The term “muscle cars” might evoke a certain set of images — a desert highway, GTOs, James Dean smoking a cigarette while wearing a leather jacket.
Harnessing that nostalgia and raw quality is partly what inspired NASCAR officials for the Nationwide Series to change the type of cars this year. It’s all part of an attempt to help the series establish an identity separate from NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series. For the first time, the new cars will come to Chicagoland Speedway for Saturday’s STP 300.
“There was a time, sitting up in Row Z of the grandstands, it was hard to tell the difference between a Nationwide car and Sprint Cup car,” series director Joe Balash said.
There are four types of cars — Ford Mustangs, Dodge Challengers, Chevy Impalas and Toyota Camrys — with updated safety provisions. Nationwide also redesigned the chassis and stipulated less horsepower than its Sprint Cup counterparts have, a measure designed to help teams cut costs on engines, Balash said.
So how have the drivers taken to their new rides, and what are some of the differences they have noticed?
It depends whom you ask.
“That’s an easy question for me to answer,” Danica Patrick said. “I can’t tell the difference. They feel the same to me. I don’t think that in my experience I would be able to tell unless I drove the old car and the new car back-to-back.”
Others, like Nationwide points leader Elliott Sadler, do notice. The old cars had a valance toward the bottom front of the vehicle, while the new cars have a splitter in the same location. If the valance hit the ground, it was no big deal, Sadler said, but if the splitter hits the ground, the tires could lose grip.
“It’s a disadvantage as far as teams, drivers, engineers — everybody working on getting that splitter as low to the track as you can without hitting it,” Sadler said. “It’s kind of a razor’s edge, a knife edge. There’s a huge learning curve right now with all the teams.”
Some drivers have been quicker to adjust to the new cars than others, such as Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who is second behind Sadler in points. Meanwhile, Riverton, Ill., native Justin Allgaier believes the new car is causing some of his recent struggles. Last season, Nationwide introduced the new cars in four races, but when Allgaier joined Turner Motorsports, Turner switched from a Toyota to a Chevy, losing all the knowledge he gained in those four races was almost for naught.
“We’re trying to work the bugs out of our new racecars and make them better, make them more comfortable inside the car,” Allgaier said. “It’s hard to start from scratch and just start over.”
Twitter @ChristopherHine
