NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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DILLNER: A Wasted Opportunity
I think the opportunity to test at Charlotte, especially given the current testing ban, was crucial...
Bob Dillner  |  Posted March 26, 2010   Martinsville, VA
Bob Dillner is a reporter for NASCAR Victory Lane, NASCAR Live! and The SPEED Report on SPEED. (Photo: SPEED)
Despite the fact NASCAR gave Sprint Cup Series teams two full days to test the new rear spoiler at Charlotte Motor Speedway this week, we still don’t know how the car will race.

Because no one opted to run in packs with other cars, we won’t know how the cars behave in traffic until the race is underway at Texas Motor Speedway in three weeks. With the exception of a few laps with four cars, at no point during those two days did teams run in packs to mimic race conditions in traffic, which made absolutely no sense to me.

I think the opportunity to test at Charlotte, especially given the current testing ban, was crucial because mile-and-a-half tracks like CMS comprise nearly one-third of the Cup schedule. Charlotte Motor Speedway was the perfect place to experiment with the new spoiler and shark fin that sits on the rear window and decklid. But it was a wasted opportunity.

Teams exploited the first day to their fullest advantage to gain a baseline of what their cars need. For instance, many worked on R&D with the spoiler and how it affected the car’s aerodynamics and handling. The common theme that first day was, “But we don’t know what the car is going to do when we get out in a pack,” with many teams indicating they intended to go that route on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, that didn’t transpire. Many of us anticipated multi-car runs, but with the exception of a four-car pack with Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Brian Vickers for a couple of laps, the runs were limited to single cars. A couple of guys went out two at a time late in the afternoon but that was it.

In my opinion, day two was a complete waste of time because the majority of teams simply tried out brakes, shocks, springs and so forth – the normal stuff that only affects the car in qualifying trim. But qualifying doesn’t pay any money or points. Teams race against 42 other competitors during the race. They race close to each other – not spaced out by dozens of feet – so why not do the same for the test?

I asked Mark Martin on the second day what he thought of the spoiler versus the wing. He said he didn’t really see much of a difference but wouldn’t learn the true test of the spoiler until they get into groups. I asked if they planned to run in a pack and he said they hadn’t really thought about it and would just do it during the race.

One car owner told me it was pretty silly that they’d just spent that much money only to work on qualifying runs.

Crew chief Brian Pattie was pretty aggravated after sending Juan Pablo Montoya out on the track and attempting to mix it up with another car a couple of times. On both occasions, that car immediately pulled off the track because the team didn’t want to run with Montoya. As a result, Pattie didn’t get the information about the spoiler’s performance he was seeking.

Additionally, Montoya told me he pulled behind Bill Elliott quickly to see how the air would feel coming off the spoiler of Elliott’s No. 21 car, and as soon as he got behind him, Montoya’s car went into major push-mode. He had the steering wheel cranked as hard as he could, but the weight the spoiler is making, in terms of air, is so different from the wing that he could not get the car to turn. That information gave them valuable knowledge about what to do to their car’s setup in race trim - and Montoya gleaned that just from one corner.

Some teams may be dismayed at Texas with what Brian Vickers told me after briefly running in that four-car pack. Vickers said it wasn’t necessarily the spoiler but more so the shark fin on the rear window and rear decklid that caused the major discrepancies between running alone and with the pack. Next to another car, the sideforce and the manner in which the car handled was much different than flying solo.

But no one will know definitively until the Texas race and I remain puzzled as to why teams failed to gather as much data as possible about race conditions. They’re not permitted to test at NASCAR-sanctioned tracks nowadays, so I expected them to squeeze every conceivable bit of data out of this opportunity. But NASCAR allows competitors free rein at test sessions and always has. Teams police themselves but I think they missed the mark this time.

Bob Dillner is a reporter for NASCAR Victory Lane, NASCAR Live! and The SPEED Report, among other programs on SPEED. He also hosts NASCAR Race Hub and NASCAR in a Hurry – Monday Edition for the network. Dillner has covered numerous forms of motor sports since his teenage years and got his journalistic start writing for Speedway Scene and Area Auto Racing News at only 15 years old. Dillner, owner of 51 Sports and operator of short-track racing website www.51SportsRacing.com, is a car owner/driver in the Aaron’s Pro Challenge Series and a co-promoter for the Pro All-Star Series, a Late Model series in the South.

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The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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