Keith Tanner wrote:
I have an ex-COT wing on my Miata. When I got it, there was a Gurney flap on one of the end plates. I'm guessing it was for just a tiny little bit of side force in the endless left turns. Cool.
some teams got busted for playing with the end plates of those silly wings- they'd bend the whole thing to get more side force out of it.. they even busted Dale Jr one time for having mounting brackets that looked visibly different than what the specs called for, even tho they functionally met the spec... eventually NASCAR just made them use the wings in unmodified form with straight end plates and then just got rid of them and put the proper rear spoiler back on the cars..
i forget who it was, but one of the NASCAR teams in the 60's started putting gurney flaps on the rear spoiler and when the tech guys asked what that was for they said that it was so the crew didn't cut their hands when pushing the car. NASCAR eventually figured it out and made them take it off.. i'm thinking it was Junior Johnson's team..
turbojunker wrote:
The old cars were amazing to look at. Look at the front of a downforce car vs. a restrictor plate car:
But remember, they're low-tech pieces of garbage because they have pushrods, or something.
novaderrik wrote:
i forget who it was, but one of the NASCAR teams in the 60's started putting gurney flaps on the rear spoiler and when the tech guys asked what that was for they said that it was so the crew didn't cut their hands when pushing the car. NASCAR eventually figured it out and made them take it off.. i'm thinking it was Junior Johnson's team..
The "it's so we don't cut our hands" excuse is supposed to have been from Dan Gurney himself, at Indy.
The part that I like is that other teams thought it was a good idea, but they'd do ol' Dan one better and bend the ends of the wings DOWN...
Knurled wrote:
novaderrik wrote:
i forget who it was, but one of the NASCAR teams in the 60's started putting gurney flaps on the rear spoiler and when the tech guys asked what that was for they said that it was so the crew didn't cut their hands when pushing the car. NASCAR eventually figured it out and made them take it off.. i'm thinking it was Junior Johnson's team..
The "it's so we don't cut our hands" excuse is supposed to have been from Dan Gurney himself, at Indy.
The part that I like is that other teams thought it was a good idea, but they'd do ol' Dan one better and bend the ends of the wings DOWN...
i heard it attributed to one of the old school NASCAR teams, too. i'm remembering it being on some show on SPEED a couple of years ago, right about the time the NASCAR hall of fame was opening or something like that... probably saw it on the Indy cars or knew Dan Gurney and decided to try it on their big old brick of a stock car and snuck it thru tech with the same excuse/story..
