Common denominator

NASCAR hoping for less bickering, more competition

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Five days before the season-opening Daytona 500, the action in and around NASCAR's red hauler was frenzied but routine.

Missing from previous years were the angry team owners and manufacturers claiming the rules put them at a disadvantage. Gone were the frustrated crew chiefs begging for a change in the aerodynamic rules to make their cars competitive.

"We just hope it stays this way," said NASCAR Winston Cup director John Darby.

Ted Flack, the head of NASCAR engineering for Dodge, thinks it will.

"It certainly takes the whining and paranoia out of it," Flack said.

The difference is NASCAR's decision to use generic templates to measure key parts of all four car makes involved in the series.

NASCAR, calling the process "aero matching," announced the changes in September and kept refining them over the winter.

"From that meeting in September on, every car body was scrapped, all the parts and pieces," Flack said. "It was a big deal, starting back at zero."

Beginning with the preparations for Sunday's Daytona 500, all the cars have to exactly fit 18 of 32 steel templates used during technical inspections. Until this season, there was a completely different set of templates for each make.

The key "common templates" dictate the shape and size of the "greenhouse" -- the area enclosing the driver -- the deck lid, door sides, front valance and rear spoiler.

Despite all that, the teams have managed to retain some individual characteristics of each make, thanks to the remaining gray areas -- nose, rear end, wheel wells, edges around doors and windows -- in which the fabricators and engineers have what Flack called "wiggle room."

"Everybody was afraid you'd be looking at very generic cars that don't look like anything. That didn't happen," said Robin Pemberton, a longtime crew chief and now Ford's NASCAR field manager.

"There's still a huge difference, more than I expected, between makes," said Doug Duchardt, NASCAR group manager for General Motors. "But there are a lot more constraints, which is a real challenge for the team fabricators to get around."

It has taken some doing to get the templates the way NASCAR wanted them.

"It was extremely, extremely aggravating," said Chad Knaus, crew chief on Jimmie Johnson's Chevrolet. "The rules seemed as though they were changing daily. Every time we got something done it seemed like we had to go back and redo it."

Darby calls it "an education process."

NASCAR officials sent out very specific technical bulletins, visited every race shop over the winter to guide teams in building their new cars, and ran them through unofficial technical inspections in January's testing.

Despite all that effort, the tech line the day before the first official practice of the season was a tortuous experience for just about everybody, opening at 7 a.m. and continuing until the last car was through at 10:30 p.m.

"The cars went through a garage inspection first in their stall, then they were in line for about six hours," Pemberton said. "It was a pretty difficult process."

Difficult enough that NASCAR is taking the extraordinary step of opening inspection a day early next week at Rockingham, N.C., site of the next race.

Darby said NASCAR is doing that "as a courtesy to the teams," who will be bringing their intermediate, or downforce, cars to Rockingham, rather than the speedway cars used in Daytona.

"We're real confident that when we get to Las Vegas, the next week, when we go more into a normal inspection mode, if the teams come out there with the cars as they should be, we won't have a problem," Darby said.

"Overall," he added, "the teams did a great job. There may have been a little spot that needed a tweak or a little sandpaper, but nobody had big saws out, nobody was cutting off roofs or noses, and we didn't have to confiscate anything. There were close to a dozen cars that went through the process the first time without any infractions whatsoever."

Darby said he's confident the new templates and stepped-up inspection procedures have assured "that critical areas of thecars are closer in line than they've ever been."

The change in templates comes after years of criticism of NASCAR's manipulating the aerodynamic rules to even out the competition.

The height of the rear spoilers -- a thin rectangle of metal that creates downforce poking up from the rear decklid to catch the air -- was changed most often. Now, every car has a rear spoiler 61/2-inches high, 57 inches wide and set at 55 degrees for racing on Daytona's high-banked oval.

It was a situation that made no one happy and needed changing.

"I think this is going to do what they want it to do, and that's eliminate some of the bickering between the manufacturers and eliminate some of the bickering between the drivers -- `You're driving a Chevrolet, I'm driving a Ford, boo hoo,' " Knaus said.

"Now, when NASCAR makes a spoiler change, it will affect all the cars the same," Pemberton added.

A side benefit of the change is closer racing.

"We'll know more after Sunday," said race favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. "But I think the competition is going to be even closer than it has been, and it was already real close. Now, there just won't be as much whining."

Darby said it's going to take NASCAR a couple of months to determine whether the new templates are going to make life easier for the sanctioning body and satisfy the teams, car owners and manufacturers.

"If you look at where we were in winter testing and where we are now in Speed Weeks, a quick assumption would be, yeah, we hit a home run. We'll see."

 

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