Tag: Next Gen car

Chase Elliott on NASCAR safety in Next Gen car: ‘I just hate to see us go backwards’

“It’s just super surprising to me that we allow that to happen,” Chase Elliott said about safety with NASCAR’s new car.

Chase Elliott, like many NASCAR Cup Series drivers, is concerned about the safety of the Next Gen car, which made its debut this season.

His and his competitors’ sentiments are extremely understandable, as multiple drivers have said many of the hits and impacts have felt much harder this season in the new car compared with previous years. And two drivers, Kurt Busch and Alex Bowman, have been sidelined this season with concussion-like symptoms following wrecks.

Busch has not raced since July after his concussion symptoms appeared following a wreck at Pocono Raceway. And now, Bowman announced Thursday that he won’t compete at Talladega Superspeedway this weekend because he’s experiencing concussion-like symptoms after wrecking at Texas Motor Speedway last Sunday.

This week, in response to a tweet from Trackhouse Racing co-owner Justin Marks about the car’s safety, Elliott said, “we should never take steps backwards in any area with a new design.”

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Then Saturday during a press conference at Talladega, Elliott was asked about his tweet and where he’d like to see NASCAR and the Next Gen car go moving forward. He noted how drivers seemed to be OK after similar wrecks in previous seasons, but this year, there appear to be more injuries.

Elliott said:

“I don’t feel like we should have ever been in this position to begin with to need to go forward. We should have gone forward with a new opportunity at a new car, in my opinion. You have all of these years of experience and knowledge and time of racing and crashing these cars and teams working on them and building them. It just blows me away that we can have something new in 2022 that offers all of this technology and all of this time and experience of so many super talented people in this sport, and we allow it to go backwards, especially with safety.

“It’s just super surprising to me that we allow that to happen. But we did, and now it’s just about how do we go forward from here, making sure we’re making the right choices to improve what we have and keep things like what happened to Alex this week from happening? And what happened to Kurt. Those types of incidents didn’t result in injuries in the past handful of years from just me watching. Obviously, I’m not doctor, but I’ve watched a lot of cars back into the wall and those guys be fine.”

Other drivers have also explained that mild-looking crashes have come with harder impacts on them, like when a car hits the wall rear first.

“From the get-go, everybody could see that this car was way too stiff,” Kevin Harvick said in July, per NBC Sports. “When I crashed it (at Auto Club Speedway in practice), I thought the car was destroyed and it barely backed the bumper off. It just felt like somebody hit you with a hammer.”

Harvick also specifically said he feels that other than his fellow drivers, people in the industry don’t appreciate just how hard these hits are and aren’t taking their complaints seriously. Along with Harvick, Denny Hamlin, Bubba Wallace and Christopher Bell are among those who have expressed similar concerns throughout the season.

Elliott continued Saturday at Talladega:

“I just hate to see that. No one is immune to it. It could be me next week, or it could be any of my peers or fellow competitors. Nobody wants to see that no matter how much you like or dislike a guy, in my opinion. I just hate to see us go backwards, and I’m afraid that we have in some of those areas.

“But look, it’s just about how do we come together and how do we go forward from here. I think there’s a lot of really smart individuals to try and help make that happen, and I’m confident that we will. But it’s crucial that we do, in my opinion, because having guys out during the playoffs right now – or any time for that matter – shouldn’t be happening, and I think it’s taking away from our product on Sunday.”

Several drivers throughout the season have noted they’ve suffered some of the hardest hits in their careers this year, and NASCARMAN, NASCAR’s unofficial historian, compiled many of their comments in this detailed thread:

And following more recent wrecks and Bowman’s concussion-like symptoms, drivers continue to speak out, urging NASCAR to address the safety of the car:

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4 big NASCAR storylines to keep in mind going into the 2022 Cup Series season

From the Next Gen car to Silly Season, here are a few things to think about this NASCAR season.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season hasn’t had its first official race yet, but the sport already grabbed a preseason victory with The Clash at The Coliseum — an annual exhibition race that moved to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 2022 — earlier this month. From the views to the racing, the event spectacularly lived up to the pre-race buzz.

Now, it’s onto the actual nine-month season with points, playoffs and a giant trophy waiting at the end of it all in November. But there’s a lot happening this season with a new car, new tracks on the schedule, drivers with different teams and a shakeup to practice and qualifying among them.

It’s a lot to keep track of, so with the season-opening Daytona 500 on Sunday (2:30 p.m., FOX), here’s a breakdown of four top storylines to keep in mind throughout the nine-month NASCAR season.

MORE NASCAR:

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Explaining NASCAR’s new Next Gen car and how it’s forcing drivers, teams to be ‘a student of the sport’

What to expect from NASCAR’s Next Gen car ahead of the 2022 Daytona 500 and season.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Retooled, revamped and with a new sound, NASCAR’s Next Gen car is about to make it’s official debut. As NASCAR likes to say, it’s a brand new car; only the steering wheel and driver’s seat stuck around.

Although the Next Gen car — the seventh generation of a NASCAR stock car — is the latest version, it will transport NASCAR fans back to an era when the cars on track more closely resemble what consumers buy at dealerships. And that’s because the sport is “returning back to stock car roots,” said Brandon Thomas, NASCAR’s managing director for vehicle systems.

That resemblance is one of many eye-catching differences fans will notice when the Next Gen car makes its official debut with the start of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season at the Daytona 500 on Feb. 20 — a year delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Teams and drivers will spend at least the early part of the season, if not the whole thing, navigating through the challenges of competing with a new vehicle.

“You change the way you race, you change the way you approach a race,” said Joey Logano, the 2018 NASCAR champion and No. 22 Team Penske Ford driver. “The strategy, your pit stops, the way you set up the car, the way we practice is now going to be different. … You just have to be a student of the sport.”

(Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

Everything to know about NASCAR’s 2022 Clash at The Coliseum in L.A.

For the first time, NASCAR’s exhibition Clash race will be at the L.A. Coliseum instead of Daytona. Here’s what to know.

The 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season is (basically) here, and there are a lot of big changes to the schedule, starting with The Clash at The Coliseum on Sunday, Feb. 6 (6 p.m. ET, FOX) in Los Angeles.

This season’s Clash will be a 150-lap exhibition event, which translates to 37.5 miles on the newly built 0.25-mile short track INSIDE the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

NASCAR broke ground on construction in late December, and over the last several weeks, the inside of the stadium was converted into an asphalt track made specifically for this NASCAR race. And it looks pretty awesome. Even if it’s a gimmick, it’s one that could work, and we’re excited about it.

Because there are so many changes to NASCAR this season, we’re helping you keep track and breaking down everything you need to know about The Clash at The Coliseum.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. on why testing at Daytona doesn’t make him want to come back to NASCAR Cup Series, Daytona 500

Dale Jr. likes being back behind the wheel, but not that much.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is happy when he has the chance to get behind the wheel of a NASCAR stock car — whether that’s his one-off Xfinity Series race every season or testing, like he did on Tuesday and Wednesday at Daytona International Speedway for Hendrick Motorsports.

In fact, Earnhardt said he texted Chad Knaus, Hendrick’s VP of competition, half a dozen times to see if he could hit the track for this week’s organizational test of NASCAR’s Next Gen car, which makes its official debut at the season-opening Daytona 500 next month. And with multiple Hendrick drivers competing at the Chili Bowl Nationals in Tulsa this week, things worked out for the 15-time most popular driver.

But although Earnhardt — who retired from full-time NASCAR Cup Series racing in 2017 — said he enjoyed his time testing the new car, zooming around the iconic Daytona track had “no impact” on making him want to return to NASCAR’s premier series or attempt a one-off Daytona 500.

Addressing the media this week, Dale Jr. explained:

“It’s a long story, but I’m old, 47 years old. And take a guy like William Byron. He’s young, he’s a risk taker, and I’m done taking risks. I’ve got two little girls that I love being around, and I put my wife through a lot to race — half of my career that she was with me. She put everything in her role on pause for eight or 10 years while we did all that, and I just don’t know that, at 47 years old, I would be willing to take the necessary risks out on the race track that a young guy like William Byron is willing to do. …

“I think once you get to a certain age, you just — if you’re not willing to go out there and put it all on the line, I don’t think you need to be competing. So I don’t know if I really have that instinct anymore. Plus, you’ve just got other things you want to do.”

After getting behind the wheel of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, he unofficially finished as high as third in one of the practice sessions.

Earnhardt — who will be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame next week — speculated that as drivers age, maybe their “willingness to put [themselves] in very dangerous situations time and time again” dissipates. However, he said he is hoping to have the opportunity to test more in the future after also previously testing the Next Gen car at Bowman Gray Stadium’s short track in October. But that’s about it.

Well, that and the once annual Xfinity Series race for his own team, JR Motorsports, because he said the second-tier series has a “completely different vibe” and he doesn’t “feel that same concern about that instinctual risk-taking stuff.”

Earnhardt’s lone 2022 race is at Martinsville Speedway in April.

He continued explaining why he’s good with just testing and once-a-year Xfinity races:

“The Cup Series is elite. You don’t just show up and think you’re just gonna out there and compete. It’d be like an old retired football player just showing up for an NFL game and thinking he’s gonna go out there and compete with those guys. He’ll get destroyed.

“I remember when [Jamie] McMurray came back and ran a couple years ago for Spire [Motorsports], he got out and he told me, he said, ‘Man, I don’t remember it being that hard.’ So it’s tough. It’s not an easy thing.”

NASCAR’s 2022 season opening Daytona 500 is set for Sunday, Feb. 20, but the new Next Gen car will unofficially debut in the preseason exhibition event, The Clash at the Coliseum, on Feb. 6.

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Austin Dillon wrecked during Next Gen test, but NASCAR said ‘car performed as designed’ in crash

Thankfully, Austin Dillon was OK after crashing during NASCAR’s latest Next Gen test at Charlotte.

Not two weeks after the end of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season, drivers were already back on the track this week. But it was for the latest test for the Next Gen car, which will debut in 2022, first with The Clash at The Coliseum, a preseason exhibition event, in Los Angeles and then officially with the season-opening Daytona 500 in February.

Although multiple drivers spun out during Wednesday’s session on Charlotte Motor Speedway’s oval, Austin Dillon was the first to wreck.

Early in the testing, Dillon’s No. 3 Chevrolet hit the wall and slid across the track before smashing into the SAFER barrier, as NBC Sports noted. And the front of the new car was seriously damaged, forcing Richard Childress racing to take it back to the shop for repairs to continue testing eventually.

Dillon was evaluated and released by the infield care center, and NASCAR detailed the crash as “an above-average impact.”

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After the crash Wednesday, NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing innovation, John Probst, addressed the media at the test and seemed pleased from a safety perspective. He said, via NASCAR.com:

“We’re always glad when the drivers get out of the cars, and when the incident happened, we actually left our spot over there in The Speedway Club and drove over there and talked to the first responders. They said [Dillon] was already out of the car.

“Then we went to see him in the infield care center. He had already been released [before] we could get there. So, yeah, it was a really good feeling knowing that the car performed as designed. Looking at the front bumper on it, [it] looked like it crushed the way it was designed to do.

“Talking with [Dillon], he felt like it wasn’t any kind of anything different than what he’s felt in the past, so I think that was certainly a good reference point. We don’t ever like to see them crash, but we felt like the car performed very well.”

After Richard Childress Racing crews made some repairs to the damaged car, Dillon was able to get back on track Wednesday.

And per NASCAR, the team replaced the left-front quarter panel, hood, splitter, engine, front clip and front suspension, among other things. Probst noted that teams being able to replace the front clip of the Next Gen car was part of the design criteria.

And Dillon commented on the crash and Richard Childress Racing crews on Instagram later on Wednesday.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CWZo9M9LCC6/

He wrote in the caption:

I bit the wall today early in our #NextGen test at Charlotte Motor Speedway. We were trying to maximize all of the available test time, but the track probably wasn’t quite ready and we were over-confident. I came over the radio and apologized to the team and told them our test was over. They replied with ‘see you at 7.’

The guys went right to work rebuilding the car and got us much needed time on track. RCR showed what they are made of today, and I am so thankful for their hard work and dedication.

Here’s a look at some of the other moments from NASCAR’s latest Next Gen test this week.

The Next Gen car will debut in the exhibition Clash race on February 6 on the purpose-built Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum track before officially premiering in the Daytona 500 on February 20.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr., Clint Bowyer review NASCAR’s Next Gen car after test: It ‘does everything better’

Dale Jr. and Clint Bowyer tested NASCAR’s Next Gen car ahead of its debut in The Clash at the Coliseum in L.A.

Although they’re both retired from full-time NASCAR racing, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Clint Bowyer got back behind the wheel on Tuesday. But they didn’t drive the same stock car they last raced in.

Earnhardt and Bowyer were at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston Salem, North Carolina to test out the Next Gen car ahead of its debut for the 2022 NASCAR season. Although the car will officially debut in the season-opening Daytona 500 in February, the first time drivers will compete in it will be for The Clash at the Coliseum — the preseason exhibition race which, next year, is moving from Daytona International Speedway to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

For The Clash on February 6 — two weeks before the Daytona 500 — drivers eligible to participate will race inside the Coliseum, and as NASCAR noted in September, the “playing surface will be converted into a quarter-mile, asphalt short track.”

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So in an effort to have the Next Gen car ready for the short-track exhibition race, Earnhardt and Bowyer turned some laps at the quarter-mile asphalt oval at Bowman Gray.

In an interview with NASCAR.com after testing the Next Gen car, Earnhardt said it “does everything better” compared with the current model. He continued:

“I drove the car around the track and it breaks — the brake performance is gonna take some time for me to get used to, or any of these guys get used to. That was probably the one thing that I found myself improving the most as I ran [with] the lap times is letting the car get in the corner because these brakes work so much better. I’m over-slowing the car using the brake pedal the way I’ve always in my life, so that was one thing. But it’s got a bigger turn, more grip, does everything much better.”

After NASCAR announced The Clash is moving from Daytona to L.A. for 2022, Bowyer got a little preview with some virtual iRacing laps at the Coliseum. And he seemed to be having a blast.

“You know who’s going to win this race? Those people in the grandstands,” Bowyer said while iRacing.

After his test Tuesday, Bowyer said:

“The car handles phenomenal. There’s not much room out there, let me tell you. These guys are gonna be in trouble. There’s gonna be some carnage, gonna be some hurt feelings, gonna happen right off the bat right there in the Coliseum.”

Earnhardt agreed with that sentiment, and he noted that he was a little apprehensive about NASCAR hitting such a small track. But after his test, he’s feeling good about what kind of racing The Clash will produce at the Coliseum.

More from Earnhardt, via NASCAR.com:

“It’s gonna be crazy, and it’s gonna work. I was a little worried about the size of the track, and we’ve never seen our product, recently anyways, on a track that small. So having driven the car around here and walking around this race track, there’s gonna be plenty of room. All those worries that I had [were] for no good reason, so I’m excited about it.

“It’s going to be physical, and I think that’s what everybody expects. So the drivers know that going in, and we’re gonna give the West Coast a taste of some good short-track racing, and NASCAR style. This Next Gen car, it does everything really good on a track like this. I didn’t know if it would work, if it would match well with this size race track, but it’s going to be a pretty good show.”

Per NASCAR, retired driver and Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner Tony Stewart also participated in the test Tuesday at Bowman Gray. Stewart said he hasn’t been behind the wheel of a stock car in five years, so this was a fun experience for him. He added:

“It was fun today to get a chance to come up here, to be invited by NASCAR to come up and do the tire test for the Coliseum race. This is a track I’ve only been to one time and got to watch the races. So it was pretty cool to be on track here. It was fun and to get a chance to drive the Next Gen car was cool too.”

While The Clash is set for February 6 and the 2022 Daytona 500 is on February 20, there are still two races left in the 2021 season. The first is Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, and when it’s over, the Cup Series’ final Championship 4 drivers will be determined and race for a title at Phoenix Raceway on November 7.

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Get an early look at NASCAR’s brand-new Next Gen Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota

Photos of NASCAR’s new Mustang, Camaro and Camry!

NASCAR races will look very different about nine months from now when the new Next Gen car makes its on-track debut in the Cup Series’ season-opening Daytona 500. And now, fans will have a better idea of what to expect.

NASCAR and its manufacturers – Toyota, Chevrolet and Ford — unveiled their respective Next Gen cars on Wednesday to the public for the first time, and it will replace the current Generation 6 car. Originally, the Next Gen car was supposed to debut at the beginning of the 2021 season, but that was delayed a year as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The development of the Next Gen car was a collaborative effort between NASCAR and its manufacturers, and aside from anticipated tweaks and adjustments, the car is nearly complete. Teams are expected to be able to begin building their new cars in the near future.

So while it will still be a while before these cars are on track competing against each other, here’s a look at each manufacturer’s Next Gen car.

RELATED: 6 things NASCAR fans should know about the newly unveiled Next Gen car

6 things NASCAR fans should know about the newly unveiled Next Gen car

NASCAR and its manufacturers unveiled their new Next Gen car, set to debut in 2022.

After years of planning, production and anticipation, NASCAR and it’s manufacturers — Toyota, Chevrolet and Ford — unveiled their Next Gen car on Wednesday. After being pushed back a year because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the car is set to make its NASCAR Cup Series debut with the 2022 season-opening Daytona 500.

The development of the Next Gen car has been a collaborative effort between NASCAR and its manufacturers, and it’s designed to be more cost effective for teams, to be safer for drivers and to more closely resemble the products sold to the general public, compared with the current Generation 6 car. And, of course, this car is supposed to intensify the quality of racing.

“It accelerates quick, it stops quicker, it turns quicker, it’s nimble,” Kurt Busch said after testing the car at Charlotte Motor Speedway in November.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘steroids’ – it’s just the car is more effective, and the car is more sensitive to changes and to feel. … You feel everything more vividly.”

In February, NASCAR announced the development of the Next Gen car was complete, and teams are expected to be able to begin building their new cars in the coming weeks.

Here are six things NASCAR fans should know about the new car.

New episodes of The Sneak: The Disappearance of Mario Rossi are out now