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NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

June 10, 2016

THE MODERATOR: We're going to wrap up this afternoon's media availabilities with a visit from, to my right, Scott Miller, NASCAR's senior vice president of competition, and to his right, Gene Stefanyshyn, NASCAR's senior vice president, innovation and racing development. I'll start with Gene. Why don't you just perhaps explain to us a little bit about the changes to the rules that you have this weekend that we're looking at and what that is doing to impact the cars at the moment.
GENE STEFANYSHYN: Yeah, perhaps a bit of a history here because sometimes we lose context. So in 2014, we had on the car 3,000 pounds of downforce. In '15 we took it down to 2,700, and today on the track, they're running today the '16 rules package at 2,000, and the package we're running here in Michigan will be 1,500. So it's been a journey over three or four years we've been taking the downforce down.
The other change this year is we've also taken sideforce out of the car to the tune of about 110 pounds of sideforce out of the car, and the reasoning for taking the downforce and the sideforce off the car, obviously we take the aerodynamic forces off the car, it makes the car a bit more difficult to drive for the drivers, but in taking those aerodynamic devices off, we do clean up the amount of air or turbulence around the cars so the cars should be able to move around each other better and pass. So that's kind of the theory.
So there are four specifics in the package. I'll start at the back of the car. The spoiler, we shortened up the spoiler. It was 64 inches wide. It's 53 inches wide. It was three and a half inches tall. It's now two and a half inches tall. So you can imagine it's quite a bit of surface area taken away. That will reduce the downforce, but it also reduces the sideforce because the right side of the spoiler as we're turning that hangs out there, it catches a lot of air and it provides a lot of sideforce in the car, so the spoiler will be doing two things; it'll be a downforce reduction and a sideforce reduction.
On the back of the car on the driver's side in the back, there's what we call a deck fin. That has also been tapered down and cut down. That will reduce a bit more sideforce, too, and also looks better the way we've kind of integrated it into the spoiler.
The other thing we've done on the rear of the car is we have put in a zero toe or skew, which means that when we had that, that would provide some turning advantage, but it would also introduce skew into the car, which had some sideforce. That was another sideforce reduction initiative.
And the final piece of it, the fourth piece is, of course, the front splitter, where at the outer edges of it they were approximately six inches wide. We've taken them down to two inches, and that took off quite a bit of downforce in the front of the car. So in this exercise we took off, what, 500 pounds of downforce, we took off, what, 110 pounds of sideforce, and it's very important as we were taking this down that the front and rear downforce reduction was taken down in a balanced fashion so we didn't upset the balance of the car, so we kind of tried to maintain the same balance we've got today.
That in a nutshell is what we're trying to do. Really what we're trying to do is I think the best way to describe it is the car as it goes through the air, it casts this aerodynamic shadow, and we're trying to make this shadow as small as possible so the other cars around it don't feel the effects of the shadow, as it were. Yeah, so that's kind of a synopsis.
THE MODERATOR: Scott, do you want to perhaps address what your expectations are, to do this, obviously putting a lot of effort that you and the folks back at the Research and Development Center have done. What are the goals here and what are you trying to achieve for the racing?
SCOTT MILLER: Well, I think that we made a pretty good step forward with the move we made from the 2015 to the 2016 package. For aerodynamics in making more competitive racing and closer competition, more passes for the lead. In most cases all the metrics we looked at have been better in those areas.
So this is just another step toward, again, creating closer competition and great racing that the fans and the media and everybody wants to see. We want to see that really bad, and I think this direction has been something that's been embraced by the drivers, and actually we've worked together with them to land here and try this for this year as a potential way to move forward with closer competition.
THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. The drivers today after practice have described the feeling of racing the new package anywhere from challenging to lots of fun in case of some of the younger ones. But they've also expressed the fact that until Sunday really they won't know what it's like to race in larger packs. Are you going to encourage them at all during practices on Saturday to try to race in larger groups and perhaps in close quarters?
SCOTT MILLER: Well, that's pretty much up to them. You know, I expect to see many of them testing those waters on their own because they don't want to be surprised when the race starts.
I think tomorrow's practices without us actually saying anything may look a little bit different than they generally do on Saturday, just because of the unknowns of running close together.
GENE STEFANYSHYN: Yeah, I think they're focused today on qualifying and single car, and they're very focused on that, and then tomorrow I think they'll bring the other element to it to learn that piece of it.

Q. Gene, the change in the spoiler itself, how much downforce did that take away? I realize you did other things, as well, to do it, but just the spoiler change, what would the impact of that have been?
GENE STEFANYSHYN: Yeah, I think we took 500 off, and it was about evenly split front to rear, 250/250. That would be boxcar numbers, but that's about what it was.

Q. I know they just practiced today and you mentioned a lot of it was single‑car runs, qualifying trim, but what did you see out there today, if anything?
GENE STEFANYSHYN: Well, I heard a lot. I mean, I heard the cars‑‑ when they went into the corners were a lot quieter than I have in the past, and when I walked out to the garage and talked to some of the drivers, they said you have to find the new spot to lift, and that spot is quite a ways further back, and they're using the brakes a bit more.
I think they're getting used to it. The first thing I noticed was in my ears. I could hear it. But I don't know what you all thought.
SCOTT MILLER: No, not really, and to the first question about how much downforce got taken off by the spoiler alone, one of the objectives was to keep the aerodynamic balance of the car the same. Both this morning in practice and the little bit that we got to run this at the tire test, it was pretty much a direct swap over, and there was no huge balance change. It was just less grip, which is what we were looking for, which is a testament to the science, both the CFD and the wind tunnel development that we did to establish the package. You know, it all correlated exactly correctly to the racetrack.
And as far as today, I think it's difficult to visually see the difference, but when you look at the data from the cars, the speed trace is significantly different, the mid‑corner speeds are down a lot, the entry speeds are up a little. And from some of the driver comments, having to use the brakes pretty hard and maybe even thinking about needing brake cooling and everything at a big track like this is a departure from where we've been before, and we're really hoping that those things actually produce a really, really good race on Sunday.

Q. Were the speeds that you saw in practice today about what you would expect for the temperatures, and are you okay with what they're running as far as before they do have to start lifting going into the corner?
GENE STEFANYSHYN: Yeah, I would say we did our analysis. We came up with some numbers in simulation. We came here, as you know, three weeks away from, we ran and it was very, very close to what we're seeing today. It's all in the ballpark. So we expect once we get them racing and a lot of cars around each other, the speeds will drop as they always do. Sunday should be a warmer day. Yeah, right now from what we're seeing, we feel comfortable.

Q. Scott, you're about five races into the new lug nut rule, policy. Are you comfortable with where you're at there as far as how you're officiating it and the penalties that you're issuing?
SCOTT MILLER: As far as the penalties go, yes, that's what we plan on continuing to get it in check, and as we've said all along, we continue to work on different technology items to be able to instantaneously see things happening on pit road to a higher degree than we can today, and we're getting close on some of those things. Can't really talk much about what all those are, but I think you can expect to see some different strategies there on our side coming hopefully sooner rather than later.

Q. Of the downforce that you took away at the beginning of the year with the new package, what percentage of it have the teams engineered back into the cars at this point?
SCOTT MILLER: Yeah, I think there's a lot of stories swirling around about that, and I think some people‑‑ we took about 700 pounds off. A lot of people said they've got it all back. That's really‑‑ that's not true. I mean, we audit cars. We take them and put them in the tunnel. We measure them. I would say depending on the team, they would have probably got in order of 100 to 150 back, something like that, so yeah, they haven't recouped all that back.

Q. Drivers seem to like less downforce. They talk about the increased competition, good for the show, etcetera, etcetera. But the engineers are going to keep trying to put the downforce back in the car. How tricky is that sweet spot for you to sort of legislate with rules so it can be what everyone wants?
SCOTT MILLER: It's a little easier for us to stay ahead of that than it is for them to get ahead of us on that. It's fairly, fairly easy to change rules packages and stuff to stay up and stay ahead of the development curve that they're on.
GENE STEFANYSHYN: But it's a good observation. We reduce it and they're trying to find it. It's kind of like dieting, right? It's a constant struggle.
It's kind of an interesting journey. I think we've got a couple of very interesting things coming up here. When we're done here on Sunday night we're off to Kentucky. As you all know, we've got a repave going on there, and hats off to our SMI colleagues there. They've done some very interesting things on the track there with some new type of asphalt and all that, so we don't know how it's going to play out, but everything we're seeing so far, we're encouraged, and that will be a very, very good learning exercise for us, and we'll have 14 cars down there Monday and Tuesday running before we go back there to race. We'll be learning about the package in Kentucky. We'll also be learning with the repave, so we've got a repave, and as you're probably aware, Turn 1 and Turn 2, they've increased the banking there from 13 to 17, so the track will be a bit different for the drivers. So some interesting things going on here in the next couple weeks, a lot of learning going on for all of us.

Q. Gene, can you give a little bit of description in terms of how different this repave is and some of the things that you're actually‑‑ that they're doing that's different in terms of the technology ahead for that track?
GENE STEFANYSHYN: Yeah, we have a way of measuring the roughness of the track. When I talk about the roughness of the track, I'm not talking about the big bumps, I'm talking about the actual very minute analysis of the asphalt itself, and we measure it in micrometers from crest to trough, and the aggregate that they use on this track is much coarser than traditionally. There was a time that people were paving with asphalt to make the track last a long time, like I‑75 or something like that, and I think there's a significant amount of evidence now to suggest that that's probably not the right type of surface for racing. It doesn't promote tire wear. It's very, very high grip, and it's‑‑ so what we've done here is they've come together or created a very coarse aggregate, and when we measured the track before it was 230 micrometers, and we measured it after, it was 460.
Now, the only other challenge then is you've got it‑‑ it's coarse, but now the new has a lot of oil in it and things like that which reduce friction. So the other thing they've done is used lime to wash the track down with lime many, many times to try to remove the oil out of the track to increase friction, also. So we don't know where this is going to end up yet, but if it works out well it could, in fact, be something we look to as a future guide for repaving tracks. So that's kind of a bit of learning going on there. I hope that wasn't too much detail.

Q. OD said on Sirius the other day that they were perhaps looking at putting practices at the actual times we race, yet tomorrow it's supposed to be extremely warm, a lot different than what our conditions will be for the racing. Is that something on the table, and if so, when could it be implemented because it just seems to be one of those common‑sense things that's always talked about; why do we always practice in conditions that are not close to what we race in.
SCOTT MILLER: Yeah, that's definitely something that's on the radar for us, and it does make good practical common sense to be practicing with the track conditions much closer to the way they will be in race conditions. There's a lot of challenges with the schedule and the companion races and making that all fit. One of the things from a long time ago, I think there was some practices after the companion race, and we've talked about a lot of things and beat a lot of stuff up. We haven't landed anywhere, but it's something that's definitely high on the priority list, to get back and make those hours on the track count more for the teams.

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