At Daytona International Speedway this weekend, there\u2019s a bigger mystery than which drivers will secure the final three positions in the Chase.<\/p>\n
The greater unknown is how the NASCAR Cup Series cars will behave with a new, untried competition package that features reductions in both horsepower and downforce.<\/p>\n
The engines in the Cup cars will generate roughly 465 horsepower, down approximately 45 horsepower from the car Tyler Reddick drove to victory in the season-opening DAYTONA 500.<\/p>\n
The seven-inch spoiler has been trimmed to four inches, thus reducing both downforce and drag.<\/p>\n
With no practice and single-car qualifying planned for the weekend, drivers won\u2019t learn what to expect from the new package until they start drafting in Saturday night\u2019s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at the 2.5-mile superspeedway (7:30 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt might look the exact same; it might be totally different,\u201d said Chase Briscoe, who is sixth in the series standings. \u201cI don\u2019t know. I honestly have no guess. I think we\u2019re still going to see drafting, for sure, but outside of that, I don\u2019t know. (The cars) could be extremely loose. They could be out of control where the field\u2019s spread out a little bit more, but I could also see us going there and it being the exact same.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019re going to definitely be harder to drive. You\u2019re going to see more guys have issues, probably in the pack, especially off of Turn 4 where you always see issues\u2014we haven\u2019t had that as much with the Next Gen car. You\u2019ll probably see more \u2018moments,\u2019 but up front, I don\u2019t know if it\u2019ll change that much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Series leader Denny Hamlin thinks the new package will make a difference in race traffic, but the specifics are elusive.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to change a lot,\u201d said Hamlin, who will start the Chase as the top seed after clinching that position last Sunday at New Hampshire. \u201cTalking to our aero guys, we think it\u2019s going to be a significant change in traffic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019m going to learn with the rest of them, but it sounds like it\u2019s going to be something we\u2019re going to notice in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Austin Hill, announced this week as the full-time driver of Richard Childress Racing\u2019s No. 33 Chevrolet next year, has found a reason for optimism as he tries to win his first Cup race.<\/p>\n
\u2018You\u2019re going to have guys that are fully trimmed out for just straight raw speed, and you\u2019re going to have guys that are full downforce and want to have a lot of balance in their car,\u201d Hill said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to know until that green flag drops on Saturday night what\u2019s going to be the right-case scenario.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing I am a little bit excited about with the Cup package is that from everything that I\u2019ve been told and all of the data that I\u2019ve gotten from GM, it seems to be as close as it can get to the O\u2019Reilly side, and that makes me really excited. So, I\u2019m hoping that\u2019s how it all is. But until the green flag drops, none of us are really going to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the new package approximates the O\u2019Reilly cars, Hill may have reason to celebrate. He has won four times at Daytona in the NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series, where 11 of his 16 career victories have come on drafting tracks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Daytona International Speedway this weekend, there\u2019s a bigger mystery than which drivers will secure the final three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-875535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}