When the NASCAR circuit arrives at Atlanta Motor Speedway for the second race of the season, the first at a non-restrictor-plate track, there will be a host of new rules for Sprint Cup cars.
Among them are a reduction in horsepower along with a reduction in downforce. Drivers will be allowed to make chassis adjustments from inside the cars, and officiating on pit road will be done more with electronics, taking some of the judgment calls out of the equation.
Former driver and Fox analyst Darrell Waltrip said the new pit-road rules could be problematic for teams, especially at Daytona, Atlanta and some of the earlier races on the schedule.
“Where situations such as when a crew member going over the wall too soon were judgment calls before, they’re now monitored electronically,” Waltrip said.
“I expect teams will struggle with the implementation of this new program until they get comfortable with it and understand completely how it works, what is expected of them and where the parameters are. …
“I’m a little concerned that we’ll see a lot of penalties early in the year, but maybe they’ll prove me wrong.”
Larry McReynolds, a long-time crew chief who now works alongside Waltrip as an analyst, said one rule change that is not getting a lot of attention could have the most impact.
“The biggest one is the ban on testing other than the tests in conjunction with NASCAR or Goodyear,” he said, adding that rules changes always seem to affect some teams more than others.
“We saw that last year with the no-ride-height and downforce changes. Joe Gibbs Racing struggled when compared to their 2013 performance.
“If anything, what the testing ban could do is give an advantage to the middle-tier teams who typically can’t afford to test. It levels the playing field a bit more for them.”
Cup driver Ryan Newman, who has an engineering degree from Purdue, said the impact of the horsepower and downforce changes will depend on the kind of tire compound that Goodyear uses to respond to the changes.
“I think the way we drive the cars will be very similar, and I think what really affects us the most is what Goodyear does as far as developing a tire that gives us what we need to make the racing better, and that is a tire that falls off,” Newman said.
“Because of the less downforce the tire does not need to be as durable. We saw so many problems with the tire last year and it was not because of low air (pressure), it was because of extreme downforce and the speeds that we were going because of that downforce. Taking downforce off helps the tire, but now Goodyear has to scale that back and give us a tire that falls off.
“That is where the quality of the racing is going to be impacted.”
The track at AMS is a worn surface that almost always leads to a fall off in speeds because of tire wear and consequently delivers multiple-groove racing. As a result, Newman said the AMS race won’t be a great indicator of whether the new rules package will improve the racing.
“I think we are going to see great racing in Atlanta because of Atlanta and not necessarily of the rules package,” he said.
Some in the sport look for the new rules to benefit Kyle Busch because less horsepower in the Cup cars makes them more similar to the Xfinity Series cars he’s been so successful in.
“I like to hope that the Cup cars getting closer to the aero and engines of the Xfinity cars will lend itself to my driving style,” he said.
“But now I’ll be racing against the best of the best, and that’ll make life a lot tougher on Sundays than it has been on Saturdays.”
But as the old saying goes, the cream always rises to the top, so people such as team owner Michael Waltrip are anxious to see if defending Cup champion Kevin Harvick and his wizard of a crew chief Rodney Childers can come up with a setup that works well given the new rules.
“Harvick looked like he was glued to the track every week, and he could drive the heck out of it,” said Waltrip, who fields the Toyotas driven by Clint Bowyer and Brian Vickers and once employed Childers.
“It will be interesting to see if Rodney Childers can put a (similar) setup under the car again given new rules.”
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