| | | | | | IT'S NOT BROKE | According to Biffle: NASCAR's COT simply can't be 'fixed' | |
| | By SceneDaily Staff AVONDALE, AZ -- Roush Fenway Racing’s Greg Biffle agrees that the new car is difficult to drive. But he doesn’t think that testing it more would solve the problem.
No matter what is done, Biffle says that this car cannot be “fixed.” Therefore, the teams and drivers are simply going to have to adapt.
Biffle said there are multiple reasons that this car was designed that way it is. Those are the same factors that would make a change problematic.
“One, is how the windshield is stood up,” he said Thursday at Phoenix International Raceway. “And the size of it. It’s what NASCAR wanted. This is what NASCAR wanted. NASCAR built this car, and it’s our job to race it, race it the best we can, get it to handle the best we can and do what we can with it. That’s our job, so that’s what we’re going to focus on and we’re going to work on, and we’ll just let nature take its course.”
While some have suggested more testing would help teams gain ground and make the races more competitive, Biffle said that isn’t the answer. In testing, teams would be trying to work with the aerodynamics and the issues teams face there.
And that, said Biffle, is an aspect that simply is not going to be altered.
“There’s nothing in this world that you can put on there that it won’t be aero tight,” he said. “It’s a car, you put a car behind it, one’s going to be in dirty air and one’s not. The old car did it, [just] not as bad. The new car does it real bad.
“But, it’s the size [of] the car, and the configuration, with the windshield and all the components. And you’re not ever going to fix it. ...Whatever you do to the car, the car is still so big, and you shove it through the air and it makes a hole behind it. It’s the way it is.”
So that leaves it in the drivers hands to figure out how to race better with the model.
He says there are things one can do over the course of a race to figure out how to be more competitive.
By doing that, drivers will come up with a way that makes passing easier for them – and racing better for the fans.
“Search around on the race track, change your corner entry, do what you can to get in front of ’em,” he said of a driver’s role. “Get in front of ’em on pit road. Get in front of ’em however you can.”
| | Posted April 12, 2008 , 3:43 pm EST
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