NASCAR's 'Car of Tomorrow' Not Much Wiggle Room

Motor, Mar 2008 by Bryan, Pack

NASCAR's first full season with a field of decidedly different race cars is just getting started. Here's a close-up look beneath the skin of one of NASCAR's newest cars, and an explanation as to why the rule changes were made.

In March 2007, after seven years of development and testing, NASCAR premiered its "Car of Tomorrow" (COT) at the high-banked .533-mile oval in Bristol, TN. Many drivers had expressed disdain for the car before the race, claiming it felt "top-heavy" and was hard to handle. Climbing out of the organization's much-heralded new racer at the end of its first race, the winner declared how much he hated the vehicle. So much for a grand entrance! Nevertheless, the car has been a success. By the end of the race, most drivers had faced up to the fact that the car was what they'd be driving in the future. They put their objections aside and went to work learning how to get the most out of it.

Working with manufacturers and race teams, NASCAR engineers at the organizations Research and Development Center focused their engineering and testing efforts for the COT on the principal goal of safety. It didn't hurt that the new rules also led to significant cost savings for race teams. Because so much of the ear's configuration is rigidly prescribed in the new specs, there is little advantage (or need) to build different cars for different tracks. There is far less wiggle room. As a Wood Brothers/ JTG team spokesman said, "Under the old rules, you used to be able to color outside the lines once in a while. Now you can't!"

The COT chassis are built from blueprints provided by NASCAR. Once completed, they're submitted for approval at the Research and Development Center. Certification is a two-part process: A thickness gauge certifies that the mend thickness is compliant and a coordinate measuring machine; certifies the proper location of the frame rails, chassis tubes and suspension points. Together, the two devices take more than 220 measurements.

Although the COT is 2 ½ in. higher and there's 4 in. more width in the greenhouse, NASCAR claims that the car looks more like a production car than the old race car. That will take an experienced eye to discover, for all cars must meet the same dimensional specs for wheelbase (110 in.), body width (74.0 in.), body length (198.5 in.) and height (53.5 in.).

On completion of the inspection process, NASCAR attaches radio frequency identification chips to nine points on the chassis with a special hologram tape to assure that the chassis has been officially approved by NASCAR and is ready to go to the race track.

In the past, tye big teams often had 20 or more cars in various states of readiness in their headquarters garages. Smaller, less well financed teams had come to the point in recent years where even they had to have more than just a few cars if they hoped to have any chance of success throughout a 36-race season. Starting with the basic requirement for a backup car for any given race, teams had found that there were enough differences in car setups (and, sometimes, even car shapes) that cars built specifically for certain tracks became the way to go. One pair was built for the two high-speed restrictor-plate races at Daytona, FL, and Talladega, AL, another pair for road courses like Watkins Glen, NY, and Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, CA, and still another pair for the short tracks at Bristol, TN, and Martinsville, VA. Finally, there was a variety of what we might call "regular" cars for the many oval and tri-oval race tracks that make up the rest of the NASCAR circuit. Drivers had their favorites and constantly worked with their crews to achieve a consistent feel and driveability among all of them.

Although teams struggled to make a car and its backup identical, there are always minute differences that take expensive track and shop time to minimize. Reduce the need for track-specific cars and you cut costs by the barrelful. If the same car was needed for two races in succession, the problem of cleaning up and "freshening" it after the first race frequently was avoided by sending its backup car to the next event. This practice also worked well when two successive races were scheduled at tracks located at opposite ends of the country. But you have to have enough cars and haulers to do that. Teams sometimes experimented with changes to the shape of the front end and other parts of the body to achieve real or imagined improvements in speed or handling. But each time they did, there was a cost in bodywork, painting and testing. That can't happen anymore. Building the Car of Yesterday (COY) used to take four to five days. Now, for the COT, it's down to three.

Building the Car Of Tomorrow

Let's see how the basic NASCAR racer is put together. The days of pulling a car off the showroom floor, strengthening the frame, welding a few roll bars in the cockpit, souping up the engine and going racing are long gone.

The big changes began in the early 1960s as NASCAR grew and acquired the authority to mandate what was necessary to make a car eligible for racing. It started with strengthening the A-frames, moving through the 1967 entry of Ford Fairlanes with specially modified front frames. A few years later the roll cage, welded to the existing frame, became an integral part of every car.