NASCAR Truck Series gets body updates for 2022

NASCAR rules have been updated for the 2022 season; See the new truck design

There’s been a lot of talk regarding the NASCAR Next Gen car which makes it debut in the NASCAR Cup Series for 2022. However, there’s also going to be a change in the NASCAR Truck Series.

View a photo of the 2022 NASCAR Truck below.

NASCAR will allow Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota to update the rear bumper and front fascia in truck competition. In addition, the front portion of the truck will be allowed from more detail to closer resemble their real-world counterparts.

Previously, the lower portion of the fascia was stock. Now, those body shapes have been opened to allow for the changes.

Manufactures began submitting their changes back in September 2020. Since, all three manufactures have conducted wind tunnel tests with NASCAR viewing the results. All three passed the wind tunnel test on the first attempt and now all three bodies have been approved.

Like the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the new Next Gen car, the front and tail pieces of the new truck will be made of a composite material. The rest of the truck will still be sheet metal.

Related: NASCAR Cup Series 2022 car shapes revealed (Video)

John Probst comments on the new NASCAR truck body

“We’re always looking for ways to be more relevant for our OEMs,” John Probst, NASCAR’s senior vice president of innovation and racing development, told NASCAR.com.

“One of the ways to do that is to have the products on the race track more accurately reflect what’s available in the showroom. I think you’ll see a lot more characteristics of the production trucks in the trucks that you see on track in 2022.”

“We had opened up a lot more areas for the OEMs to basically implement their DNA into the race truck,” Probst said. “As part of that, though, we wanted to make sure that from a performance perspective, we keep parity on the race track.”

“If you look at the Truck Series now, that’s some of the best racing we have going on. First and foremost, we didn’t want to hurt that, so we actually used the performance of the current truck for the new truck with additional character to them. While they have a lot more character from our process, from a performance perspective, the parity will still be really good in the Truck Series.”

Related: NASCAR Next Gen car won’t have rear-view mirrors

2022 NASCAR Truck - Ford
2022 NASCAR Truck – Ford

New shapes

“They look really good with all that additional styling on the fenders and the hood and in the lower nose,” Probst said.

“It’s even striking again when you see them all painted up with the decals on them and the paint schemes they implement. There’s a lot of thought that went behind them. I think the fans are going to be over the moon with how these trucks look.”

“We said why don’t we just take this opportunity to take some of the lessons that we learned on the Next Gen to open a lot more of the truck to OEM characteristics and that’s where we landed,” Probst said.

He concluded, “We got all three (manufacturers) on board. They were excited to go ahead and do that and take advantage of the opportunity to bring even more of the production truck to the race track.”

Related: Kyle Busch knocks the NASCAR Next Gen car

Links

Ford Performance | Team Chevy | Toyota Racing Development | NASCAR

Categories

Tags