There’s speed but not much downforce. The bumpers don’t match. The draft has a new and maybe more dangerous look.
Welcome to Daytona 2013.
It’s a new year for the NASCAR traveling circus, and the first stop, as always, is Daytona International Speedway. The first two weekends of each season are always tense as drivers and teams break through the cobwebs of a long off-season and return to speed, but this year the time at Daytona will be even more convoluted -- and perhaps a bit uncomfortable -- because of the arrival of the Gen-6 race car.
Designed to be much more similar to street models than the previous Sprint Cup car, the Gen-6 has sleek lines and a cool silhouette – one that instantly identifies its manufacturer. But, simply because it’s new, it carries a boatload of mysteries, some of which can be explored only when dozens of cars are on track together in the dynamics of the famous Daytona draft.
How will the car respond in groups of three, four and five, and with 43 on track at once? Is bump-drafting a thing of the past? Will the last few laps of the Daytona 500 be chaotic (as is usually the case)?
“It was definitely different behind the wheel (in testing) right away,” said Greg Biffle of the Gen-6 Fusion. “When I first saw the car unveiled at Ford, I was shocked by the look of it. I said, ‘There’s no way we’re racing this in NASCAR’ because it looked so cool. It really, really looked racy just sitting there. I’m so excited to see these cars sitting on the grid. It’s a neat car. It’s going to change our sport.”
Joey Logano, new to Ford Racing, said the situation entering Saturday night’s Sprint Unlimited, the non-points race that will open the season, is similar to preseason football.
“Saturday is preseason racing to me,” Logano said. “We need to learn as much as we can as a team, and it will help us when we get to the 500. As far as the racing goes, I would assume you are going to see something fairly similar to what you saw last year. But we will have to wait and see. When I was out there before, we found things with the side-draft that work differently. You have to fine-tune your techniques as a driver to find what you want for the 500.”
Saturday night’s Unlimited will give the participating teams their first true look at the new car in a competition environment. The race, scheduled for an 8 p.m. start, will be run in segments of 30, 25 and 20 laps as a result of a fan vote that concluded this week. Sprint Unlimited practice is scheduled at 5 p.m. (ET) and 6:30 p.m. Friday.
On Sunday, Daytona 500 qualifying is scheduled at 1 p.m. Results of the time trials will fill only the first two starting spots for the Great American race. The rest of the 43-car field will be set by the results of next Thursday’s 150-mile qualifying races, qualifying speeds and provisional.
Logano said Sunday’s qualifying will be more important than usual because of the uncertainties surrounding the week.
“We want to help ourselves in case something dumb happens in the Duel (Thursday),” he said. “They have the car in the [wind] tunnel working on that and trying to make sure we can qualify up close to the front. I know we made adjustments on the car since the test (at Daytona), and we have a different car than that one, but we planned on having a different car anyway. I feel like there were some pretty big gains there. I am sure everyone else has pretty big gains, too, I just hope ours are more than theirs.”
No comments:
Post a Comment