Nationwide's new cars will match Cup cars in safety, but differ in chassis

By Lee Montgomery - Associate Editor

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Nationwide Series teams work on the new car during the test at Richmond International Raceway.

David Griffin
NASCAR Scene

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RICHMOND, Va. – NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said the new Nationwide Series car’s safety features are exactly like those in the Sprint Cup version, and that the chassis is 85-90 percent similar.

Does that mean the two series will become closer than ever? Or will the differences in the bodies of the cars and the 10-15 percent differences in chassis be enough to truly differentiate the series?

The Nationwide car of tomorrow looks different than the new Cup car, using a rear spoiler and a smaller splitter. This year, as the Cup series has used the new car exclusively while the Nationwide Series remains in an older model, Cup drivers have been less inclined to race in the Nationwide Series.

“I don’t think you want to discourage crossover,” Pemberton said. “I think you want to encourage competition and keep it separate. There are guys in each garage area who don’t mind competing head to head. What they don’t want to be is disadvantaged. You become disadvantaged when a guy can walk 30 paces and bring his setup from one garage area to the other. It’s our goal here to let everybody play on an even playing field.”

That’s the reason why the Cup cars will continue to use the bump-stop chassis, while the Nationwide cars will keep using the coil-bind setups. Bump-stop chassis uses shock absorbers as the main component of the chassis, while the coil-bind chassis use springs to help control the car.

“It’s good that NASCAR is making the cars [have] their own identity with the two different packages,” said driver David Ragan, who competes in both series full time. “It should help young drivers getting into one of these cars [in their] transition to a Cup car.”

Besides, Ragan said, a race car is a race car. Any good driver should be able to adapt to vehicles in each of NASCAR’s three national series, he said.

“I think they need to be a bit further apart,” Ragan said. “If you can drive a race car, you can drive about anything, whether it’s a truck or a Cup car or a Nationwide car.”

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Comments

1 response to "Nationwide's new cars will match Cup cars in safety, but differ in chassis".

1

Thomas Mikulski said:
Sep 9, 2008 at 3:50 PM
Safety,YES!I agree. But PLEASE bring back the spoiler and coil spring set-ups to cup and than MAYBE "we" will get back to the REAL racing that the REAL fans used to enjoy. As far as "stock cars" I guess we will NEVER see that mfg. body anymore. What a shame!! "Win Sunday,go to work Monday!"
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