How NASCAR's Daytona aero package is taking Cup Series drivers into the great unknown

NASCAR Cup Series drivers don't know what they are in for on Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway with an untested, unpracticed aero package.

The only thing that one driver, 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace, is certain of is what he does not want to see happen.

“I really hope it’s not a debacle,” said Wallace on Friday, “because it’s going to look really bad that we didn’t get practice with something so drastic if it is a debacle.”

A debacle, in Wallace’s eyes, would be the field driving into Turn 1 and crashing. Because until that point, no one will know what the car will feel or drive like in the pack.

A visual change with the aero package is a smaller rear spoiler (four inches). Additionally, horsepower was reduced, and there were some gear changes. It should reduce the drag on the cars, which hopefully will then result in drivers not being able to save fuel, make the cars harder to drive, and lead to better passing opportunities.

It has been a struggle at drafting tracks for drivers to get runs through the field, which also comes from the field being locked down two-by-two because of the fuel save. The drivers find themselves not running full throttle, but instead logging laps.

“I think the biggest thing that we’re trying to accomplish with this is more lanes to pull out and make a move – not hit a big wall of air,” Ryan Blaney of Team Penske said. “With the big spoiler on it, you would just stall super easy. Hopefully it will make a little more gaps between the cars so we’re not just on top of each other the whole time, because it would get two by two, there are no holes to get in, and the third lane was tough to get going.

“But some more separation, the cars driving a little worse so you have to handle a little bit better, and to be able to get from the back to the front better if your car is handling better than the other group. Can you get to the front? There has to be room to go there. I think taking the drag out is what we all talked about for multiple reasons … and hopefully we achieved that. We’ll see.”

Austin Hill was told that it could make the cars similar to what his Richard Childress Racing car is in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Those cars have about as much horsepower as the Cup Series cars have been backed down to, and their package allows drivers to come and go through the field.

It sounded to Chase Briscoe like the package would mean more work for the drivers behind the wheel. But he also could see it going either way once they begin racing.

“I could see it being absolutely out of control, and I could see it being very similar to what we have,” said Joe Gibbs Racing’s Briscoe. “Who knows what it’s really going to be like tomorrow night? But I think, regardless of the package, we'll probably find a way to crash some cars. We’ll see.”

A repeated consensus is that getting drivers away from fuel saving to where it log-jams the field, and being able to make runs, is the goal. Some would like to see a replication of the racing from EchoPark Speedway.

Either way, “I think the intent is there,” said Wallace. “We’ll see.”

For right now, there are only hopes and even theories about what the tweaked aero package will do. There is also plenty of thinking about it, made even more so by the fact that NASCAR did not add a practice session to the weekend schedule.

The field will not know what the package will do or how the cars will feel until they are in the race. Some drivers would have wanted practice of any length this weekend. Others are fine without it.

“If there was a poll out there of ‘Would you like practice this weekend?’ I would have checked the ‘Yes’ box just to have an idea,” Blaney said. “But I’m not really upset that there is no practice. It is what it is, and we’ll all try to figure it out together. The best group that can figure it out the quickest is going to have a little advantage over people.

“Would I have liked it? yes. Am I upset that we don’t have it? Not really. It’s not really what I’m thinking about.”

There probably should have been a practice, Denny Hamlin conceded. But from an entertainment standpoint, the fans don’t miss anything without it. It would only have been for the drivers to learn something, and they would have been in small packs with their manufacturer teammates.

“I feel like NASCAR knows this - even if there was practice, I feel like it would have helped, yes, but we're not going to experience what we're going to experience tomorrow night,” said Daniel Suarez of Spire Motorsports. “Because there were going to be packs of maybe 10 cars, 12 cars, 15 cars max, and that's kind of like maybe. And tomorrow, it's going to be 40 of us.

“It would have been nice, but I don't think that we're going to learn everything that we're going to learn tomorrow. Sometimes a little bit is better than nothing, but who knows?”