Almost since its first race in 1948, NASCAR has had a long history of teams tinkering with the rules. Some might call it “bending the rules,” or the best statement of all: “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t tryin’.”
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But with the introduction of the Next Generation/Gen 7 car in 2022, crew chiefs, mechanics and engineers have been stymied by the rules. There’s little innovation or even downright cheating, which usually gets caught anyway.
Yet because most Cup cars have identical NASCAR-mandated spec parts and are set up in almost identical fashion, those same crew chiefs, mechanics and engineers continue trying to find the slightest advantage, or as it is better known these days as “working in the gray area.” To use a well-worn phrase in the NASCAR garage: It isn’t easy.
Kyle Busch appeared on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday and talked about this weekend’s race in Indianapolis, a race Busch needs to do well in to help his playoff hopes, as well as break a 78-race winless streak, the longest of his career.
But Busch also got into the technical aspect of the Next Gen/Gen 7 car, which has taken away so much control and innovation from the brain trusts of every team.
“The cars the last three years have become more sourced from a single-source supplier,” Busch said of the spec parts that NASCAR mandates teams purchase from one supplier.
“Everybody buys their chassis from the same place. The bodies all come from the same place. The parts and pieces all come from the same place, where years prior to that everybody always built their own stuff. You’d in-house, you would build your own chassis, hang your own bodies, all that sort.”
Finding things in the gray area is a guarded secret
While the current era car is more of a one-size-fits-all aspect, there still are some things crew chiefs and mechanics can tinker with, but not too much, lest they catch the attention of NASCAR officials.
Anything out of whack can lead to heavy fines, suspensions and all the way up to having a win taken away if a car is found to be significantly out of compliance with the rules.
“Now the engineering aspect of what little tricks of the trade there are is huge,” Busch told McAfee. “Having the smart people of being able to kind of go manipulate the little bits of gray area is way bigger nowadays than maybe what it once was.
“You could always manufacture and build your parts and pieces better than everybody else where now all of that’s the same. So, how you assemble those Legos and manipulate those Legos, you got to be better than all the other teams. And that’s engineering.”
Busch is counting on some great engineering at Indy and the other four remaining regular season races. Even though he’s 15th in the Cup standings, that is technically a misnomer.
Josh Berry, Austin Cindric and Shane van Gisbergen all have wins this season. So even though they’re all below Busch in the standings heading into Indy, Busch is technically 18th in playoff eligibility.
And only the top 16 make the playoffs. That means Busch needs a win in the next five races. Otherwise, he will wind up missing the playoffs for the second straight year.
