The NASCAR Of Tomorrow

You are closing in on NASCAR driving champion Tony Stewart on the backstretch at Talladega Superspeedway. The speedometer, if you had one (stock cars don't--what's the point?), would be reading north of 150 m.p.h., but you're still south of Tony. And you need to pass him for the checkered flag, the Nextel Cup points and the adulation of the 150,000 or so NASCAR nuts who regularly show up every weekend. As you get closer to Stewart's rear bumper, a couple of things start to happen, not all of them good. First, Tony gets ticked off. Don't worry--Tony gets ticked off at everyone sooner or later. Second, you might not have control of your car, especially as the speed nears 200 m.p.h. "The way you pass somebody at Talladega is the same as you do on the interstate--you turn left," says veteran Kyle Petty. "But at 150 to 180, the car doesn't necessarily want to turn left." Reason: Aerodynamic forces on today's cars become disruptive at those speeds. Which means you can't make the pass, and if you try, you could end up against the wall.

Safety and competition are the top issues being addressed by NASCAR as it finishes its Car of Tomorrow, due to make its first of 16 races next March at the Bristol Motor Speedway. The car is a bit wider, a bit taller, a bit less long and actually a bit slower than the current models. Most important, the Car of Tomorrow is designed to be a whole lot safer than the car of today. The project was given tragic impetus during a nine-month period in 2000-2001 when a number of drivers were killed, including Petty's son Adam, then 19, and the legendary Dale Earnhardt, who ran into a wall at Daytona. Even so, the idea of developing the model was not exactly championed by the drivers. "I don't think drivers thought anything had to be changed," says Petty, 45, who has tested the new car. "We'll drive anything, anytime, anywhere--all you have to say is, 'Show up.'"

The basic principle of the new model is to get the driver farther away from points of impact. So engineers have made it wider and and taller, creating what the drivers call a bigger greenhouse. That could be important when the car, say, rolls onto its roof. The driver's seat has been moved 4 in. to the center, which is supposed to achieve two things: it lets NASCAR reinforce the driver's side with energy-absorbing, staggered steel plates and gives the driver more comfort. Over the years, as NASCAR began adding such safety devices as the HANS head-and-neck restraint system, the cockpit began getting cramped. Older drivers in particular were demanding their space. Says Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition, about the changing environment for drivers: "They have gone through the cycle of very limited restrictions in the cars to what we have today. The world has closed in."

What's key is that the wider car addresses what Pemberton calls G-force spikes, known to the rest of us as the crash. "It's the amount of energy absorbed over time," he explains. The farther the driver is from the impact, the more time the energy has to dissipate. To help it along, NASCAR has added front and rear crumple zones. It is also studying the addition of more crash protection for the right front, the most frequent collision point.

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