Filed under: Daytona Int'l Speedway, Sprint Cup, NASCAR
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- As NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams were packing up their equipment from Sunday's Daytona 500 pole qualifying session, NASCAR officials issued a technical bulletin aimed at keeping the cars from the 206-mph, two-car drafts that dominated Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout 75-lap non-points race.
"I thought it was cool at the beginning, medium in the middle and when they hit 206, I wasn't thinking of the race anymore, I was thinking what we needed to do in the next couple days,'' NASCAR Vice President for Competition Robin Pemberton said of Saturday's race,
In response to the increasing speeds and two-car breakaways, NASCAR has regulated the front grill opening on all the cars to 2 1/2-inches by 20-inches and it will install a pressure relief valve in the water cooling system. Pemberton said the idea is to decrease the temperature that the engine water will boil. Some cars could run water as hot as 290-300 degrees. Pemberton would like to get that temperature down to 250 degrees.
Cars shouldn't be able to run in the two-car pack for a sustained period of time for fear of overheating, thus making it less likely they will reach speeds upwards of 200 mph like they did Saturday night.
Although NASCAR did not change the size of the carburetor restrictor plate, Pemberton said that remains an option and didn't rule out other technical changes in advance of the Feb. 20 season-opening Daytona 500. Officials are looking to see what the racing is like in the Gatorade Duel 150-mile qualifying races on Thursday. They issued the technical bulletin Sunday so teams will have a chance to make the necessary changes before NASCAR Speedweeks resumes with a practice session on Wednesday morning.
"The speeds are high because everyone did their job,'' Pemberton told reporters in a nearly abandoned Daytona garage late Sunday afternoon. "The track with the paving, Goodyear, the teams have done a great job and now we're (NASCAR) in the fold and trying to reel some of that back in. And we have the support of the race teams.
"There's a lot of pressure here,'' he continued. "I can't even begin to tell you the pressure from a large group of people that are expecting us to get it right (for the Daytona 500).''
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Source: http://motorsports.fanhouse.com/2011/02/13/nascar-issues-technical-changes-for-safetys-sake/
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