NASCAR's Next Gen Car Is Fundamentally Broken

[JKL]

In my opinion the next gen car is virtually unfixable. It’s not just an aero package or a tire compound, it’s the wheel width, the hp nascar refuses to change, the gearbox, the diffuser, the overpowered brakes, the spec parts, etc. It needs the type of fundamental changes that are really only possible with a move to a new generation imo.

[tyman]

The whole concept of a "spec" car in a stock car racing series is the problem.

I think Tony Stewart said it best when he was on Kenny Wallace's show a while back. He said quote "I don't think we should have got a sports car maker (Dallara) to design a stock car".

[MICHMIKEY]

There's many issues but the chassis are way too rigid, that's the main one. These cars have also needed to be lighter for decades but NASCAR doesn't care.

[hicktown]

My take on how to fix the car is to let the teams test and bring back practice each weekend.

Allow them to work on the car, let them massage the new body and add or remove parts, work on the engine or tuning

All the teams get together with NASCAR and say 1 week we will test at a superspeedway, next month intermediate track, next month is short tracks, then follow up with road courses. If one team finds something that works everyone tries it so a more complete notebook can be formed. That way we can see what does and doesn't work.

What we know works for the car are softer tires ex Bristol and New Hampshire race on the rain tire. So let's try that on other tracks in the dry or just a softer tire compound period.

[whiteboi_]

I think like Logano said, it’s a combination of everything. The big tires, the carbon fiber underbody, the rear diffuser, the lower hp. If we can get the rear splitter back and do some of the aforementioned changes above, then I think we could have a solid car all the way around (including in traffic and in dirty air) that would put on better races than we currently have.

[TeamAbrams]

Disclaimer: I am not an engineer, but IMO, the Next Gen car has fundamental handling issues because the chassis is too rigid. Ask anybody who has ever raced r/c cars - the cars with the most rigid chassis' handle like shit, the cars with more flexible cars are easier to drive and, if designed right, tougher. The Next Gen car has a flat floor and 3 clips that bolt together to complete the chassis. I'm sure I don't have to remind people of the rigidity of the back of the cars that came about in 2022 - they only fixed one part of the problem.

You've probably heard many times from the drivers by now: "I had no warning it was going to spin" or "it was tight and then it snapped loose" or similar comments a hundred times over by now - that's the rigidity of the chassis 100%. A horsepower increase or a smaller tire would not fix anything, it would just be a bandaid fix. The diffuser + softer rear springs change the handling a lot too but so does the super wide and draggy front end. Those are smaller problems though compared to the chassis IMO.

Lastly, the car is just too heavy. If there is any way they could knock 400 to 500 lbs off of this car, they should do it. It would help the dirty air dramatically.

[liambrotherton]

Looking back at my knowledge of aero, its progressed a lot from where I was back in ~2019.

The way I explained downforce in that old video was that by "removing air" from underneath the car, that's how to make downforce. Which was "true" to an extent with the Gen1-6 NASCAR vehicles. However as the Next-Gen has helped me better understand, that was only true because Gen1-6 vehicles underbodies were largely lift generators. The areas where you had a flat section (say the radiator pan) they actually were wanting to feed air to it to help generate downforce (curved splitters before they were banned).

The smooth floor allows the air to increase in velocity and thus decrease in pressure. Adding to the negative lift (downforce) of the car. However all the trailing arms, engine components, transmission components, bumper bars, etc, created localized slow moving pockets of air that in collective created a huge lift problem under the car. This was best solved by simply not allowing air under the car. Thus why the front splitter were welded to the floor in our previous eras. My knowledge of diffusers, etc was all flawed from this mindset.

Diffusers work for two reasons and these two reasons are two components of the same effect. #1 they decrease the pocket of slow moving air left in the cars wake, thus decreasing the negative effects of that wake. (downforce loss, drag, etc) #2 and most importantly they speed up the air coming out from under the car. This (as mentioned in the previous paragraph) decreases the pressure under the entire car, front to rear, and generates a lot of downforce.

Overall I still don't think the diffuser alone is really a big deal, the issue is the flat floor in front of it. A great example of this is that when they removed the diffuser the aero issues of the car remained. (short track package this year doesn't even really have a "diffuser" anymore) The main thing the diffuser removal helped with was allowing the car to run at higher yaw angles (how sideways the car is mid corner) without stalling downforce as aggressively. Thus allowing the drivers to hustle the car and tires harder. (Diffusers tend to be very yaw angle sensitive).

The main reason the NextGen has fixed the aero problems of the old Gen-6 car one intermediates are two fold.

#1. The car is designed to keep its wake very narrow by keeping the air better attached to the car all the way to the rear end. Critically that rear end tapers much more than previous cars and is straight, rather than angled on one side. The NextGen's wake is much straighter and narrower behind the lead car vs. the Gen-6 where the wake was very wide (due to the cars overall triangular shape and wide rear end). This created a situation where visually the car in 2nd could be fully outside of the direct line of site wake of the front car (ie a lane up) but still getting severe aero issues because of the large scale, angled wake from the lead car.
#2. The NextGen decreased the reliance on sideforce for lap time significantly. (this decrease plays a large part in the lap time decrease from previous cars despite similar overall downforce levels, see ARCA running times faster than cup at Dover) Sideforce was very wake and velocity sensitive. Think of it as a wing on the side of the car that was generating a force into the direction corner helping the cars stability. With that knowledge you could understand why in a giant wake of a gen-6, you could be fully out of the visual line of site for the wake, yet your sideforce was being critically effected and thus you were being slowed down.

TLDR the car was very aero sensitive and threw a bigger wake than the current NG car.

There are some stories from the garage that I've heard from the Gen-6 era that a car directly behind another car (in very specific circumstances) could actually be generating more "negative lift aka downforce" than when it was leading because of all the negative underbody and overbody elements (rear glass, etc) of the car for downforce creation. However ALL of this was negated by the loss of sideforce and thus even with more downforce than the lead car, they were still overall slower.

Overall TLDR: So while the NG addressed the size of the wake and car's sideforce reliance, they simultaneously made directly following another car 10x worse because of the flat underfloor.

I could absolutely have gaps in my knowledge, like I did back in the previous video, but hopefully the explanation is at least 70% true and will help everyone understand the car better. If anyone with more knowledge is around please feel free to correct sections of my statement below.

[TheBraydenBunch]

They better create a Gen 8 car. Which is basically just the Xfinity car, But with Gen 6/7 style bodies. But it’s probably unlikely.

[mlwilliam]

A really cheap option would be experimenting with ride-heights. Maybe if you get the splitter off the ground just enough you’ll lose a bit of downforce and mechanical grip will be important again. Richard Petty said years ago that stock car racing is better when it’s a mechanical grip game. That makes sense because obviously the lead car doesn’t affect the mechanical grip of the trailing car. This didn’t start with the ground effects of 03. It really started with coil-binding in 05 or 06. That’s when the teams figured out how to seal the front valance to the track. That’s when aero-blocking really took off. It’s obviously gotten progressively much worse since. The funny thing is that once the coil-binding started, the complaining about not being able to pass started and that coincides directly with the ratings decline. It’s really simple, gimmicks don’t work. The Gen 4 car was a good race car. They could pass. It put on good racing everywhere. As a result NASCAR gained popularity year after year. Once the cars struggled to pass each other, people stopped watching. All the playoffs and stage racing and other garbage won’t save a series where the cars can’t pass each other. It’s RACING. Make the racing good and people will watch. NASCAR since 06 has been the equivalent of a restaurant with great service, great scenery, good parking and below average food. You can dress it up all you want but you’ll lose business to a hole-in-the-wall steakhouse that has great food, which is basically what 90s NASCAR was. A bunch of rednecks with simple rules, and great racing.

[NickGreene]

"It just spun with no warning" means the chassis suck. Ladder climber nascar executives won't change anything though, too much egg on their face.

[RACINGUS]

remember when everyone was complaining about the Gen 6 car, and now those same people want it back?

[JohnsonTheSecond]

They Danica Patrick'd the sport - they tested the cars running fast laps and forgot to test them racing eachother

[OHIOFARMBOY-kbfn]

They need to change alot of aero stuff like a bigger spoiler for instance that would help with the dirty air situation. I doubt they will change anything.

[thegreattreon]

The problem in my eyes is the one size fits all formula. NASCAR wanted this car to be used at every style of track with no changes to the body or suspension and with all the variables in physics that every track has, it hasn't worked out well. Let the teams go back to having short track cars, speedway cars, and road course cars, bump the horsepower to 800 so the back end can at least break loose coming out of the turns, and just let the teams practice. Practice reveals so much about the track, the cars, the drivers and not having practice keeps everything in a box and I feel NASCAR has done this on purpose and it's gotta stop because we're almost at the point of no return

[joshuagray]

Well, for short tracks and road courses, NASCAR is already running a super-simplified version of the diffuser (it's so small, you forget it's actually on the car), and they already said they're not doing anymore aero changes for the time being, so...😐

Now you already know I want to add 80-100 HP to these cars lol, but not because I think it'll help the aero issues per se. But it'll allow for more off-throttle time in the corners (and therefore, more opportunity for lap time disparity), heavier braking, and a more even power-grip ratio.

To go along with that, one change I would LOVE to see is the bump stops deleted and the ride height minimums tossed out the window. That way, they can not only run the diffuser as low as possible, but the splitter also. I don't think NASCAR anticipated teams squatting the rear end of the Gen-7 so much, and the rake of the car had to have an effect on the front downforce. With no ride height minimums, that should allow the rake to be more even and give the car some front downforce back. And maybe run a 6 to 7-inch spoiler to give the car a little more topside downforce? Idk.

[VarishKasturi]

Its the same story. ever since 2007 nascar fans have been hating each car from the C.O.T to the Gen 6 car and now the Next-Gen. Theres gonna be a car that is similar to the gen 4 and is all around perfect but i'm pretty sure fans are gonna hate that one too, If it happens

[ScottG]

When you have to rely on Goodyear to try and help your product, you are already admitting that you failed. Way too wide of tire which gives the car way too much grip, gear ratios where the drivers have to shift which absolutely has ruined short track racing, dirty air, and on and on and on. Just put the cup drivers in modified Xfinity series cars.

[Reckless]

Cup needs Xfinity car with 850hp
this will be amazing racing.

[whoasked]

The thing is
this car is absolute peak on intermediate tracks
some of the greatest racing we have ever seen on those tracks
not to mention the parity is amazing
but like the thing is I still think this car needs a bit more time to cook
I don't think we need to instantly juts kick this car to the side like ASCAR did with the COT
just when that car was getting really good they ditched it for the Gen 6
idk if NASCAR needs to go through that again
what they need to do is take a good hard look in the mirror and admit defeat that this car is not as perfect as they think it is
whe it wors it works
but when it doesn't it really doesn't
they need to actually address road courses and short tracks and not just slap band-aids on it
the drivers the teams AND the manufacturers are literally all begging for more horespower
and the drivers themselves are giving plenty of solutions for these cars
so overall I personally think this sport is in a better place than it was 5 years ago but we still need to improve
I hope NASCAR takes the lessons learned form this generation of car and improves on it in the next generation
with that being said I can't wait for fans to be glazing the shit out of this car 5-10 years after its gone like every other generation of car

[Borchert]

It's such an easy fix, unrestrict the engines, take the tapered spacers back off, give these guys the 850-950hp they had in 2014, they could probably push over 1000hp out of these engines now a decade later. I promise you this would help so much, much faster straightaway speed, harder on the brakes in corners, the power needed to overcome dirty air, the power needed to actually wear these tires out, horsepower literally fixes EVERYTHING but it's the one area NASCAR fucking refuses to touch lmao