Brian France said NASCAR liked what it saw at Kentucky
It’s fair to say Saturday night was the most entertaining of the five Sprint Cup Series races at Kentucky Speedway. While the 13 lead changes was only third-most in the track’s Cup history, the number of green flag passes increased more than two-fold over 2014.
The second stat is a telling one. The race featured a record 11 caution flags. Green flag pass numbers are typically inflated by rounds of green flag pit stops and long stretches of caution-free racing. Need an example? The 2012 spring race at Texas Motor Speedway, a forgettable race with two cautions, had 2,797 green flag passes. The 2014 fall race – you know, the one with Brad Keselowski and Jeff Gordon’s kerfuffle – had 2,592 passes and 13 caution flags.
Monday, NASCAR chairman Brian France said the sanctioning body liked the early returns of the lower-downforce rules the teams ran at Kentucky. The cars had smaller splitter leading edges and spoliers, meaning drivers were forced to slow down more in the corners with the goal of creating more passing opportunities.
“It looked like there was more passing, there’s no question about that,” France said on SiriusXM. “Cars were harder to drive; you saw some additional cautions as a result of that. And there’s a little bit of that possibly with not having a lot of practice time but they were slip-sliding a little more. And so therefore you saw more cautions and you saw more passing.
“But our mission and you’ve heard me say it many times, we want the cars as close as possible. We want as many lead changes as possible and most importantly we want the drivers that have got the talent and their teams, their talent and hard work take them as far as they can and have a real shot.”
We’re not surprised that France liked the race, and we’re also not surprised he wanted more lead changes. Not long after the race was over we were assuming the lack of lead changes in an otherwise intriguing race would be a point of emphasis afterwards. But the other points of his assessment of how NASCAR wants to improve the good things it saw at Kentucky are a bit head scratching.
NASCAR has touted how close its teams are for a number of years. Those times are reflected on the practice and qualifying sheets, where thousandths of a second can separate cars. But it’s imperative to remember that cars can only make a pass when there’s a difference in speed. If two cars are going the same speed, passing is nearly impossible.
Heck, the closeness of competition so far in 2015 under the previous rules was an impetus for what NASCAR tried at Kentucky. Since drivers had very little time off the throttle and were going the same speeds, passing was, well, really hard.
Not long after France talked about how close his company wants its competitors, he emphasized it again. And then again.
“And we’re going to try some things coming up here in Indy where we’ll go the other way,” France said of the higher drag package the sanctioning body will try in two weeks at the Brickyard. “And I’ll tell you what we didn’t see [at Kentucky] that we’d like to see more of, is more drafting. We didn’t see as much of that as we would have liked. And more pack racing, we saw that on the restarts but not quite as much.”
The reason teams weren’t able to draft at Kentucky probably has to do with the lower downforce. With a smaller spoiler, cars weren’t poking large holes through the air, minimizing the draft effect the car behind could get. And as we’ve seen with the normal six-inch spoiler, cars can’t get too close to one another because of the turbulent air coming off the car ahead.
One race is not a very large sample size. We’re fully aware of that. But it sure seems like drafting and the Kentucky rules package don’t go together.
Drafting will work at Indianapolis, where the spoilers will be higher. Since cars two-and-three wide in the corners at Indy isn’t recommended, the higher drag package makes sense. Promoting passing on the straightaways should help competition. Michigan, the track where it’s also being used, is a good litmus test to see if higher draft is mutually exclusive with less side-by-side racing in the corners.
But at most tracks, sustained pack racing is, well, unsustainable. If drivers are forced to manipulate the throttle in the corners at intermediate tracks – something that many advocate for – cars will likely be going different speeds. And passing each other.
In a pack, most everyone is going the same speed, similar to the normal 2015 rules package.
It looks like NASCAR hit on a good thing at Kentucky, and striving to improve it incrementally is admirable. And it may be on to something for Indianapolis and other flat tracks too. But there’s a risk in trying too hard to find a white whale that likely doesn’t exist.
Can cars be kept as close together as possible while also freely able to pass each other, almost at will? It’s doubtful. The sweet spot is probably a compromise between passing ability and the proximity of the entire field to each other. Hopefully France and NASCAR realize that. Sometimes really good can be plenty great enough.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
