Mike Dinovo-USA TODAY Sports
“Well, a big brick of steel was going a lot of miles per hour and it got sideways and lifted off the ground.”
That is the oversimplified version of how Corey Lajoie understands is flip last week at Michigan International Raceway but he stopped by the NASCAR R&D Center earlier in the week to get a more scientific explanation as well.
“All the guys that were there that could have explained it to me – in probably way more scientific terms than I could understand – had come down to Daytona already, whether it’s Jacuzzi … Probst,” Lajoie said on Friday at Daytona. “I haven’t had a chance to connect with those guys; it was just [John] Patalak. So, I looked at more of the interior stuff – the halo bars, the mouthpiece sensor data, stuff like that to get an idea. The car performed exactly how it should in the event of a roll.”
Lajoie was uninjured in the barrel roll but the reasons the car left the ground kind of vexed the industry a little bit. The car has wind flaps designed to deploy if it starts to turn over but they didn’t catch the car. Instead, the general consensus is that a windy day, where gusts reached 20 mph, combined with the sealed underbody of the NextGen car just combined to create the perfect scenario for lift off.
The incident registered 30Gs of impact.
“The diffuser flap didn’t drop as quickly as it would have helped as well but the combination of going so fast, 180 with a 10-15 headwind, made it take off pretty fast,” Lajoie said.
Lajoie had pondered that the new air jack system might have contributed to the roll over but NASCAR said it ruled that out.
“I thought, potentially, with it being a new addition to the back of our cars and never seeing that before, the car getting upside that quickly before but it got ruled out when they explained it to me,” Lajoie said.
But what NASCAR has added now is a second rear fin, this one on the right to match the one on the left. NASCAR isn’t sure yet which tracks it will order it to be utilized.
But Lajoie cheekily is going to take credit for the new rule.
“I guess I can own a piece of addition to the Next Gen car like the Petty bar, the Newman bar,” Lajoie said. “They got the ‘Lajoie fin’ now in the right-side glass. I’m just an innovator. Just trying to innovate and make these cars safe.”
But overall, he praised the safety components of the platform, which is a really important element to a family that has spearheaded numerous safety initiatives in motorsports. His dad, two-time Xfinity Series champion Randy Lajoie is the proprietor of the Safer Racer platform designed to do exactly what the name implies.
“This is a really solid car,” LaJoie said. “I knew the seats and belts and their strengths and everything going to be around us; we worked really hard to get our cars comfy and safe. So, everything did exactly what it was supposed to do.”