Team Penske superstar Austin Cindric addressed an important difference between the cars used in the Xfinity Series and the Cup Series during a recent interview. He detailed how big the difference is in terms of handling dirty air and also reasoned why races usually tend to get aggressive toward the end.
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First off, Cindric believes that every racing series in the world has to deal with dirty air. The difference between cars in the two national series is how they let this turbulent air affect the cars around them.
He said, “I feel like in the Xfinity car with the longer rear quarterpanels, you could definitely affect the car in front of you by your proximity a lot more than you can in our (Cup Series) cars. On the flip side, taking air off each other’s doors in the Truck and Xfinity car also affects the racing.”
There is a lot more side-by-side racing in the Cup Series Next Gen car. Cindric wasn’t very sure if this is good, bad, or indifferent. His second major point of difference was that the competitors in the Cup Series are all highly competitive.
He continued, “That’s the nature of having a highly competitive series. If I’m half-a-tenth to a tenth faster than you in any series, am I going to realistically expect to pass you? That’s going to be a hard pass to actually make. I’m going to have to go off the line, have a big enough run, so I think there are a lot of details other than just the air.”
At the end of the day, every driver is pushing their car through the air. The magnitude of it and the variance as to how each driver does it is what enables the racing. It is also why Cindric believes that races on tracks with multiple lanes are great.
Is the parity in the Next Gen facilitating aggression?
Having little to differentiate themselves makes things a lot harder for Cup Series drivers. The No. 2 Penske driver was asked if the uptick in aggression towards the end of races can be attributed to the parity that the Next Gen car enforced throughout the field. He thinks not.
“I think you’re going to get close to the end of the race in any series and you’re going to have an uptick in aggression,” Cindric said. “I mean, you watched Watkins Glen in the Xfinity and the Truck Series. We wrecked a bunch of stuff just because it was the end of the race, so I feel like that is just racing.”
He also categorized late-race wrecks as a result of the urgency that drivers feel to gain positions in the last possible minute. Cindric will next race at Richmond this Saturday with his playoff berth already in the bag.
