Once again, a general theme of the Daytona 500 and superspeedway racing with the NextGen car in general right now, is the amount of time drivers spend at half-throttle under green flag conditions.
The reason they do this is because it is incredibly difficult to pass with the current generation car on these tracks when everyone is racing at full throttle. The cars are too equal and there is so much drag that any attempt to pull out of line is a momentum killer.
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With that in mind, the best way to get track position is for drivers to burn as little fuel as possible in relation to the competition, because that means spending less time on pit road. If drivers can’t pass on the track, the goal is to make as many passes on pit road.
This has been the case since the advent of this car on superspeedways and the frustrations are reaching a fever pitch. Earlier in the week, NASCAR officials concluded ‘what are we trying to fix’ since fuel saving produces three and four-wide visuals but the racing on Sunday did little to change hearts and minds.
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NASCAR on superspeedway fuel saving: ‘What are we trying to fix?’
To wit, race winning team owner and current driver Denny Hamlin says drivers and NASCAR have discussed, casually, an experiment using a return to Daytona with the pre-season Clash using an experimental rules package.
“There’s a way, but we’re going to have to increase the speeds by a lot,” Hamlin said during the post-race press conference. “You’re going to have to make it to where handling matters. That’s going to spread (out) the field. That’s going to make it to where we’re not — it’ll look a little more like racing from the past.
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“But as long as their insurance company is okay with it, you’re going to have to speed up the cars because right now we’re so planted in the racetrack that we can just run in this really tight pack.
“One of the suggestions that we talked about just a few days ago is come here next year in the Clash. Let a few of us come up with a package that we think you won’t see any fuel saving — you’re just going to see people hanging on. That would be the only fix.”
After the press conference ended, Motorsport.com asked Hamlin what he meant by that.
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“Taking away spoiler and slowing us down in the corners,” Hamlin said after a pause. “More lift. We need more lifting.”
Effectively, this would make the direction more akin to the races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, which is where the Cup Series will go next. The intermediate track received a reconfiguration in 2022 in the form of increased banking but the new pavement has aged quickly and produced a product increasingly similar to classic superspeedway racing.
Despite initial pushback from drivers about the concept in 2021, they’ve actually come around on the track in recent years as the pavement has aged.
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