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Next Gen cars stand up to the 'bumping and banging' at the Clash
By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer
LOS ANGELES — The best thing for NASCAR in its "debut" of the new Next Gen car was that the Next Gen car wasn’t the big storyline of the preseason Clash.
The focus was on the spectacle of the exhibition race at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
The reviews of the Next Gen car? Of course, they are incomplete after a race on a flat, quarter-mile track. NASCAR doesn’t stage regular-season or playoff events at such a track; the oval created inside the Coliseum was less than half the size of NASCAR’s shortest track (Martinsville Speedway is 0.526 miles).
Justin Haley wrecks into the wall with 35 laps to go in the Clash at the Coliseum
But there were plenty of things to notice about the Next Gen cars in their soft opening:
–– The composite bodies seemed, as expected, more forgiving. With bodies now made of carbon fiber instead of steel, the body panels tend to flex back into place. Scraping the wall in the old car sometimes resulted in a cut tire from a sharp piece of steel. There were no such issues, despite several drivers scraping the wall in practice and the races.
"The biggest win we saw today with the car itself is that we can bump and bang and not cut tires down," race winner Joey Logano said. "For as much as cars were on each other's doors, think about when we used to do that at Martinsville. [We'd] give each other a fender rip immediately. Next thing you know, your car is spinning out, [and] you have flat tires.
"There was a lot of bumping and banging, and it was OK. That says a lot about the body on the car but also the tire and wheel package that we were able to have really, honestly, full contact without being nervous about cutting tires down."
–– There likely is concern about the driveline. Both Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe broke their drivelines. Reddick said his occurred when he hit the clutch while accelerating to try to warm his tires.
"There are always things to work out with new cars, and it’s unfortunate," Briscoe said.
Reddick teammate Austin Dillon said he avoided making a similar move as Reddick to heat his tires and maybe found an alternative.
"He was pretty aggressive all weekend on getting heat in his tires," Dillon said. "He did a good job of that. I just feel like once they told me, I was already aware of it, but I wasn't spinning my tires with the clutch.
"I waited 'til the RPM came up, really hammer it instead of dropping the clutch to make it happen. I kind of got lucky, I guess, but I was never really that aggressive."
Dillon said the teams will have to look at the parts, and NASCAR’s chief racing officer, Steve O’Donnell, said they would.
"This is probably the toughest test we could have on the track that we set up in terms of durability, beating and banging, driveline, different things," O’Donnell said. "We'll learn from that."
–– Dissipating engine heat apparently was an issue, and NASCAR showed it was willing to change on the fly, as it allowed Chevrolet and Ford teams to remove louvers that were in their radiator vents that came out of the hood. Toyota doesn’t use them.
Most Ford teams took out every other louver, while Chevrolet’s looked like the Toyotas. Whether NASCAR will allow this at Daytona has not been announced.
–– The cars were more nimble in the turns. The tight turns on the quarter-mile track worried drivers, but they were able to navigate them with more speed in the Next Gen car. The bigger wheels and bigger brakes were probably the biggest factors, along with the different suspension.
–– The wrecks can still be hard, even at a short track. Aric Almirola and Justin Haley both had hard hits but were uninjured.
"It was a bigger hit than I expected with as slow as we were going here," Almirola said.
Aric Almirola spun out by Todd Gilliand in last-chance qualifier
But now there is a next step: Can those cars be repaired, and how long will it take to repair them? Expect many to ask Kaulig Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing about their experiences fixing the car.
All in all, O’Donnell was pleased, though he knows it means nothing for how the cars will race at a track 10 times as big for the Daytona 500 in two weeks.
"You didn't hear drivers getting out saying — or even prior to the race — ‘I can't drive this car,’" O’Donnell said. "Knowing going in this would be a really difficult race to have drivers be able to put cars in certain positions, we [still] didn't hear any of that.
"Certainly there were challenges. We saw a lot of teams who in practice were junk and were able to make some adjustments and compete and almost compete for a win today."
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Thinking out loud
NASCAR has a decision to make on whether to return to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the Clash next year or try the temporary track concept at another venue.
My initial reaction was to move it every year. But here’s a vote — after giving it more thought — to do this again in Los Angeles in 2023 and somewhere else in 2024.
Why? After any first event, there are things NASCAR and teams naturally might want to do differently. By having the event at the same venue next year, those changes could provide a more apples-to-apples comparison rather than going to another venue.
Going to the same place every year wouldn’t generate the buzz. But a second season to build on the 2022 event makes sense. And if NASCAR is worried about a construction timeline to reconfigure Auto Club Speedway into a half-mile (the decision on whether to do it after the race at the Fontana track in a few weeks is TBD), this track could serve as the one visit to the Los Angeles market, and then NASCAR can make a return to Fontana in 2024.
'It exceeded expectations' — Bob Pockrass on the success of The Clash at the Coliseum
Social spotlight
Stat of note
Joey Logano is the only repeat winner of the Clash in the past eight years.
They said it
"They're advertising the Clash as much as they're advertising the Daytona 500. To me, that kind of puts it into perspective a little bit on what this event meant to our sport." — Clash winner Joey Logano
Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!
