THE NEXT GEN OF NASCAR
The Next Gen NASCAR machines made their debut at the L.A. Coliseum with great success, there were a couple of mechanical issues, but overall the cars ran well.
Ahead of its first official championship round the Daytona 500 this weekend, AUTO ACTION looks closely into the new machine and how it got to this point.
Below is an extract from that piece discussing the reasons for the radical change from Gen 6 to Next Gen.
The previous iteration, the Generation 6 NASCAR, was raced from 2013 up until the end of 2021 with three brands taking part – America’s Chevrolet and Ford, as well as Toyota.
Parity was never an issue. All three brands claimed at least one championship title in the era, however drivers, particularly the always outspoken two-time champion Kyle Busch, became increasingly vocal about the difficulty to overtake and follow a car ahead.
NASCAR felt that decreased costs and even closer racing would keep the three existing manufacturers interested, but also potentially appeal to other brands to join America’s most popular motorsport.
“I think that at the highest level, one of the main goals is just that the sport remains healthy and strong, that it remains attractive to our current OEMs (manufacturers), teams and fans, but also attracts new ones,” said NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing innovation John Probst.
“As we dive into that, it’s your overarching goal. Then we know, to be attractive to our OEMs, we need to be relevant to them.”
Prior to the introduction of the Generation 6 regulations, Dodge was also involved in the sport, but once Team Penske defected to Ford, Dodge saw little reason to spend millions with another team.
“If you look at where Gen-6 is today, there’s a big component of it that’s around wind tunnels and simulation,” said Probst.
“While that will always be in our sport and rightfully so, we felt like we needed to have that at a level that’s commensurate with the amount of attention that the fans get out of it.
“We don’t sell tickets to the wind tunnel or to watch engineers run simulations, so, just trying to keep things focused on the race track.
“I think now that the range of adjustments (teams) will have on a week-in, week-out basis will exceed what they have as an opportunity with the hardware they’re running today.”
American’s love their action, particularly in NASCAR. They enjoy drivers getting their elbows out and nudging and bumping their competitors and rivals aside.
This has been lost a little in recent years as any bodywork damage on cars has limited aerodynamic performance, something that is incredibly detrimental around a high-speed oval, but no more.
“This new car’s going to allow them to get into the wall a little bit, get into each other a little bit, without really any worse for wear as far as the performance of the vehicle,” Probst said.
“We’re really hoping that this encourages them to get a little bit even more aggressive, if that’s possible.
“Our drivers are pretty aggressive already, but we think this composite body will really allow them to bump and bang a whole lot more.”
This was seen at the Coliseum with drivers able to get their elbows out and make aggressive moves without fear of damage.
This overall helped the product on the 0.4km layout at which the cars debuted.
In the extensive feature, we look at the specs and specifications of the new machines and how various alterations are all about making better quality racing.
