DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR officials mandated rule changes to the superspeedway package for Daytona Int’l Speedway ahead of the Aug. 29 event at the 2.5-mile track.
The rear spoiler will be shortened from seven inches to four inches, which is the same height as intermediate tracks. The move is at attempt to reduce drag, along with a slight reduction in horsepower from 510 to 465 to adjust for the reduced downforce.
The move is in hopes of making it easier to pass cars, allowing drivers to move through the field while eliminating the importance of track position and fuel strategies.
Point leader Denny Hamlin, who was involved in the process of identifying the new package along with NASCAR officials appeared on NASCAR’s ‘Inside The Race’ to discuss the changes.
“What we’re essentially trying to recreate is Atlanta at Daytona and Talladega,” Hamlin said. “It happens organically at Atlanta, the space between the cars, because the cars themselves are grip-limited, and the fuel-mileage (racing) really doesn’t happen because you have to be on offense constantly. If you watch the pack, there is no saving.
“Guys are dicing it up the entire race. So this is what we’re aspiring to get to at some point. And it’s going to take chunks here and there. This is our first bite of the apple at this, so what I believe is that from the numbers that I’ve seen, it’s going to be roughly a 33% gain in the right direction.”
NASCAR Event Management President John Probst also appeared on ‘Inside The Race.’
“We want to react quickly,” Probst said. “You know, Steve O’Donnell, our new CEO, is on us all the time to get the feedback and react on the feedback as quick as we can. And I think that working with Denny and the working group there, we made changes that we felt had the highest potential to make a big change, but with the lowest risk as well. Like, we didn’t pull every lever that we could because some of those would frankly require us to get 15 cars down to Daytona and try some more radical stuff. We’re not against doing that, but that certainly would affect the timing in which you unroll that level of a change for.
“So we got that group together. I feel like everybody in there brought their opinion and provided really good feedback. And I think that where we landed is the biggest change we feel like we can make without doing a full-blown test.”
