NASCAR haulers are giant machines that can weigh up to 80,000 pounds and be up to 80 feet in length. They are not vehicles you want to drive close to on the highway. When they take up so much space on the large and wide roads, how is it that they’re able to navigate through the narrow lanes at race tracks? Joe Gibbs Racing answered in a recent YouTube explainer.
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It is not always that the haulers are taken to the track. In Martinsville, particularly, there is no space near the track to park the Xfinity Series haulers. This is why they’re parked in a grass lot on a nearby hill.
It takes ten minutes to walk to and back to the location of the haulers from the race track. A tricky obstacle in a sport where the tiniest of seconds make a huge difference.
The team media detailed that the essentials for a race are almost always available in the garage and there is seldom a need to retract something from the hauler.
But in case they do, it does become one hell of a task to do. One might wonder what the point of such huge vehicles is. A driver could simply drive the car down the road to tracks and make matters so much more simple.
That is what used to happen in the sport decades ago. But back then the race cars were street-legal. They aren’t now. The other main reason why haulers came into existence is to keep the cars safe, secure, and top-notch for race day. Driving them across the country would make them susceptible to a range of risks from wear and tear to theft.
The challenge of exiting the Bristol Motor Speedway in a hauler
The Bristol Motor Speedway has a lot of tricky curves to it. A slight mistake and a driver’s day could be ruined. But one of its most difficult sections lies outside the race track in the streetway. A Kaulig Racing hauler driver relayed a video of him piloting his machine outside the track last March.
He says in the footage, “The most nerve-wracking thing I probably do all season is leaving Bristol Motor Speedway. Because when you make that turn out of there, out of here, you gotta get up to a certain speed. You have to make sure your differentials are locked. You can’t be too slow, can’t be too fast. If you turn too shallow, you drag your trailer into the wall.”
“You turn too deep, you nose into the wall. If you hesitate for a second, you will stop and get stuck. Have to get pulled out. So, the anxiety is up.” He eventually gets the job done and gets on his way home. But his words send a strong ring of just how technical the haulers are.
