Racing News Digest

I found it interesting when Ryan Newman started his wild ride last Sunday that I wasn’t to concerned. I admit when at first it seemed like it was taking a while to get him out of the car that I got a little concerned. But overall with this new car it seems like especially the cockpit really holds up.

Of course with a crash like that…..you never know.

And then the second I say the replay with him landing on Harvick’s hood I of course thought about the spring wreck where Carl Edwards landed on Newman’s hood.

What else I immediately thought of was that Newman was the one pushing the most – and really maybe the only one pushing – that they needed to find a way to keep the cars on the ground and not getting airborne.

I remember and interview with him where he was saying that when the COT got engineered he felt like the flaps were just basically taken off the old car and put on the COT with out any real consideration to the placement, size or anything to them.

And I don’t remember Newman saying anything about slowing the cars down. He has talked about engineering them to stay on the ground, regardless of speed.

And despite what many might think, I don’t think those flaps are suppose to prevent any form or going airborne. All those flaps do is act as air brakes to help slow the car down as fast as possible so that the car’s speed comes down fast enough that it can’t get lift and get airborne.

In Newman’s interview above he talks about how ironic it was to be sitting in the media center last Sunday talking about the same thing as he did the spring, but this time it was him crashing and flipping.

From an ironic standpoint, that’s why I was probably the most frustrated after the race last weekend, was I was in the media center talking about the very same thing on the last lap of the spring race. To live out what my frustrations were from six months before was difficult, as well. From an engineering standpoint, whatever we can do speed-wise and aerodynamically to keep the cars on the ground, in particular things in the back of the car, when it sees the air first for downforce, keep the lift out of the back of the cars is what we need to focus on.

Newman said he is happy with the integrity of the car. He believes that even though his helmet was pinned to the roof of the car after it’s multiple flips. To me that is not surprising and it really didn’t seem to bother Newman that that happened. It seems like it could have been a lot worse than just pinned to the roof. But Newman does say that the fact the cage crushed the way it did was a little disappointing.

“When I had 3,400 pounds come down basically on my head, I never was compressed physically in the car,” said Newman, eighth among 12 drivers in Chase points with three races remaining. “I say that, have to explain it a little bit. It’s just like a head-on collision. When two cars hit head-on, you got the force of both. I had the force of me going up in the car while the car was coming down on me. I was compressed. My spine was compressed. But I never was compressed to the point that it pushed my butt down into the seat. There was an instantaneous load there that hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still sore from it. But I was never wedged. Once they got the car back upright, I was able to take my helmet off, there was room there. It wasn’t like I was physically wedged.

“The second part of my answer is, I was I guess a little disappointed in the fact the cage crushed the way it did. I know it was a heck of a hit, don’t get me wrong. We’ve got to be able to learn from that. Whatever we might be able to do from a welding standpoint, from a wall-thickness standpoint with the tubing, to make it stronger so that doesn’t happen again is equally as important from a safety standpoint.”

Newman also says that he now knows that testing has been done for situations like this after talking with Mr. Darby and Mr. Pemberton on Wednesday this week.

He also made it clear that NASCAR did NOT call him in to talk, he made the call and went to them to talk.

There has been testing done. I learned some of that stuff on Wednesday morning talking to Mr. Darby and Mr. Pemberton, that they have tested.

But I don’t know that they have tested everything. I don’t know that you can test everything. But obviously more testing needs to be done in order to make it safer for everybody.

Speed is a part of it. The faster you go, the more likely you are to take lift. We were talking before, an airplane takes off at 160 miles an hour. We’re 40 miles an hour above that at times. There’s plenty of potential for a car to take lift, whether it’s going forwards, backwards or sideways. We have to take everything into consideration, as drivers, as teams, as a sanctioning body, to control that situation.

Some say the spoilers the problem causing to much life but Newman points out the Matt Kenseth basically did the same thing in the Nationwide race. And lets be honest, the same thing happened with the old Cup car as well.

AND I INCLUDED THE Carl Edwards video because I think Carl’s car was on the way to doing the right thing in that accident. That situation was a little different because Carl was not backwards when he got airborne.

But my point is that Carl’s car was on it’s way back down to the track when he hit the top of Newman’s hood and then went airborne.

I think Ryan Newman would disagree a little and actually I would to because what is being discussed is that the car should not “lift” off the track at all. And that is what Ryan Newman keeps talking about.