Yahoo Autos It's Finally Time To See What NASCAR's Next Gen Car Can Do
Over the past month, NASCAR's ambitious new Next Gen car platform has passed high-profile tests at the Los Angeles Coliseum and Daytona 500. Sunday's race at Fontana is a far less high-profile affair, but it might actually be the most telling test the car will face.
Daytona and the L.A. Coliseum short track are NASCAR's two extremes. One, a flat-out and high-banked track known for pack racing, has a style of competition determined almost entirely by aerodynamics and cooling. The other, a track so small that drivers were lifting off the throttle for the next corner before the start/finish line, is too slow for aerodynamics to be particularly relevant at any point. While both were successes worth celebrating, and both showed the promise of the Next Gen car in those applications, neither told us anything about what this car will look like week-to-week. That changes at Fontana, a 2-mile, low-banked intermediate oval that has in the past raced like a wider and rougher version of some of the "Cookie cutter" 1.5-mile ovals that make up a massive portion of the NASCAR schedule.
That makes Sunday our first real look at whether or not the new car has accomplished its most notable competition goal: Solving boring racing at those tracks big enough for aerodynamics to make passing difficult but not so big that the draft becomes relevant. For the past few decades, NASCAR has struggled at these tracks with an "aero push" element, an effect where air coming off the leading car significantly slows anyone trying to pass for position in a group and greatly reduces the ability for a trailing car to make a pass. By moving to symmetrical bodies approved only by the manufacturer, a new downforce concept that integrates a diffuser, and a mid-horsepower package introduced late into offseason testing, NASCAR believes they might have a competition setup that actually solves at least part of that problem. If they do, the season will be an immediate success.
The first, and most important element, is how the cars react to each other in traffic. As 23XI Racing driver Kurt Busch explains, previous cars were designed by teams to create side-force that greatly altered how they raced when side-by-side. Now that the cars all share manufacturer-designed symmetrical and common bodies, he hopes that the "dirty air" created as a side effect of this technique will be reduced:
That's what we're hoping for, the old cars were reliant so much on the side-draft and side-force. We were starting to shape the right sides of the car like a spoon, so when we were in yaw two or three degrees it created side-force and we could lean on it that way. This car doesn't have that, so hopefully we'll be able to be side by side with less risk.
Busch also noted that testing at the sand-worn Phoenix Raceway showed Goodyear's new-for-2022 tires to be nearly two and a half seconds slower after they begin to wear over the course of a run. Chris Gabehart, crew chief of Denny Hamlin's No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing entry, believes Fontana's particularly coarse track surface will create the same effect and make that new tire degradation element relevant immediately:
