Following a month of safety incidents that included a blow-over incident involving Joey Logano at Talladega Superspeedway earlier this year in April and visibility issues at Circuit of the Americas, both in the NASCAR Cup Series,, NASCAR announced June 8 it will implement new safety precautions to its road course and superspeedway packages.
For the tapered-spacer events at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega, cars will use reduced hole spaces from 57/64″ to 53/64″, which is a reduction of approximately 50 horsepower.
Additionally, the wicker on the spoiler has been removed, an additional roof bar will be mandatory at superspeedways.
For road courses, two flashing lights will be mandatory on the rear end of both Xfinity and Cup series vehicles.
The next races these rules will be implemented at is the July 4 Cup and Xfinity events at Road America.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
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If NASCAR really wanted to stop super speedway carnage they’d reduce the spoiler to 4”, eliminate stage racing and go to single file restarts. Instead they keep instituting incremental changes that never accomplish anything at all and they’ve been doing it for nearly 3 decades.
Instead of restrictor plates, I think in addition to lowering the rear spoiler, they should also remove the front splitter and side skirts, run skinnier tires, AND make them all run NA V6 engines to cut the power a tad (although V6 can still make really good power, especially once race engineers get involved). This will bring handling back, where lifting before entering the corner is necessary, and acceleration (grip) off the corner is key. The combination will keep speeds naturally in check, and bring more than the aero engineer into the car setup equation.
If there are still visibility issues at the road courses I guess the next step will be 3 lights. Real out of the box thinking there.
The brain trust at NA$CAR would put a bandage on a shotgun blast to the stomach. And they might want to get a livelier bunch as the emergency crews.
I think the emergency crew eats to many donuts.
It must be a rule that all NASCAR on track personnel be morbidly obese
So you need someone that needs to be trained in AED application, be able to apply an oral pharangeal air way and pump oxygen into your lungs with a BVM and you will turn that down because they are overweight. Shame. Lots of training involved.
Extricating a family of 4 in a auto wreck and setting up a LZ for life flight the other night and not one of them asked any of our crew what we ate or our body condition. Shame.
That’s bullshit, if following cars around in two rows isn’t boring enough you want to slow them down as well, where does the racing part come in. The sport of Nascar isn’t dying its dead.