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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Last Hurrah For Winged Warriors
Next week at Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR will revert to spoilers for its Sprint Cup cars...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 19, 2010   Bristol, TN
This weekend in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway the wing will be used for the last time. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Three years ago in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, NASCAR first raced what was then known by the euphemism “car of tomorrow.”

Radically different than the traditional NASCAR stock car, the COT was unlike anything NASCAR fans and drivers had seen before. With a higher center of gravity, less downforce and no aerodynamic offsets from side to side, the new car was a handful for drivers at the high-banked 0.533-mile oval.

Asked how he graded it after that first Bristol race in 2007, Kyle Busch was blunt. “An F. An F-minus,” Busch said. “It’s terrible. I can’t stand to drive the thing, but we have to. We have to make it work.”

And he was the race winner.

Of all the new features on the COT, none was more controversial than the aerodynamic rear wing, which mounted on two struts and stretched the width of the car’s trunk. In short, it looked like it belonged on a Honda Civic in “The Fast & The Furious” instead of a Sprint Cup car.

The wing was not popular with race fans because of its appearance. Over the 2009/2010 offseason, NASCAR decided to pull the plug on the aero device and replace it with a proper blade spoiler, starting next week at Martinsville Speedway.

Thus, Sunday’s race at Bristol will be the final event of the wing era, and, frankly, it doesn’t seem as if the wing will be missed. Not only will the wing look different, drivers believe it will race different, too, which could have some interesting ramifications as the season goes on.

“I’m looking forward to the spoiler,” said Kasey Kahne, driver of the No. 43 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford. “I think it should be pretty good. I think the wing has changed NASCAR racing a little bit, and the spoiler will change it again a little bit. That’s the way it’s gonna be and we really won’t know until we get 43 cars on the track and we’re at Texas or something like that – Phoenix maybe.”

Kahne said he thinks the spoiler will alter the handling characteristics of the cars. “Everybody is gonna have to change their driving a little bit because the side-by-side stuff is definitely gonna be different,” Kahne said. “I think it’s just more of when your car gets sideways, when it gets loose, the way it helps recover. When you’re racing cars side-by-side, and you’re on the inside of a car, the way your car handles there and right now I think everybody in here knows how that is. When we change it, it’ll be a little different and it’ll just take some time to get in those positions and feel out what that spoiler is actually doing to the back of the car.”

Roush Fenway Racing’s Greg Biffle participated in a recent NASCAR-sanctioned spoiler test at Texas Motor Speedway and came away enthused. “I have to admit, when we tested it at Texas, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, Brian Vickers and myself were the first ones with the thing on the car and I think it’s gonna be better racing,” said Biffle, who comes into Bristol third in points.

Biffle said he was encouraged by how his car handled with a spoiler on it instead of a wing. “I think the car showed signs of a little better corner exit, which is where this car really struggled to get turning and racing each other was that corner exit,” said Biffle. “We’ll just have to wait and see. I was by myself and felt the difference, so I think it’ll be better overall. We’ll know next week for sure.”

Jeff Burton noted that the wing didn’t cause any real technical problems, it just didn’t resonate with fans aesthetically. “I think the majority of the reason the wing is being changed is because of the way it looks,” said Burton. “That means I believe the wing could have worked and we’ve seen that. If you look at the races at the end of last year, the middle part on last year, you look at the racing we have seen this year, all those races that we have had that have been really good have been with the wing. So it doesn’t mean we can’t be successful.”

“I think it definitely looks better,” Kahne said of the spoiler. “That spoiler is pretty easy, it’s pretty normal and flat and just kind of a normal piece, but as far as a stock car goes, I think that’s kind of what a stock car is – a spoiler. If you want to race an Indy Car, then you’ve got a wing.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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