Full Throttle

At the end of this weekends NASCAR and ARCA festivities at MIS the track won’t fall silent until sometime Monday afternoon. The sanctioning body will be conducting further testing of its CoT at the two mile Brooklyn, Michigan facility.

Next weeks objective is to test some new parts and pieces for the car. The principal piece is a vertical side plate to be afixed to the rear wing. The plate is said to be adjustable so teams can adjust the angle to create side downforce.

“Instead of having the bodies offset [the chassis] the way they are today, they will generate side force with those pieces at the end of the wing,” said NASCAR Director of Cost Research Brett Bodine. “This is where we take what the teams find they need, and then they say they would like to be able to do this.”

Toyota’s NASCAR program manager Pat Wall seems to think the new system will work. “We’re really interested not so much the wing but what the side-port generating end plates do on that car at that speed,” Wall said. “We think it will help it handle.”

Without seeing it it’s hard to judge how effective it might be. First impression is the size would have to be fairly larger to have much effect. But my aerodynamics training is all by seat of the pants and not theory. I’ll have to wait until the quotes come out in Tuesday’s media.

One other interesting note is the front splitter. Maybe I’ve missed the news but that awful looking cow-catcher that hangs below the bumper may be constructed of wood. But not just any Home Depot/Lowes style wood, oh no can’t have that. The splitter is made of Jadrock, “an exceptionally hard and wear-resistent hardwood.” Who knew?

A lot of people I guess. Do a search of “Jabrock” and you will be amazed. For example try Gunner Racing who uses Jabrock for the skid plates on restored IMSA Camel GTP Porches and Lola-Porsches. Also note how they describe the material, “Jabrock is a type of rare hardwood that is exceptionally hard and resistant to wear.” (and it’s darn expensive to)

Why do I sense an attack on NASCAR by the enviro-weenies?

Bodine said the teams will have the option to test a more compressed fiber splitter at the Michigan test. “It looks real promising,” Bodine said. “It has tremendous character. It has very good characteristics that we liked in the lab. Now we’re going to take it to the track.”

Well ok whatever, it’s still looks like a cow catcher.

One other note on Gunner Racing. Those that have seen the Pixar flic Cars should be familiar with the character Doc Hudson. Far from being just an animated character there is a real vehicle and Gunner Racing built it.

It started life as two, a 1952 Hudson Hollywood Twin H and a Petty Craftsman Truck. Here is a series of photos taken during the process of melding the two together.

Again… who knew! And damn, I sure would love to have the finished product! My kids have seen the movie 5 times if I were to park the real Doc Hudson in the garage I wouldn’t have enough shelf space for all the “World’s Greatest Dad” coffee cups.

NASCAR, NEXTEL Cup, Car of the Future, Doc Hudson, Cars, Pixar, Sports, Petty Racing, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle