Spoiler To Help Or Hurt Johnson?
The speculation runs in both directions: the new rear spoiler may help Jimmie Johnson or it may hurt the dominance of his Hendrick Motorsports Chevy. I doubt it will make much difference one way or the other.
Back in the old days — when the rear wing was still on the back of the COT — a walk down any of the pit roads on race morning pretty much told the story. All the teams had cranked the wings to the maximum downforce setting, because there was relatively little drag penalty and they needed as much downforce for the aerodynamically-challenged COT.
It’s likely the spoiler settings for most teams will be about the same and the battle for balance will continue at the front end of the cars.
Jeff Gordon, one of Johnson’s teammates at Hendrick, summed things up during the test in Charlotte last week for the new rear spoilers. “Other than being around other cars, I really didn’t feel a big change (with the spoiler),” said Gordon. “Most of what we’ve been learning with this car is in the front end with the splitter and the bump stops and shocks.”
If that’s the case, is the front end where the Hendrick team has learned more than others with the COT? It’s certainly an area of great interest for teams. But the technical personnel on the teams are not interested in talking about what they’re doing. While I was working on a story for RaceCar Engieneering magazine, one team member suggested to me, “Whatever you do, don’t ask about bump stops and shocks.”
When people try to re-direct the conversation, or when all the answers in the garage seem to run in circles, that’s usually a sign something significant is going on.
John Darby, the technical chief for NASCAR, said there’s been a groundswell of interest in front suspensions ever since the COT first arrived.
“For ten years everybody based their program on aerodynamics and mechanical grip was ignored,” he said. “There was more value in the aero platform and that’s where all the focus was. The window of moving the body around and changing the aero has been closed. It put teams into some really old notebooks.
“We’re seeing a lot of different front end geometries, spring combinations, shock combinations, sway bars,” continued Darby. “When we started with bump stops, they were not the most elaborate things in the world. Now we’re finding all kinds of material being used for the bump stops, everything from hard machineable plastic to a super ball cut in half.”
At the beginning of this year, team owner Jack Roush shed more light on this subject when he offered an apology of sorts for the performance of his team in 2009. “We spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to find the thing that NASCAR had missed, the thing that other teams were overlooking, for that next breakthrough and, guess what? It didn’t come,” said Roush. His conclusion: “We got best-balled on the tweaks and the sanding.”In addition to getting the weight lower in the COT and experimenting with rear anti-roll bars, a lot of the tweaking and sanding has been done on the front ends of the COT’s. Apparently Hendrick Motorsports has done a better job than most of its rivals.
It’s not a simple equation of throwing in more mechanical grip. The problem is getting the front wheels to respond to downforce and sideforce through the turns without introducing the excessive drag that comes with more mechanical grip. The real key still concerns aerodynamics: getting the front splitter as close to the track as possible without damaging it.
But what does that have to do with Jimmie Johnson?
As the front suspension on the COT has become relatively more compliant in the three years since they were introduced, the cars have become a little better when it comes to adjustments compared to the old aero-dependent chassis that virtually rode on coil-bound springs. There’s a bit more room to fiddle. One reason why Johnson and Crew Chief Chad Knaus are so successful is because they play the track position game and the mid-race adjustments better than any combination on the pit road — including their teammates at Hendrick Motorsports.
Knaus and Johnson do not always come up with the magic mid-race adjustments. But their cars usually get better as the race goes along. The driver, crew chief and pit crew all have a strong sense of confidence as a result. If they can stay close until the end of races, they feel they’ll find a way to win it.
It’s one thing to put on four tires when several other front runners put on two as happened at Bristol, where Johnson won for the first time in his career at the Tennessee track. It’s another thing to put on four tires that enable your driver to chase down all the guys who took on two in the closing laps — and beat the other drivers who also took on four tires such as Kurt Busch, whether they’re held up on a re-start or not.
If there was a magic bullet, confidence would be it. (Demoralization of the competition is the flip side of this potent weapon. Rivals now expect Johnson to fly down from the rafters to win races.)
As for the outcome at Martinsville, where Johnson has won five of the last seven races, the short tracks are more about mechanical grip than aerodynamics. Maybe that’s one reason why Hendrick Motorsports had won eight of 11 races at the little bullring in Virginia, including three by Gordon, before Monday’s postponed race.
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