The Way It Is: Why NASCAR sets the standard.

Monday, 17th September 2007

With open-wheel racing in disarray, Gordon Kirby reveals the pleasure former single-seater ace Juan Montoya gets from NASCAR.

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“I think the biggest thing you’ve got to learn when you come from open wheel is that some weeks you’re going to run 30th, or 35th,” he observed. “And that is so hard to understand, especially when you ran 30th and did a good job! It’s hard to explain because there are races where you did a worse job and you finished fifth.”

Juan says it can be argued that there are more details for the driver and team to play with and dial-in during a race weekend than there are in F1.

“You play with geometries every week and in open-wheel racing you never do that,” he said. “In open wheel, you’ve got bars and springs and the front wing, and that’s it. Here, you’ve got shocks and steering and suspension geometries that you’re always messing with. So in many ways there are more things for the drivers and for the teams to either get right, or screw up.

“There are a lot of things we’ve still got to learn as a team,” Montoya added about his adventure with Ganassi’s team. “We’ve got to be better and be more consistent as a whole organisation. I think when we’re good, we’re as good as anybody. We’ve just got to be that good every week.”

Another measure of NASCAR’s continuing success, beyond the flood of open wheel drivers coming into Cup racing, is the switch to the Car of Tomorrow. The move to the larger, bulkier CoT has been criticized by everyone from drivers and teams to the fans and media, but the fact is the transition seems to be going extremely well.

Sure, the cars may be less attractive and any visual differences between manufacturers have been essentially eliminated. Nor do many drivers like the feel of the new cars and it may well be shown over time that the new car doesn’t race as well as the old because it makes only half the downforce created by the old car.

All that aside, the logistics of the switch to the CoT appear to have gone much better than predicted. NASCAR’s vice president of competition Robin Pemberton says a healthy working relationship between the organisation and its teams and drivers is the key to this successful process.