As the Next Gen car debut is nearing, NASCAR is making sure that everything is in order.
One of the things that NASCAR had to decide on was the superspeedway aero package for the 2022 season. With that in mind for the recent Daytona drafting test, NASCAR went with two aero packages for the two-da test.
After the test, John Probst, NASCAR’s senior vice president of innovation and racing development, confirmed that the one with 510 horsepower and a 7-inch spoiler will be used for the 2022 season.
“When we released the test plan to the teams coming here, we had Package A group run, reevaluate, Package B group run, and those were more or less place holders from our standpoint,” Probst said.
“We told everyone we were shooting for a 48(second)-flat (lap time) to a 48.50 for that main group at the front and if we hit that, we would step back a little bit. Once we hit those numbers, we sent the message to the teams that we’re done, the track is yours.”
The package is set to be used in three tracks, twice each at Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta races. Probst also highlighted the improvements made with the Next Gen car since the test they did last September.
“If you look last time we were here, the cars were darting, the steering was really quick, drivers weren’t comfortable being close to each other, certainly not three-wide like we saw today,” he said.
“We had issues with driving cooling and steering and grabbed the best of the best in the garage and got with the vendor to figure out the best way to fix it. When we left the test here in 2021, we didn’t leave here feeling great. We felt OK.
“But getting the feedback from the drivers, we didn’t feel like if the race were held tomorrow, that we would put on the best show we could. Coming out the other side of it now, we’re pretty happy with what we saw today.”
While the car might be far from perfect, but NASCAR is determined to “put on a good show” when the car hits the ground in competitive action.