see Stewart-Haas or Gibbs, when they find, let’s call it 30 counts of downforce, it makes a lot bigger deal when you have a lot less downforce compared to when you add more downforce on these race cars," Allmendinger said. "I think this closes the gap up. By itself, it makes the cars easier to drive, but in the race ... that was as hard as I could drive. And that was tough.

"Running wide-open around the fence at Charlotte, every lap I held my breath getting in the corner."

Harvick crew chief Rodney Childers says he reluctantly supports it on the merit of giving fans what they want.

"I understand it when people say it's not real racing, especially compared to what we all grew up driving," Childers said. "All this comes down to the race tracks being too big. If the race tracks weren't too big, we wouldn't have this.

"I think we're going to see the tracks move back towards more short tracks and road courses, but until then, this is the way I look at it. I'm still too young to think about retirement. So, we need to do what's right for the fans. If it turns out to be better for them, I'm fine with it."

Ultimately, everyone agrees that NASCAR has a track problem, or at least a track redundancy problem, but it is seemingly powerless to make changes until at least 2020.

So for now, this is an interim solution.

"It's not ideal, but based on the options we have been dealt, this is the best choice we have, short term," Ragan said. "Long term, we have to get on the right race tracks. I know that's not an easy thing with the contracts and agreements, but for now, this package can work at a lot of places."