Did I Miss A Thread On The Next Gen NASCAR Car?

pirate said:

In reply to stafford1500 :

It seems every time something about NASCAR is posted here it brings out the haters. The fact is NASCAR has the biggest car fields and most competitive racing of all the professional series. The fields for Indy, Formula One are half of NASCAR plus in those series probably there is less then a half dozen cars that are competitive and have a chance to win. NASCAR is also listening to the fans about the type of things they want to see and experience. Reading some of the comments it's clear some of the posters know little about the series. If you don't like NASCAR it's simple turn the channel. 

What haters have there been in this thread? I've been mostly seeing a discussion of the technology.

By the way, you shouldn't lump Indycar in with F1. It's much more wide open and there are way more than a half dozen cars with a chance to win.

Now that these cars may have some brakes that match their weight, maybe NASCAR could see fit to use the whole track at the Glen..........please, please, pretty please? Aside from not seeing lug nuts flying all over the pit box, I expect stops to look the same, the oval races will be much the same, the colour and spectacle will remain, BUT the road course racing should get a bit better with a better balanced car ,easier shifting and better brakes. I expect the whole show should get better. We shall see.

DeadSkunk (Warren) said:

Now that these cars may have some brakes that match their weight, maybe NASCAR could see fit to use the whole track at the Glen..........please, please, pretty please? Aside from not seeing lug nuts flying all over the pit box, I expect stops to look the same, the oval races will be much the same, the colour and spectacle will remain, BUT the road course racing should get a bit better with a better balanced car ,easier shifting and better brakes. I expect the whole show should get better. We shall see.

Pretty sure it's not the brakes why nascar hasn't run the full course at the Glen rather then just allowing more laps. They are running at road america this year so that should be harder on brakes.

I find it amusing that people are calling ohv obsolete. 2 of the 3 manufacturers in nascar are building production street v8s with ohv. And a third manufacturer previously in the series does aswell.

Like a lot of topics the new Cup car is more complicated than it might first appear. 

Here, in no particular order, is a list of some of the major items that NASCAR was hoping to address with the new car.

• Reduce manufacturing cost
• Continue to try and change the if you ain't cheatin' you ain't tryin' culture
• Reduce the number of cars needed by a team
• Continue to improve driver safety
• Continue to improve the racing
• Address fan criticism about the cars not looking like the street versions
• Address fan criticism about the cars using outdated technologies

Reduce manufacturing cost:  The current cars are pretty much hand made starting with sheets of steel and racks of steel tubing.  By using basically one common car from one or two vendors teams will save significant labor costs.  The new composite bodies are going to be significantly cheaper to build that the current had made ones as well.  The downside is that there are going to be a lot of talented fabricators looking for work. 

Continue to try and change the if you ain't cheatin' you ain't tryin' culture:  This one is tough because innovation or cheating (depending on who's doing it and to what level) has been a huge part of the tradition of NASCAR.  Icons like Smokey Yunick wrote the NASCAR rule book by building cars that took advantage of pretty much anything that wasn't explicitly in the rule book.  For example NASCAR never said that your car had to be full scale so Smokey built a 7/8 scale Chevelle.  Throughout the years there have also been outright cheaters who've tried to slip things that were prohibited past the inspectors.  As the sport has become more mainstream it's been getting harder and harder to find sponsors who are willing to have their name on the side of a car that's penalized for cheating but there's still tremendous pressure to perform at the highest level.  If a team is making all their own parts they are forced to push the limits on every tolerance and loophole to maintain a competitive edge.  If everyone is buying from the same vendor and the rule is you can't modify it then everything is simpler. 

Reduce the number of cars needed by a team: Right now teams have different cars for mile and half tracks, super-speedways, road courses and short tracks. They need a minimum of two of each for each car number.  The better funded teams will still have more cars than the lower funded teams just so they have more spares and so that they can prepare cars further ahead but with the new cars a team could conceivably run a full season with four cars. 

Continue to improve driver safety:  This one is pretty simple.  NASCAR is always looking to improve driver safety and this new car implements everything they've learned since the last car came out.  BTW, not only does NASCAR crash test cars in a lab, unlike the OEMs they data log and study every single wreck.

Continue to improve the racing:  The new cars address this in two different ways.  One is that the more parity there is between the cars the better the racing.  The other is that the aerodynamics, tires and engine packages have been designed as a system to make the cars race better in groups .  This is a really complexxx topic with a lot of factors but suffice it to say that NASCAR put a lot of research into this.  We won't really know if this works until they're on track but if they're all coming from the same vendor it'll be easier to make changes as needed.

Address fan criticism about the cars not looking like the street versions:  This never bothered me, I just want to see good racing but a lot of people feel very strongly about it.  I think they did a pretty good job.

Address fan criticism about the cars using outdated technologies:  This also never bothered me but the new car is designed to accommodate a variety of drivetrains, from the current v8s to turbo 4s to hybrids and even full electrics.

Personally, I'm an NASCAR fan.  I like the fact that the cars are slow enough and move around so much that you can tell on TV how hard the drivers are working and what they're doing.  I thought this past Sunday's race at Darlington was excellent despite the fact that one car dominated.  Watching Truex run that car sideways inches off the wall, and sometimes against it all race long was exciting as was seeing Kyle Busch run from dead last up to third and Kyle Larson picking away at Truex's lead near then end of the race.

I like the longer races.  There's time to watch the various strategies unfold and teams overcome problems.  I don't alway get a chance to watch the races, particularly after my own race season starts but I always record them and when I can I watch them over several days.

I wanted to hate stage racing but I actually really like it.  It makes the racing more exciting and it creates opportunities for some different strategies.

I'm not a huge fan of the chase.  I don't like that it's difficult for the casual fan to understand and I'm not crazy about starting the last race with all four contenders having an equal chance at winning.  It seems like a good performance all season should carry a little weight into the last race.  It does make for an exciting last race however.

I'll miss the v8s when NASCAR moves away from them but I'm not going to complain unless whatever they replace them with ruins the racing.

I also am not a fan of the single lug wheels but I'm not going to stop watching because of them and while the change will eliminate the missed lugnut storyline there's likely to be some other way for teams to excel or fail during a pit stop.

I applaud NASCAR for continuing to move forward and trying new things and I'm looking forward to seeing how the new car performs.

In reply to APEowner :

Nicely summarized.

On the single lug wheels, there is one thing that we (the guys doing the prep/development) have all considered a big chance for failure. All four wheel nuts are threaded the same direction, no left side/right side specific wheel nuts. This was done to save on parts count and increased cost for extra parts. However, the chances of a wheel nut coming loose are greater than zero, so expect some sort of issue early in the 2022 season with wheel nuts. It is not like there is a precedent for different left and right wheel nuts, since pretty much every series that runs single lug wheel does it that way, just scraping every penny out of the projected build cost.