unlikely I would think.

After a ordinary cup race at Sonoma, maybe they should take on road america instead. Or maybe it was just the lack of regular cup drivers doing double duties that made it a great race.
tough to work out a fuel stategie there given the length of the track, a single green white chequer would add 12 miles to the race! Notice some cars even had wipers. Good stuff!

That was the most well behaved Cup race I think I've ever seen, especially thinking back to last year. Love the road course races and would love to see another one in the Cup schedule. Montreal with the Nationwide race would be my first choice, as that always seems to throw up amazing races. I think Road America would just end up with endless periods under yellow, given the circuit length. Anyone know if the trucks have ever raced on a road course? Can't recall ever seeing one?

Thanks for the info, I noticed on the oval 'straightaways' they turn right to go straight

yep, pretty surprising. I don't get why Bayne is being overlooked. If I was him I'd be pissed.

Because Stenhouse Jr comes with budget (sponsors).

As for the car setup, since they introduced the Car of Tomorrow, it's one chassis for all eventualities. Years ago they used the same chassis for superspeedways ('Dega or Daytona etc..) as road courses - obviously with a different setup. You'd have an offset chassis for short tracks which put more weight on the inside. The Car of Tomorrow is a "straight up" chassis, ie: symmetrical as far as it can be.

To summarise, on banked ovals you run "stagger" (bigger outside tyres than inside to help turning left), you also run positive camber on the left, negative on the right, so both sets of boots are leaning in a bit! Again, a few years back, it was common to "offset" the car by running the inside rear axle trailing arm a little shorter than the outside, so the cars looked like they were crabbing down the straights, well actually the were!. NASCAR have banned that now, the cars have to run "straight".

They do turn right, in fact the new car is very good on a road course. Even though NASCAR mandate very simple chassis specs, they are very refined. Yes they're a handful. You'd be a handful with 900+ hp and no electronics to contain it. These flat tappet (no nice funky roller rockers here) motors rev to 9000+ and drive through the most rudimentary 4-speed dog box to a pretty basic live axle which is 3-linked with a panhard rod. They have got clever with adjustments on the chassis using things like spring packing rubbers that can quickly be added or removed to change the spring rate at a pitstop. They can adjust the way the rear suspension at the rear by adjusting the panhard rod (track-bar as they call it) up or down which shifts the balance of the car and changes the way it handles. They've got really clever with tyre pressures to. 0.5psi can make all the difference! And what's more, pit stops. 5 men over the pitwall max - two for refuelling (might be only one now they have gone to dry break self-venting systems), and three to do the wheel changing (one jack man, two wheel men), changing four tyres, 5-stud wheels, with one trolley jack, and standard (but fast) nut-guns, plus 22gal of fuel in 13 seconds. F1 used to be 20gal of fuel through a high speed rig, 4 wheels, 16 men - 9-10 seconds.

Next road course is Watkins Glen on 12th August, but for next weekend (1st July) they're at Kentucky - a 1.5Mile speedway - expect near on 200mph qualifying laps again! It's fast!

Thanks for the great info, I was curious because of pics like this of Jim Clark's Lotus with offset suspension for the Indy 500 Oval... sounds like Nascar used to do something similar but no longer. Presumably they can still offset the CoG to the inside for ovals?



At last that line in Days of Thunder makes sense "those tires are matched perfect and staggered special!"

Kentucky this weekend. Fast tri oval.

Big news is that Andretti racing are to start a cup team to run one car in 2013. They've signed a deal for Penseke engines and are believed to be chasing Matt Kenseth to drive the car after he was released from Roush earlier this week. Looks like Petty Motorsports are also tied up in this deal.


Trucks are back, but they ran yesterday.

Nationwide race is tonight. Starts at around midnight. It'll be on motorstv tomorrow (Saturday) at 9pm.

Cup race starts about 12:45am Monday morning our time.

Jeez that has to be one of thee most boring races in history, even contemplated switching over to Wimbledon at one point but came to my senses and saw it through. Hope the cup race is better.

Dillon got 6 points docked, $10k fine for crew chief.

Okay, so back to Daytona. No trucks. This is a restrictor plate track.

Nationwide race is tonight at around midnight or so. Will be on Motors TV at 15:15pm Saturday according to their schedule : http://www.motorstv.com/tv-guide?d=2012-07-07&...

Cup Race is Saturday night, green flag scheduled for 12:50am Sunday morning our time.

Hamlin has a back problem so will not be running in Nationwide, Logano takes the #18 in his place and Bowyer will run the #20

Also watch for a familiar name: Jeffery Earnhardt is in the #15 for the Rick Ware team.

In Cup there has been a subtle mod to the rules - radiator caps can be 32psi now (up from 25psi for the 500 and 28psi at Talladega). This helps with cooling temperatures (basically means you can run hot for a little longer in the draft).

Michael McDowell is not running the weekend, Mike Bliss will drive the #98

So a win for Smoke after some carnage late on. JPM can't get a break huh ?

Goodness knows what 'dinger is thinking, I think he's done with Penske, will be interesting to see if they let Sam run the car until season end.