There are a lot of things about NASCAR’s second year Cup Series car, christened the NextGen, that remains a work in progress but the biggest gripe about its on-track product is how equal it has made the entire field.
After all, if everyone is running pretty much the same speeds, how does that encourage passing? The issue is more problematic on short tracks and road courses, where there is only one lane to make speed around a race track, but still shows itself on intermediate tracks to where pit stops and track position have become increasingly more important.
Speaking on his weekly SiriusXM NASCAR hour, two-time Cup Series champion Joey Logano says NASCAR needs to shake up the rules package every year to generate a little more disparity and open up competition.
“So, it’s a spec car, alright, so everyone has the same stuff so they’re going to be close,” Logano said on Wednesday. “What can you do to change it up some? You change the rules. Change the downforce levels. Take a bunch of downforce off it.
“If you get rid of the diffuser, oh boy, we are starting all over. Everyone would be starting all over. That would be huge as far as setups.”
The rear diffuser (in purple above) is the rear-most section of the underbody, which in totality, completely seals the bottom of the car to generate downforce. In response to a question from Sportsnaut last month, Kyle Busch said NASCAR needs to completely remove the underbody (the light blue, dark blue and purple pieces above) to return to a style of racing that is more traditional to the sport, suggesting that improvements in the technical inspection process will lead to better enforcement of the rules.
“The biggest thing for me, that I feel like is a hindrance to the car in traffic and all that kind of stuff is the underbody. They wanted a flat sheet across the bottom so it’s the same for everybody so they don’t have to police it, but honestly, I think that is our biggest detriment with this car.
“We all talk about over body, underbody, aero, and this and that for years; Tens of years. We all thought the underbody aero was the way to go, but honestly, we have gone backward. It’s worse in traffic.
“So, I feel like that stems from that and to get rid of that and just have over the body and what all we do there. … They have a scanning device that scans the floors, so why don’t we just scan the bottom of the cars without a pan. And all the rough surfaces and everything else under the bottom of the car. But that is kind of my thing, and I don’t know if that makes any more discrepancy between the field on speed. I think that is just a traffic thing in my opinion.”
Speaking on SiriusXM on Thursday, four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and Hendrick Motorsports executive vice chairman Jeff Gordon says the underbody is still a work in progress.
“For the most part, I just want to see the best racing possible and I think we’re starting to see this car come into its own,” Gordon said. “The underwing is a whole big discussion right now. What happened at Daytona with air getting under the car and then the rear diffuser, are we able to get cars close enough to get the side-by-side racing and the passing that we want to see.
“This car has changed the game, really, with how important track position and pit stops are and how important it is to be fast unloading off the truck and qualifying good. It just seems like passing at a lot of tracks is just very, very challenging.”
Back to Logano, who says creating a greater disparity in speed is actually better for the racing product than trying to get everyone closer to the same speeds.
“The field would be more spread out as far as speed and that creates better racing,” Logano said. “Everyone thinks the best racing is when the cars are closer together and eh, I don’t know.
“There’s a happy medium in there somewhere, right? You don’t want it to look like F1 where one car is significant faster than the rest of them, and the same winner every week. But if everyone runs the same speed, and when everyone runs the same speed, it’s hard to see a lot of racing that way. So, I think if you can change the rules every couple of years, and something big like a big rules change, I think that will create some separation throughout the field and that creates better racing, I think.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.