New spoiler to replace rear wing on Sprint Cup cars beginning at Martinsville, NASCAR officials confirm
Crew chief Ryan Pemberton (far left) chats with NASCAR officials Robin Pemberton (center), John Darby and NASCAR President Mike Helton at the NASCAR test at Talladega Superspeedway March 16.
// Rusty Jarrett, Getty Images for NASCAR
CONCORD, N.C. – NASCAR will begin using its new spoiler instead of a rear wing in Sprint Cup competition beginning with the March 26-28 race weekend at Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said Wednesday.
The spoiler will be 64.5 inches wide, 4 inches tall and be set at an angle of 70 degrees, Pemberton said. The spoiler will be a straight blade, as opposed to the ones used on the former Cup cars that were contoured. NASCAR will issue the spoilers only at Daytona and Talladega, but teams can buy them from Richardson Racing Products.
It will be the first time a spoiler is used in Cup competition with the new car, which was used at select tracks in 2007 and then every track beginning in 2008.
“[Martinsville] is as soon as we could be ready,” Pemberton said during a news conference that centered around the Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “You could have the teams build them and we would have been ready in 10 days.
“But as it relates to trying to give every team enough opportunity to get into their wind tunnels and get to the race tracks to test and for us to be able to regulate how the spoiler goes on the car and the big templates and the big grid we use to inspect the cars – a lot of that had to be changed.”
The announcement was not unexpected. Martinsville had appeared to be the target date for the introduction of the spoiler since January. It gives teams two races on shorter tracks – Martinsville and Phoenix – before the April 18 at 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway, where aerodynamics and downforce are much more of a factor.
Cup teams will test with the spoiler March 23-24 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Many Cup organizations were at the test Tuesday at Talladega, and teams used the spoiler at recent tire tests at Texas and Darlington as well.
“So far everything we’ve done with the spoiler has went really well,” said Michael Waltrip Racing’s Martin Truex Jr. “We had the Talladega test and that went very well. We actually ran it about two months ago down at New Smyrna [Florida] on a short track. Obviously, we haven’t ran it where it really matters, and that’s a mile-and-a-half and 2-mile-type downforce tracks.
“So we’re looking forward to the test next week. We’re going to learn a lot in those two days about that car. My first reactions were obviously it looks better. Every car I’ve ran except for the last two years of my entire life had a spoiler on it, so I feel a little more comfortable with it.”
The original thought with the wing was that it would be a good tuning device for the car and also could be attractive to youth, NASCAR officials have said.
“I was never crazy about the way the wing was mounted on the back of the car,” said four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon. “When I envision a wing being put on our car, I envisioned it a little bit more like a Trans-Am car, where it was raised up, more of a cool-looking concept, and also fit a function of aerodynamics, just made the cars a little bit more futuristic.
“But the wing that we put on there was just a glorified spoiler. It sat down on the deck lid. It wasn’t very appealing. We weren’t really using it efficiently. So when I heard about going back to spoilers, I was totally fine with it. This car looks good with a spoiler on it. From what I’m hearing, we’re going to get more downforce in the car.”
NASCAR is going to the spoiler because it was never embraced by the teams nor fans. Some drivers and teams believe the cars will be easier to adjust with a spoiler instead of the wing.
“Many of the teams already have got a month under their belts testing it at various places around the country,” Pemberton said. “They’ve got some experience and they’re not coming in totally blind.”
