The Cool Down Lap: Rest in peace, rear wing
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Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR
By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
At approximately 4:36 p.m. Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway, the rear wing on NASCAR’s Sprint Cup car died of natural causes, at age 93.
A memorial service is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. ET Friday, the same time spoiler-equipped Cup racecars take to the track for their first practice session at Martinsville Speedway. No one is expected to mourn.
Robin Pemberton, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, provided the post-mortem for the wing four days before it was officially pronounced dead.
“Quite frankly, the wing wasn’t accepted as widely as we had hoped it would have been, by competitors and the fans alike,” Pemberton said last Wednesday after a news conference promoting the May 22 Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
“So, after a bunch of effort, we started looking and decided to go back to the spoiler.”
That’s about the closest thing you can expect to get from NASCAR to an admission that perhaps the wing wasn’t such a great idea in the first place.
All told, the wing was part of the Cup car for 93 points races, from a 16-race phase-in in 2007 to 72 points races as the full-time car in 2008 and 2009 through the first five events of 2010. Three drivers collectively won 46 of those 93 races: Jimmie Johnson 22, Kyle Busch 13 and Carl Edwards 11.
In three years, the wing era of Cup racing came full circle. It was born March 25, 2007, at Bristol with Busch’s victory in the Food City 500. It died March 21, 2010, at Bristol with Johnson’s victory in the Food City 500, the four-time champ’s first win at the .533-mile short track.
If the wing was a bad idea, however, NASCAR’s new racecar in its entirety was an exceptionally good one. The enhanced safety features speak for themselves, from the first real test—Michael McDowell’s 2008 qualifying crash at Texas Motor Speedway—to the most recent—Brad Keselowski’s airborne excursion March 7 at Atlanta, with an assist from Edwards.
In truth, the return to the spoiler has everything to do with the appearance of the car and little or nothing to do with safety. Though intuition might suggest otherwise, a car is only marginally more likely to become airborne with a wing (as Keselowski’s did at Atlanta) than with a spoiler (as Matt Kenseth’s Nationwide Series car did at Talladega last year).
The difference between the two is so small, says Ford aerodynamicist Bernie Marcus, that it becomes statistically insignificant.
“It’s not the wing,” says Marcus, who has spent countless hours observing wind tunnel tests with both wing and spoiler. “It’s the air trapped beneath the car (as it spins and travels backwards) that creates liftoff.”
So when NASCAR sets out to keep cars on the pavement, it’s not a wing-vs.-spoiler issue. That’s not to say, however, that switching to the spoiler doesn’t create its own unique set of challenges.
The endplates on the rear wing gave the cars substantial sideforce and consequent stability in traffic. Since a spoiler provides no sideforce, NASCAR has compensated with rear quarter panel extensions and a 3.5-inch “shark fin” that can run the full length of the rear deck lid. Marcus says the combination of those two features will reinstate the sideforce—and stability—lost with the removal of the wing endplates.
At a full-field test Tuesday and Wednesday at Charlotte, teams will try to find a comfortable balance with the spoiler for the debut at Martinsville and beyond.
And the wing that was never accepted will gradually recede into the oblivion it deserves—not because it was a safety hazard, but because it was an eyesore to stock car racing enthusiasts.
Rest in peace, rear wing—but stay buried.
