Looking ahead

HAMPTON, Ga. – It's been called the Car of Tomorrow, but that moniker no longer is appropriate.

It was being called just "the new car" by both the drivers and team engineers who participated in the latest on-track test of NASCAR's next generation Nextel Cup car at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Monday.

In attendance were six cars – one each from DEI, Roush, Hendrick, RCR and Petty, and a Dodge Charger that was built in-house at the NASCAR R&D center in Concord, N.C.

At first glance, the new car looks very similar in appearance to the current Cup cars, except that the swoopy nose of the current model is gone, replaced by a stubby snout. The roofline also is higher, giving the car a boxier look.

There are other key differences.

The nose of the car is highlighted by a protruding bumper that is placed directly midway between the ground and the top of the hood. The height of the bumper is the same height as the rear bumper, which has been lowered.

The new front and rear bumper placement, which is designed to prevent a race car from sliding underneath another car in front of it during an on-track accident, are safety-motivated, as are most of the changes in the new car.

Unfortunately, the lowered rear bumper has a downside: It will allow for more opportunities for bump drafting at the faster tracks.

Burton tests at Atlanta. (NASCAR)

Also, the cars are wider (by 4½ inches) and taller (by two inches – although they look much higher) and the driver's seat has been moved four inches closer to the center of the car.

But it's not a completely new car.

"We tried to not change things unless there was a definite reason to change," said Gary Nelson, vice president for research and development for NASCAR. "The car of today will transfer most of its parts to the new car."

Parts like the radiator, engine, brakes and suspension of the current car will transfer into the new car. Nelson says the only reason to change those items would be if something better was to come along.

Many of the changes in the car are underneath its skin, from specifically designed crush zones that will absorb energy in a crash to a new two-way radio system that will notify drivers immediately both verbally and visually when there is a caution on the race track.

The new car features an improved roll cage integrated into a uniformly designed chassis and frame, unlike the current design that allows each team to build its own chassis within the framework of the rules. The new design also incorporates an increased distance from the firewall to the driver as well as a higher roofline that will open a bigger hole in the air as the car races down the track and make the car more accommodating to taller drivers.

Martin Truex Jr. said the roofline on his 2007 Monte Carlo reminded him of a '55 Chevy.

"It's got some kind of nostalgia to it," Truex said. "It's not that different [than the current car]. I don't think race fans will be able to tell the difference."

Perhaps, but the new car's design also has made allowance for a wider distinction between manufacturers. The front ends of the new cars are distinctively different and manufacturer specific, and the rooflines, although designed to be identical with each model, are strikingly different due to the differences in each car model's "C" pillar design.

Nelson and other NASCAR engineers repeatedly referred to the new cars as prototypes, saying that the final version of the car was months away. This was the fifth on-track test of the new car, but it was the first time it was being tested with several cars under near-race conditions on a 1½-mile speedway.

Jeff Burton, who was driving the RCR prototype, had the distinction of being involved in the first incident when he spun his Monte Carlo while on track with Brian Vickers, Carl Edwards and Truex. His car swapped ends coming out of Turn 4 and slid into the infield grass. He was unhurt and the car was undamaged.

NASCAR officials blamed his spin on excessive turbulence – or dirty air, as the drivers refer to it – being generated by the cars in front of Burton. That was because the cars of Edwards and Truex were running a different version of rear quarter panel than Vickers and Burton, highlighting the fact that these new cars are still undergoing design changes.

Most of the day saw drivers running anywhere from a handful to a dozen laps, three or four cars at a time, sometimes in packs and sometimes three-wide nearly all the way around the track.

Engineers from NASCAR and the three current manufacturers (Toyota was not invited to participate) as well as observers from other teams (Gibbs and Ganassi) in attendance primarily focused on how the new car's aerodynamics would affect the handling of the car under race conditions.

One of the key changes in the new car's aerodynamic design is the introduction of an air splitter on the front end of the car. The splitter is a protruding lip at the bottom of the nose designed to use the air that flows over it to keep the front of the car on the ground – a design used successfully for decades in sports car racing. The splitter also is intended to stop the cars from traveling (when the nose of the car sinks in turns) as much as the current cars do.

The splitter is an integral part of the new car's design, because without it the car will lose all of its forward downforce. Because of that, NASCAR says that many more tests are necessary to determine its final design as well as the material to used in its construction.

NASCAR has taken much of what it has lear,ned from the Craftsman Truck Series with its bigger box-shaped trucks, and designed a car that will punch a bigger hole in the air, produce more downforce and be easier for teams to balance under race conditions.

"The side of the car looks like a flat board, it looks like it would help when you get sideways and it will catch a little more air," said Carl Edwards, who drove in the Truck series from 2002 to 2004. "If it's anything like the trucks, they're great in that respect. The trucks are easy to drive sideways, so that could be a lot of fun."

Nelson said not to expect the new car to end up looking like the bent and twisted bodies of today's Cup car, which is designed to maximize airflow and complement track-specific chassis designs. The plan is that most teams should be able to compete an entire season with just six to 10 cars instead of the current 20 to 25 they now build.

Although the new cars do look more like their showroom counterparts, they still maintain their race car looks.

"They're not as swoopy, but it's a lot more like a stock car," Edwards said. "I'm sure that when you get them all painted up and have them running three-wide down into the corner at Daytona there going to look alright."