Hey, Nice Body…

After a weekend of madness at Talladega, I wanted to clarify something and let our readers in on a little secret.  Engines and horsepower are important, but success at the superspeedways all comes down to how good the sheetmetal is on your race vehicle.  Aerodynamics are vital at high speed, and even though the importance of a good body has been diminished slightly in the Cup Series because of tight templates for the COT, without a good body you won’t run up front in any of the three NASCAR series.

What prompted me to write this post was listening to the broadcasters on Friday during Truck Series qualifying.  They kept talking about the reason the Roush trucks were up front was the Ford horsepower provided by Roush-Yates Engines.  If that were true, then both Circle Bar trucks (Rick Crawford & Brendan Gaughan) would have been up front.  They qualified 11th and 20th respectively. 

You could maybe make a case for Jon Wood’s Wood Brothers F-150, but even though he qualified in the fourth spot, he was over half a second slower then the worst Roush truck.  The difference is the bodies on the RFR trucks.  Their teams spend a lot of time in the wind tunnel, and they have some very talented individuals hanging their bodies.

The other team to mention in the Truck Series is that of Todd Bodine.  He’s won the last three restrictor plate races in the Truck Series and led a lot of laps.  Between Germain and Roush, they’ve got the series covered at Daytona and Talladega.

Another example of superspeedway dominance is Joe Gibbs Racing.  All three Nationwide Series superspeedway races this season have been won by a JGR Toyota, as have the last three Cup Series restrictor plate races.  Part of their success has been the strong Toyota engines, but I promise you they also have very good bodies on their Camrys.

Now, I know you are going to say “but T.C., doesn’t it take good strategy and a lot of luck to win these crazy races?”  And my response is yes, it does.  But to be able to get to the front and stay there, your racecar needs to be fast in clean air.  The guys that can jump out of line and pull a train of cars to the lead are those that will be factors at the end.  And the only way to be good in clean air, is to have a car that is very slippery.

Remember when Earnhardt and Childress dominated the superspeedways in the late 90’s and early 2000’s?  Many attributed their success to Earnhardt’s ability.  We know he had a little help. 

During this period, there were three teams that were always close to the front with Earnhardt.  RCR, Earnhardt’s DEI, and the now defunct Andy Petree Racing.  And guess what they all had in common?  They were all apart of a very important “aerodynamics consortium,” headed by an aero engineer named Louis Duncan.  You might remember the alliance’s name.  They called it R.A.D.  They weren’t working on engines, setups, or anything else.  They were finding ways to make those all important superspeedway bodies as aerodynamic as possible.  And they were spending several million a year to do it.

Now try and tell me bodies aren’t important.

Subscribe to the Insiders