Racing Discussion Thread

The rule changes are official I believe.

Every thing else is pretty much spot on. Several drivers have complained about the tires. The cars do seem ridiculously easy to drive, you never see anybody just spin anymore. Talladega is completely artificial pack racing at the moment. Taking away the shark fin at tracks shorter than 2 miles will help, a little. The cars are still massive brick sails basically. You turn it sideways at 160, it catches all the air and straightens itself back out. The cars are so aero-dependent. It's more about getting maximum downforce for the car. Then it's just getting a driver who can hold the wheel and put the car in the right spots. He doesn't have to "drive" the car.

Quote :

"Biggest thing that will affect the teams is a new minimum side skirt height for all tracks. 1.5" higher left side and 1" higher right side."

So the side skirts are going to be 1.5" and 1" higher off the ground? This seems a bit redundant seeing as this was one of the biggest things to stop cars from getting airborne. I'm glad theyre doing stuff to try to make the racing naturally better, instead of manufactured racing as Sherm said. (Plate aero package, Bristol reconfig) Hopefully softer tires will be the next thing we see implemented in the coming weeks/months.

The bigger sideskirts to prevent airborne crashes makes sense at tracks like Talladega and Daytona. They really are unnecessary at tracks like Atlanta, Las Vegas etc. Keselowski's wreck was a freak accident, caused by a moment of blind rage. The shark fin was a knee jerk reaction to that. Other than that, all they do is add more body space for air to run off of and add more side force.

Softer tires will help, but I've heard some support for biased ply tires like what the K&N Series use.

After the Indy tire massacre, things have just gone to crap. Last year's Atlanta race ended up being a good battle with both drivers practically spinning out off of each corner driving it so hard for the win... But they were like 10 seconds ahead of whoever was in third, also.

We'll see how the new aero package helps, hopefully something good comes of it.

Another reason why Atlanta is good is because the track is like a mind field, aka the drivers actually need to drive the track and not the setup like 90% of the other tracks. Hopefully NASCAR does a few chassis adjustments and gets rid of the sharkfin all together next year. And honestly I don't think they'll need the sharkfin at all on the new cars because of the backends being shorter.

But I would get a stiffy if they ever brought back bias ply tires, but I know some of the drivers don't want them just because it's "too hard to drive". Harvick was actually one of those who said that surprisingly in a article a few months ago.

NASCARGearHead wrote:

mind field.

A what now?

TheShermanator wrote:

NASCARGearHead wrote:

mind field.

A what now?

*minefield...wasn't paying attention lol.

In the late 90s the cars had "shark fins", albeit they were much smaller and only ran along the rear window.

Much, much smaller.

Shawn_82 wrote:

In the late 90s the cars had "shark fins", albeit they were much smaller and only ran along the rear window.

Those are rear wickers, which have been on the cars ever since then.

Same idea basically

Meh, it's been around since then, the sharkfin has been around since 2010 I think

I think they were just looking for a name to separate it instead of calling the whole thing a wicker.

Official Layout and logo for the IndyCar Qingdao 600 in August.

I see buzzkilled hairpin... BOWLING INCOMING!

Brian Keselowski is selling his Daytona ARCA car for $100 dollars.

12 years ago today, Adam Petty lost his life. RIP Adam

I don't remember it too well but I went to that New Hampshire race in 2000 the day after he passed.

IndyCar practice today has been pretty fun to watch, they are making 2-3 pack runs right now. Jean Alesi also finally passed his RO and got his Lotus up to 211 mph.

http://racecontrol.indycar.com/

And it looks like a Honda motor just went boom... oh boy.

a lotus actually managed to run over 200, lol

a lotus actually managed to run over 200, lol

Apparently Lotus got a little boost from IndyCar and they are still slow at the moment.

Bristol:

oh god wat

They should leave it just like that.