NASCAR President Mike Helton: No major changes in store for new Cup car
NASCAR President Mike Helton said Saturday at Michigan International Speedway that no major changes are expected for NASCAR's current model Sprint Cup car. // Sam Cranston, NASCAR Scene
BROOKLYN, Mich. – A day after Hendrick Motorsports driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said NASCAR needed a sense of urgency to improve the racing, NASCAR President Mike Helton didn’t sound so urgent and said “there is not going to be a major change to this car.”
NASCAR introduced its new Cup car for about half the races in 2007 and has used it full time since 2008.
“As you talk to the principals in the garage area – the team owners, the crew chiefs, the car chiefs – there seems to be in all these conversations the consensus around: Don’t make any changes right now because we don’t want to tackle those; we have spent a lot of time now understanding this car, and don’t throw a wrench in all of that in starting all over on something,” Helton said Saturday outside the Sprint Cup hauler in the Michigan International Speedway garage.
“We’ll continue to keep an open mind. But I’ve still got to say that I believe what we’re seeing on the race track now is as good as what NASCAR has put on the race track in a long time and you don’t want to disrupt that.”
A day earlier, Earnhardt Jr. said that the new double-file restarts had provided a spark to a series that desperately needed a spark, and that before the new restart rule was implemented, a late caution was needed to create excitement and that 95 percent of an event wasn’t worth the price of a ticket.
“The media could address it a little stronger, and I think the drivers could be a little more vocal about it, and I think NASCAR could … probably be a little more urgent in improving our product,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “The ultimate result is create exciting racing that the fans will enjoy, that the drivers enjoy, so everyone is happy. That should be our quest always, even when things are good.
“I feel like, especially right now, we need to really really try to turn over every stone, and that includes where we are with the COT and where we feel like its development is and where we feel like its future goes and where we feel like this car goes, how it evolves.”
Urgency wouldn’t be the word Helton would use.
“There’s always going to be debate on what you would do different, just as there was in previous models of cars that we raced,” Helton said. “We will always have that. The consensus right now ... from our perspective is we’ll look at things that we can do different, do better with the teams and we’re working with the teams.
“I don’t know if that urgency is a term that I would use, I think, realistically and reasonably, because we’re also in a period where urgency can create more havoc or more expense that we don’t need. And, oh by the way, I [believe in] the argument that the racing we’ve got on the race track now is as good as we’ve had in a long time, and a reaction from us could interrupt that.”
Helton also said that NASCAR has received driver and crew-chief feedback about areas of the new car that could be improved.
“There are areas that are very common in conversations – weight distribution is one of those,” Helton said. “Weight in general. A lot of that weight comes from things that we demand in the car – the cameras, the data collectors and everything. Those are things that we are working on internally to try to reduce the weight of what we apply to the cars.
“All of those are factors that we are working hard on that don’t change the dynamics of the car.”
One of the common complaints on the new car is that it is difficult to adjust.
“One of the reasons that there is less adjustability on the car, and a lot of it comes from the aerodynamic adjustability, is in order to keep control of the costs the teams have,” Helton said. “That was a designed part of this vehicle. There’s as much support of keeping it that way – actually more support in keeping it that way – than keeping that from leaking back out.”
Helton pointed to Earnhardt Ganassi Racing’s Juan Pablo Montoya performing well against bigger organizations, a sign that the new car is doing what it is designed to do as far as car performance.
With Earnhardt Jr. struggling this year, that probably impacts his views, Helton said.
“In all fairness, we’re always going to have somebody that says, ‘I wish they would do this differently’ because it fits their moment,” Helton said. “Tony Stewart last year wished we had done something different because he had a bad year last year. This year, it’s 180 degrees different and it’s the same car. We have not changed anything.
“We always have those moments where the procedures or the principle pieces of the sport are challenged, and that’s just natural.”
Helton said he did not interpret all of Earnhardt Jr.’s comments to be about the car.
“The way I read his statements were more broad," Helton said. “His expression … that we need to be working on things to make the sport better in general, ... I agree with that. As it comes to the car, he and his team in particular, … there’s some frustration there that contribute to his comments.”
