Since 1995, Mark Martin has asked for zero downforce on the front of the cars; He says NASCAR has refused to look at it
Mark Martin spent 31 years in the NASCAR Cup Series. He raced through many eras and body shapes as his career spanned from 1981 until his retirement after the 2013 season.
Somewhere in the middle of that, the phrase “aero-tight” was born. And the racing hasn’t been the same as a result.
Teams figured out that if they locked the nose of the car to the ground and added front end down force, the cars would run a faster lap time. But, with this, the nose of the cars are now dependent on clean air.
When a car looks to make a pass, he’s gotta get close to the car in front. This takes downforce away from the nose of the trailing car. Specifically with the Next Gen car, passing is near impossible.
The issue becomes wildly apparent on any single groove race track, like we recently saw at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Conversely, on multi-groove race tracks, drivers can find a clean lane without traffic and make it work.
Mark Martin has seen this problem for 30 years…
Mark Martin wants zero downforce
“I would work with the teams and engineers to make the underbody, not work, at all,” Mark Martin stated.
“I know there’s a challenge. And I know why there’s an underbody because of all of the money was spent before there was one. Making downforce there, it was getting out of control.”
“I want zero downforce in the front. Zero or lift. And maybe start with 300 in the back. Maybe you need more. You don’t need a ton. But, you need the front to be virtually nothing.”
“If it’s nothing. It shouldn’t lose anything when it gets behind a car.”
“I can tell you, I’ve raced cars at Atlanta and Charlotte that were around zero or front lift. And you never ever heard anything about aero tight, ever. All the cars, it wasn’t just ours.”
“In 1990, when we went to Atlanta to race for the championship, we had three cars that we wind tunneled. We had two that in race-trim had lift in the front and one that was zero.”
“We get into the mid-90s, we start making some serious downforce in ’93. It went off the rails, we started making downforce and then people started saying, ‘aero-tight.’ “
“Everybody thought I was nuts. I can feel it.”
“I said, ‘We need less front downforce. And, [Dale Earnhardt] said, ‘We need more.’ That’s a fact. It just kept going.”
“You can’t just take it all off. It’s going to require a different race tire. It’s very complicated.”
Mark Martin concluded, “Their unwillingness to look at it has been since 1995.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr added, “That would open up Goodyear’s window. You know, the more downforce a car has, the tougher the tires gotta be.”
Mark Martin knocks the NASCAR playoff format
Fix for the Next Gen car
“You have the whole weight of the industry so you can’t get it wrong,” Martin added.
“There’s a lot of complications. But, the unwillingness to look at no downforce is really a problem. It’s ate at me since 1995.”
“I just know that the racing was better. I know that the world’s different now. But, people look back at the races from the 90s and say, ‘That’s better than today.’ “
“One of our passing problems is that the cars are within 3/10ths. Today’s racing is challenged in a lot of ways.”
“Talking about downforce, they’ve all done it. F1 had the problem before anybody. We should have looked at that before we continued to go down bigger and bigger.”
“I mean, in 2013, that No. 55 car I drove made 2,000 plus downforce. Today’s car, on the draggy package makes 2,000 lbs of downforce.”
“That’s where they go to try and make the racing more interesting. ‘Let’s take power away and put more drag so that people get runs.’ And it just creates insanity.”
“But, if you take it all away and cars get spread out then that’s not good. Becuause it’s not entertaining. So, I don’t know where you’re suppose to go. Traditionalists don’t mind cars getting spread out.”
“It’s a though thing to balance right now.”
Mark Martin wants NASCAR to ‘tell the truth’ regarding revenue
