Sofa Sideline – Helton’s Response to Aero Issues

Last weekend during race weekend in
Darlington, NASCAR President Mike Helton had breakfast with members of the media
where he entertained questions from those present. Following is response from
Mr. Helton to a question regarding the aerodynamic issues that the teams have
been facing.

Q – Address some of the aero
issues…comment.

"That can take all morning…Let me
summarize this way: Over the last few years, aerodynamics has become a huge
issue. It’s always been a big issue; it’s become a very huge issue because
of the technology. And particularly when NASCAR started taking cars to the wind
tunnel, which happened, by the way, to be from Darlington about six-seven years
ago, realizing that we needed to be smarter about it then aero became something
that is an instrument that we use to make rule changes, but that also appears to
have turned into an instrument that is being utilized for great debate among the
manufacturers and the teams, either directly with us or through you to us. So
that’s kind of where we are with aero out in the garage area."

"Relative to what it means today: We
made changes in Daytona as we told everybody in October after we left Talladega
that we would quickly for Daytona because we were going into that particular
unique facility with a lot of unknowns. And we were going to react quickly. We
were on record back in October, first of all with the competitors saying that’s
what we were going to do if we made these changes and everybody agreed. That
didn’t necessarily apply to Rockingham or Las Vegas, or Darlington or Atlanta,
but in the overall effort to keep the cars as equal as possible on the
racetrack, certainly we continue to look at aerodynamics. There is an argument
from the General Motors camp that the Monte Carlo, in particular, is
disadvantaged at this point. The wind tunnel results after we took the cars from
Atlanta last week showed some differences. The performance in Vegas by the Monte
Carlo was different, quite different, from the performance of the Pontiac and
the Monte Carlo in Atlanta last week. And what that speaks to, I think, is that
there is uniqueness at every facility we go too. And of the horsepower, the drag
and the down force of the cars, as well as the particular ability of each
individual team that might be better suited at one facility as opposed to
another; all play into to the performance of cars on racetracks. We will not
discount the importance of aerodynamics. We understand that that’s a big
factor and we are very interested in every car on the racetrack, regardless of
what brand it might be, to be able to be competitive. And leave it up to the
teams to and the effort that they put into it to determine the outcome."

"So in the meantime, we analyze all
the information. I’m not going to sit here and tell you we’re not going to
do anything. We have not done anything since we left the tunnel Monday for this
weekend. There will not be anything changed for tomorrow.

"Part of our dilemma is cutting
through all the crap, quite frankly. And it gets turned up pretty high depending
on what moment we’re in. That takes a lot of time. That’s a big distraction,
trying to cut through all of that. We know what dyno numbers show us. We know
what aero numbers from the wind tunnel show us. We see, as you see, what happens
on the racetrack. And then we’ll make decisions when we feel like it’s
necessary to make adjustments. It seems, though, in the meantime, it’s become
an element today that ‘he who barks loudest, bites…or gets a reaction.’
And we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to react just because
someone’s raising holy Cain. We’ll react because we feel like we need to
when we need too. Prefer not to react in a manner where we have several
different body issues as we go through the season. We have a different setup in
Daytona and Talladega that we do all the rest of the year. If we’ve gotten to
the point of where we fine-tune the cars and we’re not talking about eights of
an inch or 15 counts of down force or 20 horsepower drag; if it’s gotten now
to the point that we have to make a set of rules for Daytona and Talladega and a
set of rules for flat tracks and a set of rules for intermediate tracks…I don’t
know. But if that’s what we have to do, that’s what we’ll do to keep
everybody in the hunt."

That was just the first question….and I’ll
leave it to you to you, the reader, to absorb. As for me, it left my head
spinning….wait, was that what was supposed to happen? Part II to follow.

That’s it for now.