NASCAR officials and current and potential manufacturers are already hashing out the regulations for the Gen 7 NASCAR Cup Series cars, which are expected to arrive in 2021.
Speaking to Motorsport.com, NASCAR’s had of racing development Steve O’Donnell said the series has been working on the proposal model for the Gen 7 NASCAR Cup Series cars for the past year and is now getting feedback from manufacturers before deciding on the final draft for the rules package. Automakers are hoping the Gen 7 cars will look more like the production road cars they are styled after and also feature engine technology that is more closely related to what they sell in dealerships.
“If you look at a lot of the dialogue we’ve had with our existing OEMs, potential OEMs, there’s a lot of interest to do some things differently in terms of making the cars look even more like they do on the street, making sure that we can evolve some of our engine technology as well,” O’Donnell told Motorsport.com “So what we’ve done is spent the better part of a year putting together a Gen-7 model.”
“We’re in process now of going out and talking to OEMs, talking in the industry and getting their feedback on what they like and what they may want to see tweaked, but the goal for us is to roll this out fairly quickly with an accelerated timeline to 2021.”
Chevrolet’s rivals at Ford have introduced a new Mustang body for the 2019 NASCAR season, echoing its decision to begin racing the Camaro in NASCAR’s top tier at the beginning of the 2018 season. The revised NASCAR rules package for 2019 has allowed Chevy, Ford and Toyota to make their cars look a bit more like road cars, but they are still hoping to see even more road relevance in the Gen 7 cars.
“As much as we like that we’ve been able to make our new car look like a Mustang, we’d like the ability to do even more in that area,” said Ford Peformance director Mark Rushbrook.“In terms of what you see on the outside of the car, we’d like to see a few changes underneath the car for a little bit of technical relevance.”
(source: Motorsport.com)
Comments
Wonder why they don’t go back to “stock cars”? Might help interest to come back.
Nothing of any significance will come of this. NASCAR will continue it’s inevitable decline toward oblivion. It’s been argued ad nauseam that NASCAR sucks because stock cars are not in anyway shape or form “stock” cars. Hell, they aren’t even good silhouette cars.
No one is saying they need to trot out race prepped FWD grocery getters (although that would be interesting) but at least give us cars that run engines DIRECTLY related to the street V8s in EVERY WAY.
For instance, ALL of Fords V8s are OHC, so let them run OHC, or even a race version of the Ecoboost V6. GM should be allowed to run any version of the LT V8s : NA – Supercharged. Fiat Chrysler should be allowed the same. If an unfair advantage rears it’s head the ONLY handicapping allowed should be a universal HP cap. How each manufacturer achieves that is entirely up to them.
As for the chassis itself, I am fine with a purpose built race chassis, BUT it must be have all the same suspension hard points and design as the street car, and engine placement within 10″ of the original street car it’s supposed to be replicating.
As for the appearance, it MUST be a ‘visually exact’ silhouette of the street car, with allowances for aerodynamic aids. Similar to the old DTM race cars or the 2000s era V8 Supercar series.
In other words only an absolute car geek or race fan should be able to instantly identify the myriad of saftey and race changes required to make the car spec. A casual observer or child should see the car in the paddock, or fly past on the track, and actually consider that the car is little more than a race modded street car. Just like how NASCARs appeared in the 60s and 70s.
Speeds WILL NOT drop (we have home built street cars exceeding 200+mph all the time now, with no aero aids) the racing will be close, and the performance will be comparable to what we see now. In fact the cars may actually be better. The only advantage in modern NASCAR cars vs heavily modded street cars these days is safety. My proposal does not eliminate that.
If NASCAR does something similar to what I propose, if only just the silhouette/replicating the street car angle; that alone would generate real interest again. NASCAR has nothing to do with “stock cars” or what the fans drive and buy. Which by definition it IS NOT stock car racing.
the cars are too fast for good racing. no need to be going 200MPH and having the driver afraid to bump another car while passing. racing is rubbing and we no longer have that till the last laps. go to composite bodies so that a little bump will not mess up the aero or cut down a tire