Given that he was in the car, Josh Berry knew the visual of his flip at Daytona had to be astounding but it wasn’t until he watched it back on Sunday that he fully understood the concern for him.
It was vicious looking.
“It was violent for sure,” Berry said. “I turned the race on and watched it back, the last 30-40 laps, and watching it on live TV, I realized the concern because it was a big impact. …
“Thankfully, there was no grass because otherwise I would have ended up like Ryan (Preece) right? So, there’s been a huge improvement in that aspect but it also opens the next problem, which was I was just skidding on my roof at 150 with no brakes or no way to slow the car down until I hit the wall.
“So, one problem creates another problem and I know they’ll get it figured out.”
In real time, Berry couldn’t see anything because he landed upside down and it just got dark. He doesn’t even know exactly which part of the car he impacted the wall.
“Obviously I knew I hit somewhere in the front, but I didn’t know if it was head on or a little to the side or what,” he said.
Most importantly, Berry walked away with only some minor bruising from his seatbelts restraining him in place. He says he expected a lot more hanging upside down and hitting the wall at the rate of speed he did.
“I’m thankful that I was okay and got out of the race car on my own and was home with my family,” Berry said. “And the car did it’s job. It’s not ideal by no means to have a car flip over like that but I’m here racing this weekend and I think it says a lot about the NextGen and the job NASCAR has done.”
Joey Logano was asked about the three flips into two weeks, the resulting addition of a right rear aero fin, but he still believes the flat underbody contributes to cars catching air.
“I don’t really know what you do,” Logano said. “To me, I don’t have an engineering degree, I just have an RCD. I would say that the floor underneath the car that we have a big pan, when it catches wind, it’s like a kite. And we’ve seen that happen a lot with this car. Until that comes off, I don’t think there’s a way to keep them on the ground.
“So I think one of the best options would probably be to put a splitter back on the thing and take the underbodies off and go back to where they were. Not that we had great success keeping the old car on the ground all the time, but gosh, it seems like we’ve seen more cars go up here recently than ever
“So I got to think that that’s kind of the only thing you can do to fix it. You can’t put more weight in the car. That’s not going to be the answer. Then the wrecks would be bigger. So you don’t want to do that. So I think kind of the only option is to take that diffuser off.”
What did Berry think of that?
“It’s hard to say,” Berry said. “I think it makes sense but I mean, fundamentally that’s what the whole car was built around, right? So, I don’t know. I’ve watched NASCAR since I was a kid and I’ve seen plenty of flips at Daytona and Talladega.
“It’s just part of it. I think it’s unfortunate, that we’ve had a couple in a row, but, you know, I think that obviously there’s something to learn from but I don’t know that you can single out one thing.”
