I recently was on a cruise with officials of one of the companies I represent. There were a lot of race fans on this cruise and I just have to tell you that they are very stoked about the upcoming NASCAR season.
The message was loud and clear that our fans are hungry for NASCAR. I had one couple tell me that even though the NFL playoffs are going on right now, if there had been a NASCAR race, they would have watched the race and taped the football game.
Now as we’ve talked about in recent weeks, race teams have been to non-NASCAR sanctioned tracks testing.
This week everyone is together at Daytona International Speedway testing on a track they actually race on. They are also going full-bore eyeball-to-eyeball with their competition. That lets everyone evaluate where everyone else is in the same environment where they all will race in February.
The teams are able to accumulate data they will need a few short weeks from now when we go back to Daytona. This also gives them the chance to see how their stuff stacks up against the competition. Getting the data is very important, but quite honestly it’s also a good ego boost. It can be an eye-opener of where we, as a team, are today.
Keep in mind that in the recent handful of years, there really wasn’t any NASCAR-sanctioned testing, so when you rolled into Daytona International Speedway in February, you basically had what you had. So this is a great opportunity for all the teams to gain valuable info on their cars, but also on how their competitors are doing.
The new surface at Daytona is going to change things, obviously.
Sure, all the teams have their old notes to fall back on, but now new notes will have to be gathered. In the NFL, they have a preseason that includes training camp and then four preseason games. The three days at Daytona this week is our preseason. It allows the teams to work through some things.
Testing at Walt Disney World, or New Smyrna or Rockingham, etc., is great, but we don’t come back and race there. You simply don’t have the same opportunity there as you do at Daytona. Trust me when I tell you all the teams will be taking full advantage of this opportunity at Daytona.
There will be a lot of people at the track this week. Each team will be bringing its engineers, body men, fabricators, etc., just in case they need to change things about the car so they can maximize this test session.
These three days at Daytona are very important. In addition to all the data you will gather, it also will give you an idea of whether the information you have been getting from the wind tunnel and your own seven-post machines is accurate. Basically, this is a good check and balance and that’s why that’s important.
Keep in mind that teams aren’t going to show everything they have these three days. You won’t see the best motors, obviously, because teams will keep tweaking on their motors right up till we all leave for Daytona in a few weeks. The cars and setups will be massaged after the data from the test is collected.
So these three days are very important to the teams and, naturally, it also fires up the NASCAR fan base to have cars back on the track at Daytona.
