Although we’ve seen it on track in competition on multiple occasions, Sunday’s Daytona 500 brought us our first ‘real’ look at NASCAR’s Gen7 race cars.
I say ‘real’ with quotes around it because of the fact we saw it on a superspeedway – and maybe I’ll end up writing another one of these next week, I don’t know.
What I did see during the race was the new era of cars in action in a race with live pit stops (that included tire changes, unlike the duels produced), in a points race and one that frankly is four-times longer than either of the past two instances.
I don’t necessarily have the answers to the questions surrounding the car after one week – if anyone did, they’ll probably win at California next Sunday. Anyway, let’s dive in to what went down with the new car.
Harrison Burton landed on the lid of his car during an accident after Brad Keselowski got into him.
What stood out to me in the carnage, was the top of the car barely looks like it’s been touched. Hell, at an elementary understanding it could probably still run alright.
#NOW Considering Harrison Burton went up in the air and landed on the roof, the car held up pretty well. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/XuuEhOEkO3
— Brett Baldeck (@BrettBaldeck) February 20, 2022
The car, however, seemed to take air pretty easily – and that’s something we’ve seen squander the success of a car in the past. NASCAR’s ‘Car of Tomorrow’ had a spoiler that did similar things, and after seeing it become airborne the series stopped using it.
I’ll lean on Bozi Tatarevic – who we’ll have on the podcast soon, to break down everything in depth – to give some context on what’s happening.
This is a unique situation where the car ended up at an angle where the side of the car was being pushed forward so safety equipment like the diffuser flap could not deploy because of the angle.
— Bozi Tatarevic (@BoziTatarevic) February 20, 2022
Essentially, the flap that is attached to the defuser to prevent this from happening wasn’t designed for the angle it happened at. That’s all fine, especially when these tracks only come up four times a year, however, the cause for concern comes in the fact that it wasn’t a unique spin for Burton.
He went around like we’ve seen a number of cars do. I expect NASCAR to take a look at this, and they will, in the coming days. The most important part of the whole thing was how well-kept the shaping of the cockpit was. That’s huge.
Some may argue that this incident had something to do with the bumpers being curved, but I really think that that was a design technique implemented for a reason.
NASCAR has been trying to get drivers to stop locking on to each other during superspeedway races and maybe that has something to do with it, though a minor part.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. said during his post-race interview that the cars were familiar in pushing style and drafting, so I’d chalk it up to hitting a guy in the wrong spot, which is a possibility we saw with the old car, too.
There were a couple of wheel issues during the race, though.
The first caution in the event came out after a Chase Briscoe spin, but he only spun because Kaz Grala’s wheel up and fell off.
Now, NASCAR is using a new one-lug nut-style wheel for its cars, which comes with a different gun to change the tires on pit road. It’s possible there was an issue with that specific wheel, or one with the team.
After all, ‘The Money Team Racing,’ has been rumored around the sport for nearly three years, and Grala even said on FS1 during the week that everything came together in about 35 days. There could absolutely have been a mistake made.
I know what you’re thinking, though. We saw Justin Haley have issues as well. However, Haley’s incident came with the tire surrounding the wheel and not the wheel itself.
That’s not anything I would draw too much concern to, and with it not happening at all in the final 130 laps, I don’t think there needs to be any worry with wheels.
The biggest question mark from Sunday surrounded the hood flaps. Why did we see a pair of Joe Gibbs Racing cars have hood flaps that were almost falling off?
I consulted Bozi during the race, and he explained that the dirty air is breaking the flaps loose.
The airflow coming off the leading car in a tandem creates turbulent air on the hood of the following car and it appears to break flaps loose if they shake for extended periods of time. I would not jump to any conclusions just because it has only happenned to a certain cars. https://t.co/KdU1x6biFl
— Bozi Tatarevic (@BoziTatarevic) February 20, 2022
It was more of a coincidence that it happened to a pair of teammates, and overall isn’t simple to fix.
Like everything with the new car, these are issues that NASCAR can’t be proactive about with the testing sessions they had.
Mostly every issue that we saw on Sunday that surprised everyone could have happened in testing. This was the first time the cars have really been tested and it’s ultimately the pilot episode to the era we’re about to enter.
So before you judge things that happened today, take a breath and know that NASCAR is going to have some smart people look at this and we might see changes as early as this week.
I hope this isn’t a weekly column I write, but if there’s new stuff to add, I’ll do my best in digging on it.
