After learning Road America last year, NASCAR Cup teams face a new challenge the second time around
Dave Kallmann
When NASCAR brought its premier Cup Series back to Elkhart Lake last year, the 4-mile Road America layout was new to some of the drivers and many of the behind-the-scenes people charged with making their cars fast.
The Kwik Trip 250 this weekend will be a lot like starting from scratch again.
Just in a completely different way.
“We knew the car very well last year, so we just had to learn the track,” said Alan Gustafson, crew chief on the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of defending race winner Chase Elliott. “We were very confident in our road course stuff and what we had, and we knew how to tune it and what to do to get it right.
“And now it’s going to be not completely opposite but now we know the track much better and know the car much less.”
That’s 2022 in a nutshell.
The new Next Gen car – a massive technology shift after years of small, incremental tweaks – features independent rear suspension and a transaxle that handles both the gear changes and power distribution to the drive wheels, as well as many more parts than are common across teams and manufacturers.
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“We’re in a tighter box with this car in general, not just at road courses but every week,” said Jeremy Bullins, crew chief on the No. 2 Penske Racing Ford driven by Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric. “The basic suspension parts are spec’ed out by NASCAR. So it’s not like we can design a different set of spindles or upper control arms because we think they’re better.”
Consequently every driver, every engineer and every crew chief faces a steep learning curve at each track.
Changes that were possible throughout a weekend – Elliott’s team made plenty after practice and during the race last year to get Elliott comfortable – might not even exist this time around.
“The adjustability isn’t there, or at least we don’t have as good a grasp as we did with the old car on what knobs to turn to get the performance out of the car to get what he needs,” Gustafson said. “It’s going to be similar. A lot of unknowns.”
But again, that’s 2022. Unknown is an apt word to describe it.
Another common word is parity.
Heading into the 18th race of the year Sunday, 12 drivers and six teams already have won at least one race. None of those drivers have won more than twice, though, and four of them have gotten to victory lane for the first time in the Cup Series this season.
Another example of the parity: Newcomer Trackhouse Racing is outperforming some of the bigger, more established teams, accounting for three wins among drivers Ross Chastain (two) and Daniel Suarez, who hadn’t won before this season. The team has won both road races, with Chastain at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, and Suarez three weeks ago at Sonoma (California) Raceway.
“The biggest thing that you’ve probably seen this year is you’ve seen different OEMs be successful at different tracks,” Bullins said. “I think a lot of that is driven around the cars, as close as they try to be between manufacturers, everybody has different strengths and weaknesses and their downforce levels, drag levels, horsepower levels and their engine power curves that their engines make.
“There’s places the Toyotas may be better because of their engine curve or places the Chevrolets or the Fords run better because of their engine curve and where they make peak power where the RPM band falls that week.”
To prepare for the weekend, teams will rely on one weekend worth of experience with Road America and two weekends of road course experience with the new car.
The finish at CoTA leaned toward Chevrolet, with six Camaro drivers among the top 10 finishers, including Chastain, and two each for the other manufacturers. But practice was more balanced, with eight teams getting at least one car in a top 10 that included five Chevys, four Fords and one Toyota. Qualifying had similar balance, with four Chevys, four Fords and two Toyotas.
At Sonoma, Ford had six cars in the top 10 at the finish to Chevrolet’s four, but one of those Chevys was the winner. Again, the spread for practice and qualifying was more even.
If the Kwik Trip 250 plays out anything like last year, the winner could be decided by a combination of speed and strategy.
Strategy options haven’t changed with the car. They mostly come down to the choice of when to pit. But deriving speed and developing the car throughout the weekend will be a new battle for the teams.
“It’s just trying to understand the balance of the car and braking performance and the trade-offs between making your car good on entry, making it turn in the center and having good forward drive,” Bullins said.
“It’s all the normal things you work on with the race car, you’re just doing it differently with this car.”