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The only drafting Jimmie Johnson has done in the new car is the 15 laps he ran in the Sprint Unlimited before the wreck. What him and Chad Knaus are doing makes absolutely no sense to me. It makes more sense to learn how the new car drives in practice and not having to try to learn how the new car drives when everybody around you is racing.

I think I heard that Chad Knaus's philosophy is "If it's fast by itself, it'll be fast in the draft." Also, they have 6-8 teammates to share information with (I don't know if the Ganassi teams are sharing info or not since they have Hendrick engines now). Still, you would think that Jimmie would need to feel the draft for himself, so I dunno. He seemed pretty fast in the Shootout until the wreck, but maybe they aren't focusing that much on the 500 since they've already won it and they know there's only 1 restrictor plate race in the Chase.

Or maybe they have some secret ultra-realistic simulator that uses info from the January tests to simulate the air movement around the cars, rather than actually drafting and wrecking a very expensive racecar. I have no idea why they do it, but I do know that Chad Knaus is a very smart guy.

Or maybe they just consider the race the usual lottery, so why bother practising for it, and instead are using the time to gather aero data for when they get onto the real tracks.

Interesting comments made by Newman in regards to todays practice incident:
"I think some of it has to do with the huge shark fin that we have on that side. When you pack air up on that side it's not going to the spoiler it's getting blocked off from the spoiler. There are a lot of things to think about and talk about."

So aside from the roof flaps (not so much a flap any more, just a roof that raises...) there's also a shark fin to keep the cars on the ground??

Wow, there's never gonna be a blowover again is there?

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

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The shark fin is at least two years old. Nothing new about that.

Well, they are clear now

The shark fin was added during the evolution of the COT wasn't it?

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It was always there but it got bigger during the COT era.

And it slowly killed the racing on the bigger tracks.

And its the first round of the season and already the 48 team is thinking about the Chase

There have been many evolutions of the shark fin and parts similar. Roof bars, deck lid bars and all kinds of combinations have been tried in the past to break up the air flow and kill the lift the car gets when it gets sideways. They've never been able to, and I doubt they ever will, eliminate entirely the threat of a blowover.

I wonder if these incidents are being caused by a different sound reverb, what I mean is you can usually hear when someone is on your quarter panel (whatever the car), but the new bodies are changing the pitch or volume of the sound and the drivers are being fooled into thinking the car behind is further back than it is.

I know that's what spotters are for, but when I've listened in on TJ he often doesn't even say when a car is alongside, especially if it's that rare event were Jr is overtaking someone

What time are the duels for the uk peeps?

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Roughly 5pm.

Jesus one of these days there'll be action I can actually watch :/

Worst speedweeks ever.

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

2 PM EST should be 7 or 8 PM UK time based on whether current UK time is GMT or GMT+1.

Er, yeh, that's what I meant.

Trevor Bayne is working with Travis Pastrana early on in Nationwide practice. Mike Wallace and Joe Nemechek are fastest out of the gate.

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Too early to be thinking about that.