NASCAR is on a mission to keep cars grounded on superspeedways and its latest aerodynamic solution has drawn skepticism from Cup Series racers.
This is a topic of conversation because Corey Lajoie flipped at Michigan, and despite the addition of a second rear air deflector for Daytona, Josh Berry and Michael McDowell experienced blowover incidents.
The sanctioning body had a competition meeting with drivers on Saturday at Kansas and proposed a right-side air deflector on the windshield but conceded that a final decision in advance of Talladega next weekend hadn’t been reached.
Drivers did not seem to like the proposal because the windshield fin affected visibility as detailed first by Denny Hamlin.
“I heard drivers say that they didn’t like what was being proposed simply for visibility reasons amongst other things,” Hamlin said during his Saturday media availability. “For aesthetic reasons, I certainly don’t love it but they’re going to try to make the best, educated guess that they can on what would fix it. But I’ve said a million, times, I certainly don’t think that rollovers are necessarily a bad thing.”
Defending champion Ryan Blaney confirmed the meeting too.
“NASCAR presented a few ideas to help some blow over stuff,” Blaney said. “Which parts and pieces they’re going to run, I don’t know. But it was a good meeting just to know where they’re at and what they’re thinking about. It’s nice they’re thinking about this stuff, trying to keep tires on the ground.”
Blaney says NASCAR tends to be receptive to driver feedback on these matters but that the series has all the data.
Daniel Suarez says, to wit, that it doesn’t really matter what drivers think.
“They’re the ones who did the testing,” Suarez said. “They think it’s going to be better. It looks kind of funny having a gate on the other side of the windshield. Some drivers complained about visibility and that the tear off would be caught.
“NASCAR isn’t set yet so let’s see how it goes. When it comes to safety, I say let them make the calls, because they are smarter than us when it comes to that. Sometimes, we drivers just want to talk. But I think NASCAR will make the right call.”
Hamlin is referencing an analysis that he had offered before that catching air and rolling over has proven to be less dangerous, at least in this car, than hitting a wall but also that flipping is just a byproduct of going fast.
FOX Sports also got reactions from Lajoie and McDowell, since they were instrumental in this processing reaching this point in the first place.
“I guess I was involved with the changes by proxy since I was one of the ones who was upside down,” Lajoie said. “They’re trying to chase and raise that lift off speed quite a bit and they think, through wind tunnel data, that it raises liftoff speed by 40 miles per hour.
“It seemed as though drivers generally did not like it. I could make the concession, maybe, and say lets run them at speedways. But, then again, it will trickle down everywhere else like we saw with the right-side rear fin at Bristol last week.
“I think, if it adds sideforce to these cars, that’s the opposite direction from where we need to go. And we also don’t want a freaking fence sticking off the windshield looking like it was an afterthought.”
Basically, Lajoie says it looks tacky and it would negatively affect the racing product and McDowell seconded that notion.
“I don’t think they’ve completely committed to what they’re going to do but they’re obviously trying the best they can to keep the cars on the ground. They’ve done a CFD test and a wind tunnel test and found a few things they think will move that needle a lot higher.
“But we’re also in the playoffs, and anytime you make a significant change, there’s going to be a competitive element to that too.
“I’m glad they are working as hard as they can to keep the cars on the ground. I’m sure they’re going to come up with a couple of solutions for that but you’re not going to have every speed, every angle and every scenario covered, so you have to be careful that you don’t create new problems.”