Keeping Up With the Jones's
Over the years, pundits, among others, have been watching the way NASCAR handles it's everyday business, as well as the way it handles the other seasonal challenges it faces. There are always complaints from teams at the beginning of each season that new models of racecars have the advantage and that the field is stacked against them. The sanctioning body then has to resort to wind tunnel tests, which by the way, they had already done when putting their seal of approval on the new model or changes to an old one. Usually NASCAR will make some small adjustment here and there to offer amenities to those who have been squawking. There used to be a standard saying in NASCAR circles that the squeaky wheel always got the oil first, and this was true more times than not.
NASCAR has always crowed about "cutting costs" for the teams and then would come up template changes which would force teams to re-skin their cars to the tune of millions of dollars collectively. The multi-car teams with the big budgets and multiple corporate sponsors didn't seem to mind that much because they had the financial and personnel resources to shift around in order to get the job done. The smaller modestly funded teams didn't have this luxury and suffered in other areas in order to get their cars ready for the template changes.
This past season, all teams had to re-skin their cars because of NASCAR's common template goals, and also because of a new rule that prevents teams from shifting bodies forward and aft depending on the type of track they were racing on. Teams used to shift the bodies forward on the faster superspeedways to help create more aerodynamic downforce on the front end to enhance speed and handling. On the short tracks they would shift the bodies to the rear, giving the cars better traction to power out of the corners without spinning out. This season NASCAR came up with the rule that prevents this shift by setting a distance between the center base of the windshield and the center bolt of the engines air cleaner which fastens onto the top of the carburetor at the top rear of the engine. All of this added expense and yet NASCAR boasts that it has strived to cut costs for the benefit of the teams.
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