Gen6. Some more thoughts?

Can't find it now but didn't somebody here post the number of passes for the first 2 races this year compared to last and they were lower this year?
 
BobbyFord said:
What about the at least 15 passes I saw for the lead? :confused:
Passing up at Las Vegas: NASCAR's new Gen-6 Sprint Cup race car racked up some impressive statistics in Sunday's race. The official race reports reads 22 lead changes among eight drivers, with the 22 lead changes being the most at Las Vegas since 2007, the year before the Gen-5 car (Car of Tomorrow) was introduced at intermediate race tracks. Beyond those numbers, NASCAR's loop data (stats measured at the 10 scoring loops around the 1.5-mile track) showed a phenomenal 2,342 green-flag passes throughout the race, compared with 1,301 last year. In addition, there were 31 green-flag passes for the lead (including intra-lap passes scored at loops other than the finish line), the most since NASCAR started recording loop data in 2005.(NASCAR Wire Service)(3-11-2013)
Damn those pesky facts :D
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Yeah, it was better than many LV races. Was it good racing? Yeah. The fact remains. Aero push and track position after pit stops still rule. If you want to win, stay out on old tires and mess with the air.
 
FenderBumper said:
I do wish the network would focus more on the racing in the pack, because that sure got you excited. :D
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Seriously, I was out of my seat a lot of the time. It sucks that the networks cannot provide better coverage. We all know that a lot is missed through television.
 
There was more passing at Vegas than Phoenix? I'm a little surprised; I thought Phoenix was a little better.


I can't see how that Daytona number is correct at all. No way there was more passing there with the single-file train than there was in the last two races.
 
someone mentioned how does the leader pass or have an advantage once the field gets strung out with lap cars. the reason is the leader is probably running at least half a second faster than a lap car. half a second faster is fast enough to overcome the advantage the lead car has in turbulent air. I know the bodies on these cars are different but I personally think the gen 6 car is far closer to an iroc car than we have ever had, reason being is they further mandate rear end settings used to be they could adjust things in the rear end of the cars and have more crab in the cars, now crab has been taken out and mandated, but they get more camber in the rear tires, so all teams end up running max camber they can get. so there ends up being very little difference. KEEP IN MIND WE HAVE DOUBLE FILE RESTARTS. how much passing would there be in these races if we went back to single file?? if you watch most of the passing happens right after restarts or I would say at least half of it does. the key is watching lap times of these cars, yeah they do vary but you will see lap times very close across the top 7 cars. like I said 1/4 tenth on the race track will never be enough faster to over come an aero advantage a lead car has or any car ahead of another for that matter. making the cars more equal just makes the problem worse. and we have no tire fall off to speak of. I am telling you guys its TIRES TIRES TIRES that are the problem. and tell me what announcer, what driver is going to call out nascar for going to enviro friendly tires and how they suck?? lets just say if that happened, denny's incident would have been far worse behind the scenes in the nascar hauler. lets watch lap times better this will tell whats going on. one thing that is encouraging is at least the top 5 cars are at least capable of running similar times as the leader. THAT I DID see in the race, that could be the silver lining.
 
StandOnIt said:
There is just a whole lot of people on here that don't understand racing, and don't know the history of racing. Look at formula 1..they have so much downforce, the car can run upside down, tires twice as wide as nascar, telemetry out the wazoo. May be two passes for the lead a race. Car out front in clean air has a huge advantage..these are little bity cars half the weight as a nascar. They have recently..because of no passing made huge changes. They have a device that stores energy and a flap on the wing that opens and closes. The cars behind the leader can use this advantage to try to catch and pass the leader..doesn't work that great. Indy cars have "push to pass" this gives the button pusher more RPM to help in passing, doesn't work that great either, you only get so many button pushes and it doesn't work anymore. If you want a lot of passes, go fire up your playstation,
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Not disagreeing with the above but they also have Pirellis that have three different levels of softness or degradation. It isnt perfect but I do think the various cycles makes it more interesting, and Pirellis PR or image is surviving well in spite of some F1 specs prescribing some degradation.
 
Aero push was big in the 90s too. I dont think the Vegas race was that bad. Kahne made some late race runs he just didnt pull it off.
But I will agree clean air helped Kenseth.

I just think it was a good race anyway, a good battle doesnt require a pass. I am sure that comment can be eaisly ridiculed. Just remember some suspense was involved and no one could say with certainty who would win while Kasey was stalking him in the late stages.

And Fender, I would some tire degradation too, at least something that would seperate the most disciplined drivers. But the Vegas race wasnt that bad or a disaster.
 
hidesert cowboy said:
someone mentioned how does the leader pass or have an advantage once the field gets strung out with lap cars. the reason is the leader is probably running at least half a second faster than a lap car. half a second faster is fast enough to overcome the advantage the lead car has in turbulent air...
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How does your theory hold up when Kyle came from 20th to the front after the pit road penalty? Kyle wasn't running half a second faster when he went past the top 10 cars.
 
I don't remember the particular exchange you are talking about. outside the top 10 yeah there is passing going on, because there is enough of a speed differential. I am not saying no one can pass. KB is probably the best driver I have ever seen on restarts. he went onto the apron I think and even took the lead by passing 2 cars at one time, it was the time kasey tried to block him. there is another dynamic going on during restarts as well and that is going all out and bonzaiing, what if the car doesn't stick its easy to loose half a second getting loose and a spot or even more can be lost. all this is going on during a double file restart. its a time when drivers know you can make some spots if things work out right. another thing is KB despite the speeding penalty didn't go a lap down. he may have taken 4 tires back in the pack and with some bonzai restarts really picked those spots up when the field was bunched up. although I didn't see thats what I suspect. all this doesn't matter when you start racing cars in the top half dozen. once you get there the speeds are like I said very similar.
 
That's my point. Kyle was on the same tires and still drove from 20th to the front under green past the top 10 cars. Kyle didnt pass the cars bunched up, he passed them one at a time on the same tires.
 
BobbyFord said:
That's my point. Kyle was on the same tires and still drove from 20th to the front under green past the top 10 cars. Kyle didnt pass the cars bunched up, he passed them one at a time on the same tires.
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But that's talking about maybe the single-most aggressive driver in CUP - with apologies to Juan Problemo.
Fact is, Pee Wee can do some amazing things. I see his car-critical comment repeated often after he won Bristol in the debut season of the COT.

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/17788044/

He would probably say something similar about the new car if Coach Gibbs had not already told everyone on his team to STFU!

And Rickey Craven said on tonight's ESPN's Motorsprts show (with Nicole Mansky-Briscoe) that watching Matt Kenseth hold off Kasey for the win at Vegas told him all he needed to know about the aero-dependancy of the Gen6 car.
 
I didn't hear Kasey say anything about aero being the reason he couldn't get around Matt. Matt or Kyle would've gotten around Kasey if it were reversed. The fact that Kasey wasn't the right guy for the job doesn't mean that the car was the cause.
Shoulda coulda woulda doesn't win races, drivers like Matt Kenseth win races.
 
BobbyFord said:
Here's my point of view: I'm guessing the TV coverage wasn't very good because if you were actually AT the race then most of the opinions posted here regarding passing and aero wouldn't be here. I saw A LOT of passing. I saw cars that could pass top 10 cars WHEREVER they wanted. I listened to no less than 15 different team frequencies. None of the drivers that I listened were talking about aero anything. Most were talking about tight or loose with regard to set-up, not clean or dirty air.
Are the Gen-6 cars more aerodynamic than a 1948 Buick? The answer is yes. Is the car an improvement aerodynamically in terms of better racing than last year's car? The answer is yes.
I've been at Vegas the past six years and this is the best racing I've seen yet. By far the most passing I've seen all around the track. There were several grooves in one and two, as opposed to three grooves last year, I believe it's the car and not the tire. The three and four groove pretty much remained the same as year.
Attend a race before you criticize the racing quality of the Gen-6 car (plate racing not included.)
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How cold was it at the track?I checked on my phone and it told me about 4 degrees C. That would have had an impact on tyres I would have thought, and the milage there referring to.
 
hidesert cowboy said:
KEEP IN MIND WE HAVE DOUBLE FILE RESTARTS. how much passing would there be in these races if we went back to single file?? if you watch most of the passing happens right after restarts or I would say at least half of it does. .
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Yep. All the 'fantastic racing' by Kyle and others was on restarts.
 
Greg said:
Not disagreeing with the above but they also have Pirellis that have three different levels of softness or degradation. It isnt perfect but I do think the various cycles makes it more interesting, and Pirellis PR or image is surviving well in spite of some F1 specs prescribing some degradation.
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Yeah, I think they are made to run two different tires on a dry track, and the third is for the rain. It for sure livens up the formulas races. But also, they have a completely different(boring) pit setup, cars can't speed, internal jacks on the cars with a guy at all four wheels and only one nut to tighten, they don't have many chances to screw up a pit stop. Not as good as a Nascar race in my opinion. Don't know if you remember a few years back that Nascar mandated smaller fuel tanks to try to stop fuel mileage races. I think softer tires would result in the same problem, mainly more pit stops and less racing. I think if anything, using the harder tire is a big plus because teams gamble with the tires, some take two insides, or two outsides, or even like Kenseh, don't take any and gamble on staying out front.
 
StandOnIt said:
Yeah, I think they are made to run two different tires on a dry track, and the third is for the rain. It for sure livens up the formulas races. But also, they have a completely different(boring) pit setup, cars can't speed, internal jacks on the cars with a guy at all four wheels and only one nut to tighten, they don't have many chances to screw up a pit stop. Not as good as a Nascar race in my opinion. Don't know if you remember a few years back that Nascar mandated smaller fuel tanks to try to stop fuel mileage races. I think softer tires would result in the same problem, mainly more pit stops and less racing. I think if anything, using the harder tire is a big plus because teams gamble with the tires, some take two insides, or two outsides, or even like Kenseh, don't take any and gamble on staying out front.
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Ehhh I used to love when a team could short pit,put on a set of tires and run up thru the field.Can't do that with these tires.
 
BobbyFord said:
I didn't hear Kasey say anything about aero being the reason he couldn't get around Matt. Matt or Kyle would've gotten around Kasey if it were reversed. The fact that Kasey wasn't the right guy for the job doesn't mean that the car was the cause.
Shoulda coulda woulda doesn't win races, drivers like Matt Kenseth win races.
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I did.
 
BobbyFord said:
Link?
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If you watched the race on TV, you wouldn't need a link. You would have seen it happening in realtime. ;)

I watched his postrace, and he talked about how Matt was smart running across his nose and making him tight or loose. Then he did a garage interview and said how Matts moves took the air off his splitter and he would lose momentum.
 
FenderBumper said:
If you watched the race on TV, you wouldn't need a link. You would have seen it happening in realtime. ;)

I watched his postrace, and he talked about how Matt was smart running across his nose and making him tight or loose. Then he did a garage interview and said how Matts moves took the air off his splitter and he would lose momentum.
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I watched the post-race and what I got out of it is he said Matt drove perfectly and didn't make any mistakes.
 
mike honcho said:
Ehhh I used to love when a team could short pit,put on a set of tires and run up thru the field.Can't do that with these tires.
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That is still the case pretty much at short tracks. If there is a late caution at Bristol, unless they all come in, the end of the top ten and farther back will be going for it. Don't think it is that great an idea to be fooling with too soft tires at the speeds they run on a larger track. As it is now, teams have the choice as to how much tape they run on the tire fan ducts, and they also have fans to use or not to cool the tires, it will become more of a factor when it gets hotter and stays that way.
 
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