2022 Recap
2022 Regular Season Thoughts on the NextGen Car
The last couple months of the season were an absolute firestorm of news releases. I'm not even sure where to start first but going back to the start of the 2022 season, drivers were looking forward to seeing the NextGen car shake things up competition wise and bringing costs down for race teams.
However, the high hopes were mostly disappointing as a majority of the testing done to produce the car occured in 2020 during Covid lockdowns. For whatever reason, the car while improving structural integrity lost shock absorption in the rear. Drivers were commenting their suprise of feeling the hits way harder than they expected in comparison to the previous model it seemed to be a retrograde improvement. Another issue that would be apparent was tires that didn't wear as quickly but also failing with no warning such as what happened at Texas. Broken toe links proved to be very difficult to fix before the DVP clock expired.
Safety, Safety, Safety. Concerns rose to another level as Kurt Busch crashed at Pocono and was advised to decline returning to the track by medical professionals. The second major concussion incident was Alex Bowmans at Texas. There was also a third concern when Reddick had similar symptoms at Martinsville.
The Oct. 8 NASCAR meeting with drivers hoped to start some resolution or at least be a place where drivers could air their concerns and find answers.
This series of discussions were followed by NASCAR business meetings with racing ream owners to negotiate the distribution of funding from TV stations and sponsors.
The first week of October saw extra crash testing in Ohio to specifically evaluate the rear hits thought nothing was likely to change before the end of the season.
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