O/T The V8s are coming!

[Lee Roy]

Fall 2009, Kurt Busch was on pole at 191.117 mph. In Spring 2010 (just the third spoiler race), Denny Hamlin went 191.327 mph. If there was a real difference in single car performance, these speeds wouldn't have been so close.

Where'd you get this from, Jayski?

[Bob Riebe]

To derail this thread again, my fear is that the Impala will be seen by GM as a viable replacement for the Commodore. Come 2014 both the Impala and the Commodore will be up for renewal, and if the Commodore's experience being sold under the G8 nameplate at Pontiac is anything to go by, Detroit won't see the point in developing the next gen-Commodore when they can just fully import the Impala on the "Super Epsilon" II platform.

The 2013 and 2014 races just might be the final death-knells for the RWD Commodore. Detroit already killed Monaro, they can do it again.

But they are selling the rwd, fleet order only, Caprice in the U.S.

[call_me_andrew]

Where'd you get this from, Jayski?

Race Results at Texas Motor Speedway - Racing-Reference.info

[slorydn1]

There are a select few, myself included, that are interested to know which chassis their driver is running at the next race. Is it a new car? Are his teammates running a new car? If it's an older chassis, does it have a winning pedigree? In the end it really doesn't mean anything-Harv ran #332 at Loudon, his Martinsville winner and was out to lunch this week, for example, but it was still cool to know, at least for me.

But Andrew is right. They not only would have a specialized car for say, a restrictor plate race, but they would even go so far as to build one car especially for Daytona with a little downforce added in, and another especially for Talladega which would be as clean as possible-and many teams might run that 'dega car in the Bud Shootout at Daytona due to its shorter tire runs and then go with the specifically built "500" car for the 500.

It wasn't that long ago (I think it was 08(?)) when Jr won the Bud Shootout in a car that had been run at BRISTOL the year before because he and his Hendrick teammates wrecked their primary cars in Shootout practice- That never could have happened with the "twisted sister" they were running previously.

Now they build cars in basically 3 categories- restrictor plate, road course, and downforce cars.

And yes, the larger teams are building a lot of cars still as they search for the latest and greatest in weight savings and chassis mounting points (etc) but they don't necessarily build an Atlanta car, or a Martinsville car any more. All one needs to do is look at, yes I'm about to say it, Jayski, and look at the cars that have been run in other races and see the diversity of tracks those cars have been run at.

It seems that 288, for example, is Harvs favorite chassis. He won Michigan with it last year, was p2 California (last year) Indy (last year) P3 at Homestead (2009) and has run it to top 10's at Texas, Pocono (3 times) and has run it at Charlotte, Kentucky and Darlington and Bristol- a nice mix of high banked and flat race tracks of varying lengths. You never would have seen that with the old car (most of these listed are from my notes that I keep, not all were found as jayski as he didn't seem to get into the chassis listing until last year, and I didn't notice them until this year).

I'm just using Harv as an example-go find your favorite driver and look to see where his cars have been run at.

Just looking at this past race alone, the 1 was run at Martinsville and Richmond, the 2 was run at Darlington, the 5 and 6 ran at Richmond, the 9 at Phoenix and Richmond, the 14 Martinsville and at Loudon last year, the 17 in the Allstar race at Charlotte (etc etc etc). Now you won’t find any Daytona or Talladega cars on this list, but it is a pretty diverse list.

[Lee Roy]

Good analysis slorydn1. It is true that the COT narrowed the envelope of advantages from building different cars, but there is still an envelope where advantges can be gained in building your own car.

[slorydn1]

Good analysis slorydn1. It is true that the COT narrowed the envelope of advantages from building different cars, but there is still an envelope where advantges can be gained in building your own car.

Oh sure, I totally agree with that. As they say, practice makes perfect-the more cars you build, the better you should get at it.

There can be a downside though-and a lack of on track testing really magnifies that.

It is possible to go down the wrong road in your cars (RCR 2009, Roush 2010) and spend the better part of a season trying to get back to the right road. And it gets to be almost impossible to build your way out of it. I don't know how Roush fixed their problem, but RCR ended up dragging their first generation COT's out of mothballs and started running them again, and performance stated to pick up again. Then late summer they started building new cars patterned after the 2007 models. 281 was the first of those "new-old" cars that Harvick got a hold of and he took it to Atlanta labor day of 09....That was the car where he went from p18-p1 and then a 4 second lead on a single fuel run in the mid point of the race. The car was terrible the first few laps after a restart, then would take off, being almost a half a second a lap faster than anyone else near the end of a fuel run. Of course, Nascar threw the typical late race caution for a single car spin (THANKS BOYAY) and Kasey Kahne ate Harvick's lunch on the final restart....288 that I referenced earlier was another of those nextgen cot's based directly on the 2007 models.


In my own convoluted way I only brought that up to illustrate your point as to the advantages of building your own cars. RCR was able to go back and look at what they had done, undo it, then get back to moving ahead again. Had RCR been buying cars from someone else, they may not have been able to do that, and where might that have them now?

[The Phantom]

V8 Supercars kick NASCAR to the kerb

[rasprodaga-odegdi.ru]

I do not think so.