In the NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen car’s sophomore season, NASCAR has introduced a new ‘selected road course and short track package’ that has lowered the downforce on the cars for all tracks that are road courses and ovals less than a 1.1-miles in length (excluding Bristol and Dover). The results in the first two short tracks that ran the new package (Phoenix and Richmond) saw significant increases year-over-year in green flag passes for the lead and total green flag passes throughout the field. 

 

Richmond Raceway’s 2023 Cup race (35 GFPL) set a new track record and saw an increase of +288.9% in green flag passes for the lead compared to the 2022 Richmond-1 event with nine green flag passes for the lead. 

 

Richmond (3,816 GFP) also set a new track record and saw an increase of +24.2% in total green flag passes compared to the 2022 Richond-1 event with 3,072 total green flag passes. 

 

Phoenix Raceway also saw increases of +7.7% year-over-year in green flag passes for the lead and +25.6% year-over-year in total green flag passes.

 

The Selected Road Course & Short Track Package consists of the following:

 

·       2” Spoiler

 

·       Remove Engine Panel Strakes

 

·       Remove Center and Inner Diffuser Strakes. Only the Outer Diffuser Strakes will remain installed. Spacers will be installed between the diffuser flap and diffuser due to removing the inner diffuser strakes. 

 

·       Remove Diffuser Fences and Replace with Baseline Fences.

 

·       Splitter stuffers will remain unchanged from the current components.

 

The rules are in place at the following tracks: Charlotte Roval, Chicago Street Course, Circuit of The Americas, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, Martinsville, New Hampshire, North Wilkesboro, Phoenix, Richmond, Sonoma and Watkins Glen.