Ford Motor Co. shows off its 2013 Fusion sedan which will see action in the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. (Photo: Ford Motor Company)

Tasked with determining the “common areas” as a baseline led to an unprecedented situation – almost weekly, representatives from the four manufacturers gathered at the race track to meet and discuss what changes could be made that would conform to NASCAR’s standards while making sure those changes worked not only for the new design of the individual race cars, but for the production cars as well.

Working so closely together was a big move forward for a group that typically keeps its processes and procedures as closely guarded as possible.

“It was a little bit of, I don’t know if it was uneasiness, but you were guarded when you walked into that meeting the first time,” DiMarco admitted. “Because you didn’t know [what to expect]. You knew all the players and you were social with them but ... ‘why are they saying that, what are they trying to get around us?’ Now, it’s a great relationship and I think it’s a model we’re going to use going forward for any other projects that come up within NASCAR.”

“[We worked] extremely close,” Bailey said. “There have been moments of tension and some disagreements with body surfaces and common points, but in the end every brand achieved the identity they set forth.”

Hitting the Track

While much wind tunnel and scale model testing has already been done by the individual manufacturers, the first on-track test was conducted Feb. 1 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Each of the four participated, with drivers Kyle Busch (Toyota), Kasey Kahne (Chevrolet), Matt Kenseth (Ford) and Sam Hornish Jr. (Dodge) on hand for the private, one-day session.

“The things I was looking for were just ... how does it drive, how do the side forces feel?’ Kahne said. “How does the downforce feel, the front [of the car], down to how is the car turning?

“And all that stuff I was really happy with.”

Kahne said the teams also ran together on the track to get a feel of how the cars would react in traffic. “It was solid; the car was always really solid,” he said.

Suhy called the test a “non-event” from the drivers’ perspective.

“We had done wind tunnel testing on our own; a couple of weeks ahead of the Homestead test we all tested our parts on a common car in the wind tunnel so that we kind of knew how we compared to one another on a common baseline,” he said.

Still, validation was needed and the best place to obtain that was on the race track.

“If you recall back the first mile and a half test with the car of tomorrow was at Atlanta and I think that was when we learned something we didn’t know,” Suhy said. “We went there having done a bunch of wind tunnel testing and scale model testing and there was a problem with side force on the car. I think Jeff Burton spun on ... his first lap.

“We factored that of course into the new car but as much as you try to factor into the new car and you test it in the wind tunnel, you [use computer analysis] and you do scale-model wind tunnel testing, you still don’t know what you don’t know. So going to that test at Homestead was a big deal for us.”

Going Forward

With initial areo targets from NASCAR, each of the four manufacturers will continue, “to do additional development work to meet the targets,” Bailey said.

The bulk of that will be done “virtually” and in wind tunnels, he said, before the cars resume on-track testing.

Conversations between the four groups will continue, but no testing as a group or individually has been scheduled. It’s likely that any such tests will be conducted later in the year, probably the day after a race at predetermined track, much as was done with the COT and the testing process for electronic fuel injection last season.

“We don’t even have parts for the cars,” DiMarco said. “These are prototype vehicles that we have developed. We just don’t have parts that we can produce them in masses. Once we get our design directions settled in, then we can start making some parts for multiple teams to try and then we’ll go to the race track individually and as a group to hammer out the finer details.”

Until then, Suhy said, “Everyone has some work to do.”

““To go off and try to tweak our design a little bit, our parts a little bit to meet the aero targets that NASCAR has set. We’ll be back in the wind tunnel to validate that,” he said.

“I think once that’s done, you’ll see teams – and you might even see it before that – you’ll see some teams and it may be some of ours or some of the other [manufacturers] out there building cars and testing them on their own.”

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