What NASCAR Next Gen and Mercury Astronaut Alan Shepard Have in Common

• The Feb. 6 Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will provide a few hints about the NextGen car.

• Preseason tests indicate that the speeds of the new car will be close to those of previous years (around 190 mph).

• How the NextGen vehicle will perform in huge drafting packs remains to be seen.

So, after all the talk, all the planning, all the testing, all the analyses, how the heck will NASCAR’s new race car perform in the Daytona 500, stock car racing’s biggest event?

The Feb. 6 Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum will provide a few hints about the NextGen car, a dramatic departure from previous Cup vehicles. But the relatively slow speeds and tight track in LA are almost exact opposites of the landscape the cars will run on two weeks later at Daytona International Speedway, well-known as wide-open in both speed and space.

The Daytona 500 doesn’t define the season. Most of the rest of the schedule is on shorter, slower tracks, but the television and other media focus on NASCAR’s most important race, not to mention a sellout crowd, obviously make Daytona a very important opener.

Preseason tests indicate that the speeds of the new car will be close to those of previous years (around 190 mph), but how the NextGen vehicle will perform in huge drafting packs remains to be seen. Drafting during test runs was limited to about a dozen cars, and groups of 30 or more cars probably will produce an entirely different scenario.

Passing within drafting packs will likely require two or more cars moving forward together, a familiar concept from previous seasons.