New ‘shark fin’ safety feature makes its debut at Daytona
Chief Racing Development Officer John Probst met with NASCAR on Friday in Daytona to discuss the new right-side air deflector. The change comes following the No. 7's flip last weekend at Michigan Speedway.
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00:00You know after the incident we had with the seven car at Michigan, we went back to the R&D center,
00:05looked through all the data, actually had a wind tunnel test on Wednesday and was able to get a
00:10bunch of parts made for that right side air deflector that should increase the margin for
00:14liftoff of the cars this week. So when we add say the roof flaps or the hood flaps, the shark fin on
00:20the left side, the roof rails, those are all added to make the velocity at which the car will lift
00:27off the ground higher. And when you look at how fast our cars go, they actually go faster than a
00:32747 at takeoff. So when you're going that fast over the ground, things want to get in the air.
00:38And you know we add like for example the right side shark fin, that'll add about 15 to 20 percent
00:45more velocity until the vehicle would lift off the ground and in particular at the early rotation.
00:50So as you saw with the seven at Michigan when he got into it with the 10, they were going about 194
00:55miles an hour and it was a, he's going fast but he's rotating slow. And that's just like the most
01:02susceptible spot for this car is to be 90 degrees to the air. The roof flaps aren't working real
01:08good yet, the diffuser flaps not working real good yet. So you're relying heavily on the roof rails
01:13and the shark fins at that point. So you know if one shark fin's good, two shark fins are even better
01:18kind of thing. So that's the approach we had here but it should not affect any of the on-track
01:23product for our fans.
01:25you