It's Time To Clip NASCAR's Wings

It happened again.

Sunday during the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the Dodge driven by rookie Brad Keselowski became airborne after contact from Carl Edwards’ Ford. And while the actual accident itself is a controversy all its own, one thing is for certain; it’s time for the wings to go.

When NASCAR first introduced their next generation race car, it looked nothing like its predecessor. With a larger ‘greenhouse’ driver’s compartment and the front ‘splitter’, the racer, called the Car Of Tomorrow incorporated many changes. One of the most visible changes was the change from the traditional blade spoiler to a wing.

In April of last year, Edwards took a nasty tumble along the front stretch at Talladega destroying part of the fence and injuring several fans. NASCAR and track operators reacted by ensuring fences were made stronger and higher. NASCAR also said they studied the accident to ensure everything possible was done to make sure it never happened again.

At the end of the July race at Daytona, Kyle Busch, who was leading was tapped and went partially airborne, his momentum stopped by only the concrete wall. Then when NASCAR returned to Talladega, Ryan Newman was caught up in an incident and tumbled down the backstretch, later driver Mark Martin also tumbled.

Late last season NASCAR, who is constantly working on improvements on the car, said the old style blade spoiler would make a return sometime this season and replace the wing. NASCAR made it clear though that they had studied the accidents and the wing was not a contributing factor.

Anyone who thinks NASCAR doesn’t do everything they can to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the sport form drivers to fans is wrong. NASCAR studies every accident to make sure they are doing all they can to make stock car racing as safe as possible. And in fact on more than one occasion they have insisted they have studied the wing on the racecar and haven’t had any evidence that the wings contributed to cars becoming airborne.

With the incidents last year and Sunday’s ride by Keselowski, it may be in fact that their data is wrong. In each of these incidents, the cars were turned backwards, and the wings, in essence airfoils, were presented to the wind. It really doesn’t take too much to see that when the back of a car begins to lift and the wing gets air under it, the car will get a boost and be lifted higher. And that would be a condition that would be very hard to replicate in a wind tunnel.

In short, its time for the wings to go.

NASCAR has provided a rough timetable to the transition from the wing to the spoiler. They’ve also been tested at Texas Motor Speedway. The current thinking publicly has been that after more testing, primarily at Charlotte Motor Speedway in a few months the spoilers could be on by perhaps May. However as I reported in January, NASCAR has also scheduled a test on March 16 at Talladega Superspeedway that will be open to all teams and that will test with the spoilers in place.

After Sunday and if the test at Talladega shows no glaring problems, then perhaps it’s time for NASCAR to go ahead and make the switch.

The test will be held prior to the next NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race and would mean the spoilers would be in place for the two short tracks that are next on the schedule. And since the next two stops, Bristol and Martinsville, rely very little on any type of aerodynamics, the teams would get a feel for them during the following weeks as the series visits progressively longer tracks. After Martinsville, comes the one mile track at Phoenix followed by the 1.5 mile Texas Speedway and finally the 2.77 mile Talladega Superspeedway on April 25th.

Make no mistake, NASCAR wants safety to be their primary focus. But unless they internationally turn a racecar backwards at speed, it will be difficult to find out any useful information. Looking at last year’s incidents and Sunday’s wreck, throwing away the wings and putting the spoilers on before the next race should be at the forefront of everyone’s thinking.