NASCAR has made a trio of technical changes to Cup Series cars in the continued effort to keep the cars from catching air during crashes on superspeedways.
The following changes, designed to increase liftoff speed following CFD and wind tunnel tests, are effective immediately this weekend at Talladega Superspeedway:
- Rocker skirt
- Right side roof flap fabric
- Right side roof rails extended to 2″ with polycarbonate
NASCAR’s Cup Series managing director Brad Moran addressed the topic earlier in the day during an appearance on SiriusXM Radio too.
“I can’t get into the details yet because I don’t know how many of them are going to go out,” Moran said. “We’ve looked at the roof flaps, slight changes, slightly higher, fins and so forth on the top of the car as well. There’s quite a bit of things in play and options we are discussing with the drivers.
“Again, we’re hoping to get this settled by the end of the day and changes to be made before Talladega.”
What didn’t make it into the final decision was a fin that NASCAR proposed putting on the right side of windshields, one that drivers near universally shot down, citing visibility concerns.
In addition to the story linked above, Denny Hamlin provided the following commentary on the proposal during his podcast on Monday.
“We got briefed from NASCAR on changes that they’re proposing for Talladega, which is running that roof rail over our front windshield and drivers obviously didn’t like that,” Hamlin said. “For one, it looks like ass and second it hurts visibility.”
“I saw Bozi tweet and he was trying to explain to the people that it shouldn’t really be a big deal but the problem is we have windshield tear-offs and superspeedways are the worst tracks for debris on the windshield.
“So we need to get those tear offs off. Well this blocks probably 15 percent of the windshield and especially the right front corner where when we’re side drafting, we’re constantly looking out of that right front corner of the windshield to gauge how close we are to each other and others.”
Instead, the extended rail is that same piece but not including the fin that covered the windshield.
This has been an area in which NASCAR has targeted due to Corey Lajoie catching air at Michigan International Speedway followed by Josh Berry and Michael McDowell coming off the ground in crashes at Daytona in August. NASCAR added a right side air deflecting fin to match one on the left side of the car after the Lajoie flip for all tracks larger than a mile but it did not keep those two cars on the ground at Daytona.