When NASCAR first rolled out the Automotive of Tomorrow in 2007, it was hyped as the way forward for inventory automobile racing. Safer, stronger, and constructed to final. However ask anybody who drove it, and also you’ll hear a blended bag of recollections. Followers weren’t precisely thrilled both. With its boxy look, drivers discovered rapidly that this wasn’t simply one other race automobile. Fairly, it demanded an entire new strategy. And whereas loads of gripes got here and went, one subject particularly nonetheless stands out that pushed some veterans over the sting, together with Dale Earnhardt Jr.
The Automotive of Tomorrow’s most defining (and divisive) characteristic was the entrance splitter. For these unfamiliar, the splitter is a flat panel hooked up to the underside of the automobile’s nostril. It’s designed to enhance aerodynamics by creating front-end downforce, serving to the automobile follow the monitor at excessive speeds. Whereas efficient in concept, it modified the way in which groups and drivers arrange and dealt with their vehicles, and never everybody was on board.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was one of the crucial vocal critics: “The half concerning the CoT that, um, that bothered that I didn’t love was the splitter,” he admitted, pointing to the way it took away the flexibleness groups as soon as had with the automobile’s entrance valance. Earlier than the splitter, groups may tweak and grind the valance to their liking, creating small variations in how vehicles traveled into corners.
“One in every of us goes to do it higher than the opposite, and over the course of a 500-mile race, you’re going to see some folks with a bit extra power than others because of hitting that good,” Dale Jr. defined. “Everybody finally rapidly discovered that you simply needed to dwell in the exact same spot… and so in six months’ time we’re all very comparable in velocity and grip.”
