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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Spoilers Back At Martinsville
NASCAR’s Robin Pemberton said spoilers were shipped Monday...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 17, 2010   Charlotte, NC
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series will move to spoilers in Martinsville. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
It’s official: Starting at Martinsville Speedway March 26-28, the NASCAR Sprint Cup teams will be racing with spoilers measuring 64.5 inches wide by 4 inches high, according to NASCAR’s Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton.

Gone, presumably forever, will be the large, boxy wings that NASCAR’s new- generation race car has used since it was unveiled in 2007.

Pemberton, speaking at the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race kick-off event at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Wednesday, said the sanctioning body shipped out 83 of the rear spoilers Monday for use beginning at Martinsville.

And Pemberton said there was a very pragmatic reason for using the spoilers at Martinsville, the shortest and slowest oval on the circuit: “It’s as soon as we can be ready,” he said.

Making the changeover from wings to spoilers wasn’t as simple as just making a rule change, Pemberton said. NASCAR had to test the new spoilers and then allow teams wind-tunnel and track time to try the new spoilers out. Plus, manufacturers needed time to make them and new templates had to be created for Sprint Cup tech inspections.

Pemberton said teams will purchase the spoilers from the same suppliers who build templates for NASCAR. The teams will own their own spoilers, Pemberton said, but NASCAR officials will install them at each race, a way of ensuring no team is stretching the spoiler rules.

So far, testing has gone well. About two dozen teams tested the blade spoilers at Talladega on Tuesday, with a crucial two-day test scheduled for next weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“We felt like Talladega was a great test for us,” said Pemberton. “The teams worked really hard. A lot of input from some of the veteran drivers — Mark Martin and (Kevin) Harvick and Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, quite a bit. So we worked well together. And those drivers stuck it out, talked about ideas. Hopefully we answered most of the questions they had.”

So far, the decision to change from wings to spoilers has drawn almost universal approval from drivers.

“I feel a little more comfortable with it,” Martin Truex Jr. said of the blade spoiler. “I’m a fan.”

And next week’s test at Charlotte Motor Speedway will be a critical one, as about half of the Sprint Cup schedule is run on 1.5- and 2-mile tracks.

“I'm very anxious to get to Charlotte,” said four-time series champion Jeff Gordon. “ ... When we get to Charlotte I think is when we're going to find out what a spoiler really does in comparison to 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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