Full Throttle

NASCAR’s “Car of the Future” (COT) received it’s first on track test Tuesday but before I get into the article it may be instructive to look at a few of the speeds attained at Talladega in the past.

The current “plate” lap record is held by Ricky Rudd set last April at 191.180. After some off season fiddling with the aero package Elliot Saddler sat on the pole this past weekend with a 189.260 posting. The official track qualifying record of 212.809 mph (44.998 seconds) was set by Bill Elliott in1987 the year previous to “plates” being introduced.

By comparisan, Rusty Wallace hit 221 in an unrestricted Dodge last June with a top straighaway speed of 228. And it could have been much more:

“It was a helluva deal that I certainly will remember for the rest of my life. We’d all been wondering what it would feel like to run at Talladega again without the (restrictor-) plates and now I know. I’ll bet we could be running speeds up to 235 (mph) without the plates if we spent time doing some tweaking.

Keep in mind that is only a single car. My guess is a “frieght train” of 8-10 cars, along with the aformentioned “tweaking, might approach 250mph.

With that as a backdrop what has tens of millions of dollars in development costs achieved in the Car of the Future? In truth not much, at least in pure speed. The COT reached 185 mph in it’s first test.

Gary Nelson, NASCAR’s managing director of research and development, said that Dodge, Ford and Chevrolet were all represented in the test session. Petty Enterprises built the Dodge that Kyle Petty drove, Roush Racing built the Ford that Carl Edwards drove and NASCAR built the Chevrolet that Brett Bodine drove in the test.

The test was conducted to take advantage of the high banks and restrictor plate racing Talladega is known for.

“We wanted to validate some of the things we’ve been testing in the wind tunnel,” Nelson said.

Petty, Edwards and Bodine took to the track separately and in drafting combinations. “We had single-car runs until lunch at about 185 mph, then after lunch we had two- and three-car drafting,” Nelson said.

The “Car of Tomorrow” represents a bad news-good news situation for restrictor plate racing. The bad news is that even the COT will sport one of the speed-reducing plates. The good news, it will be a much less restrictive plate.

“You have to size the plate to the aero drag of the car,” Nelson said. “They had much bigger restrictor plates, and the drivers really liked that.”

A larger restrictor plate allows a larger flow of air and gasoline into the car’s motor. More gas and air mean more power for passing when the driver hits the accelerator harder.

The COT might return to Talladega for more testing before the year is out. Nelson said plans are for the car to be tested at Atlanta Motor Speedway in November, Talladega in December and Daytona International Speedway in January.

It’s important to remember speed isn’t the main reason for the COT, safety is. With added crush zones in the front clip and a driver situated further away from the side impact bars it provides a larger “coccoon” for the driver. In terms of speed the larger plate should provide better throttle response, and the larger “footprint” the car puts in the air may “dirty” the slipstream enough to allow an old school “slingshot pass.”

Maybe. There is a lot of testing miles to go.

NASCAR, Auto Racing, Car of the Future, Sports