2017: Clean Air Is NOT King... Speed Is King

NASCAR All-Star Race: How Kyle Busch won highlights sport’s biggest problem

Busch said. “Once a guy got to the front, that was kind of it.”

NASCAR’s problem? That’s still kind of it.
“It’s just so tough here at Charlotte,” Busch said. “The groove is right around the bottom of the racetrack. There isn’t a middle, unfortunately, and I’m not sure why.

“There is room there for a middle and a top, but it just doesn’t work. There’s just not enough speed to prevail in some of those different grooves.

“It just seemed like that was the theme of the night, that once a guy got out front that was it.”

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/thatsracin/article151805867.html

I know that is what I saw there.
 
FLRacingFan said:
Do you really think this season is worse than 2014 so far? Yesterday's race was terrible but it seems like many have enjoyed most of the rest of the season thus far.

Also, they still had 850 HP back in 2014.
Click to expand...

Is this season worse than 2014? Absolutely.

The horsepower is a huge part of that obviously. I think that less horsepower is a hugeeeee detriment to the racing. But in 2014, guys could pass for the lead on the track. Can't do that in 2017. If you lose some downforce having dramatically less overall, the effects of it are hugely magnified. It's impossible to pass if everyone is already on edge, especially so when you get behind another car.
 
WhiningSmoke said:
But in 2014, guys could pass for the lead on the track. Can't do that in 2017.
Click to expand...
Can't pass the leader in 2017??? Perhaps the All Star race was the first one you have seen all year. Because last Saturday night was the first time in 2017 that aerodynamics have prevented passing the leader.
 
WhiningSmoke said:
Is this season worse than 2014? Absolutely.

The horsepower is a huge part of that obviously. I think that less horsepower is a hugeeeee detriment to the racing. But in 2014, guys could pass for the lead on the track. Can't do that in 2017. If you lose some downforce having dramatically less overall, the effects of it are hugely magnified. It's impossible to pass if everyone is already on edge, especially so when you get behind another car.
Click to expand...
I think we've been watching different races.
 
The racing has continued to get better the last couple of years when they started taking away downforce IMO. This year with the exception of the one race at Charlotte, the other was really good, the overall racing competition has been stiff, stages aren't a flop, there has been some good scrambling for point racing going on, and this weekend with more points on the line and some creative track work it should be good, might be great. Possibility is there. Could be the race of the day.
 
Excellent selection of videos, FL, thanks for posting. People complaining about aero push in 2017 (except the Charlotte All Star show) is like people complaining Jimmie Johnson wins because of some golden horseshoe.
 
Last year teams figured out how to negate the rules put in place and it remains to be seen if they have done so again, the ASR was just a one off occurrence or if Charlotte is just a crappy 1 groove track. Lets hope it was just the ASR or Charlotte as there has been some good racing this year, IMO.
 
This thread has made me chuckle several times. Please keep it going.
 
Old 97 said:
This thread has made me chuckle several times. Please keep it going.
Click to expand...
OK, good idea. After the aero-dominated All Star Race, the World 600 was a better race. However, clean air was still a benefit to the leader, so it was hard to pass for the lead. The VHT was pretty successful in opening up a second groove, and there was a lot of side-by-side battling for position. There was a ton of passing back behind the leader. It was easy to see how hard the drivers were working to maintain control with the low downforce. Not a great race, but better than I expected after the disappointing All Star show a week earlier.

Dear Bruton Smith: It's time to reconfigure CMS and install progressive banking. It is Nascar's home track, and the World 600 is a crown jewel event. And you can afford it. Sincerely, A Race Fan.

Dover has always been a venue that rewards track position, and it did this year as well, but less than previously. I credit the reduced downforce for that. An excellent race, and the disappointing finish had nothing to do with aero effects. Clean air was a moderate benefit to the leader, but a faster car could pass. Passing the leader wasn't easy but was possible... I like it that way.

After both Charlotte and Dover, several drivers commented that the cars were hard to drive back in the pack, in dirty air. That's why they make the big bucks IMO. They were able to pass other cars and advance through the field, so I'm not impressed by the complaints. If Driver X can't handle the reduced downforce, then put someone else in the car. Low downforce helps separate the men from the boys. That's my $0.02.
 
Glad for the bump LewTheShoe They should be able to pass at Pocono, but usually the top pack are so closely matched there isn't much of it unless one of the front runners has problems and has to come up thru the pack. Restarts are where the action will be I'm guessing, it usually is. I spend a lot of time looking around at that track as the cameras will allow. It's different and in a beautiful part of the country. The architecture looks like a horse racing track that happens to race cars also. really pretty
 
Pocono Xfinity cars at practice no telling how many hours they all spend in the wind tunnel, top 3 roughly 3 tenth of a second apart around the whole track.
Ford
53.210

Toyota
53.327

Chevy
53.449
 
StandOnIt said:
They should be able to pass at Pocono, but usually the top pack are so closely matched there isn't much of it unless one of the front runners has problems and has to come up thru the pack. Restarts are where the action will be I'm guessing, it usually is.
Click to expand...
SOI, I think your prediction is probably correct, and I'm OK with that. If a lack of passing is caused by parity, or by the faster car being already in the lead, that is not an aero problem. Pocono does offer various strategy options that might put a slower car in the front. If that happens and quicker cars are stuck behind by aerodynamics, unable to pass the slower guy, then that is a problem IMO. If we see that, we'll know clean air is king at Pocono.

My hope for Pocono is that a faster car will be able to get close enough to take air off the leaders spoiler, loosen him up, and thus be able to pass on corner exit. That is what Kez did on Saturday in the Xfinity race (different aero rules from Cup). If we see that on Sunday, we'll know speed is king.
 
Yeah I don't see much difference between the Cup and the Xfinity race clean air on a track with the longest straight a way in the series. Just happened that the 22 got mired down in traffic and made a finish out of it. Kept it from being a runaway..stages helped this time. I don't think I have ever seen an Xfinity covered up with that many commercials..that won't change. The straight is so wide, unless there is blocking going on it isn't a problem passing if you can get a run coming out of the corner.
 
Last edited:
When the cars were slower, there was no aero push. That's when drafting was a necessary skill. So the logical way to slow the cars is to is to decrease the downforce. There is an easy way to do that, but it is not popular with most fans. For some reason these fans think slowing the cars down is a sin. At the same time, if they were able to get the kind of racing they say they want, they would wish the races were longer. It used to be that clean air was a determent, so what changed? Eventually speeds got to the point that there wasn't enough air for both cars, and that killed the draft. If you want better racing, bring back the draft. NASCAR wants to sell the speed of their cars, rather than the quality of it's racing. They always brag about how close the finishes are. People won't see the close finishes, if everything that leads to that finish, puts them to sleep.
 
Well, we saw a late race pass by Blaney for the win. Clean air or horse power on one of the most aero (slickest car) races there is.? Awful easy to say both. But if I have to pick one I say horsepower.
 
StandOnIt said:
Well, we saw a late race pass by Blaney for the win. Clean air or horse power on one of the most aero (slickest car) races there is.? Awful easy to say both. But if I have to pick one I say horsepower.
Click to expand...
I agree with "Old 97" that it was tires. The extra grip meant Blaney could get back to the throttle earlier and harder than Busch. That is how he got a run on the 18 and made the pass. Busch gambled that clean air would trump speed off the corners, but that gamble did not pan out.

Clean air was a benefit at Pocono, but only a slight benefit, IMO. Busch lead most of the race because he was faster, not because he had better air on his nose. When he sacrificed the speed for track position, he wound up in 9th place.
 
Thought this thread was about clean air OR horsepower an ongoing review of every track? Guess not the thread starter says it was tires.:confused::D
 
StandOnIt said:
Thought this thread was about clean air OR horsepower an ongoing review of every track? Guess not the thread starter says it was tires.:confused::D
Click to expand...

You brought golf into a thread about Nascar today so it is unfair to whine about something you are guilty of. Besides the only reason tires were brought into the debate was because a person picked horsepower over aero in giving Blaney the advantage in winning the race which is completely daft as neither aero or horsepower was a factor. You have to know that someone is going to correct a gaff like that.
 
StandOnIt said:
Thought this thread was about clean air OR horsepower an ongoing review of every track? Guess not the thread starter says it was tires.:confused::D
Click to expand...
The thread is about the accuracy of the often-repeated cliche "clean air is king," and whether current aero rules are accomplishing the goal of fostering better racing. So far in 2017, my opinion is that speed is much more important than clean air... a car that is slightly faster can overcome dirty air and pass the leader who has clean air.

A speed advantage can come from better handling, better motor, better secrets legal or illegal in aero or skew or whatever. Also the driver is a key component of speed, as some drivers can thrive on the very edge while others cannot. And a faster car that has older tires will usually lose to another car on new Goodyears.

The low downforce aero rules are doing their job very well. That is a key reason why the racing has been so much better in 2017. It is popular on here to say, "Get rid of the splitter and raise up the cars, like back in the 1990's." What that refrain misses is that the 1990's cars had *more* downforce than current cars, and suffered plenty from aero push in dirty air. TV announcers and writers didn't mention aerodynamics much back then, because they didn't understand aero effects at all, but the physics were the same.

Two weeks ago at Charlotte, Michael Waltrip talked about holding off a much faster Ernie Irvin to win the 1993 Charlotte Busch Grand National race. "I didn't know what aero push was in 1993. I'd never heard that phrase, but it was my best friend because Ernie could catch me but he couldn't pass me." (A rare moment of MW being lucid and actually helpful.)
 
^^ The cars of the 1990's and early 2000's had more downforce than either the COT or the Gen 6 car in any of their configurations.

Turbulent air spilling off the back of a car traveling in excess of about 120 mph or more doesn't know what day it is. Aircraft, even the slowest civil machines, never fly directly behind one another. There is a very good reason for that.
 
There has been tons of work done to get rid of aero effect. With the cars, repaving, re configuring tracks, and it all is working to a certain extent, There has to be more than one line around tracks..the ol short track bump and run isn't the most expedient way to pass a car. Sometimes it works sometimes it wads up the field. And more and more tracks are showing good results. After Texas did their thing, there hasn't been a bad race on it, Cars, trucks, open wheelers all good close racing. The track grip at Bristol turned that race track around. So there are plenty of brights spots IF you are a fan that appreciates good hard racing IMO..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom