virgivaughn: 2013 NSCS Charlotte Test Q&A with NASCAR Executives Darby & Pemberton

(L-R) John Darby, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Director, and Robin Pemberton, NASCAR Vice President of Competition, speak to the media during NASCAR Testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway on January 18, 2013 in Charlotte, North Carolina. - Photo Credit: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images for NASCAR

An Interview With: Robin Pemberton & John Darby

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Robin Pemberton, Vice President of Competition for NASCAR, and Sprint Cup Series Director John Darby. Robin, if you could just give your perspective, I know we were rained out yesterday, but how is everything looking so far?

ROBIN PEMBERTON: You know, you walk around and you talk to the teams, and really they’re busy and they’re working. So you know, you get a thumbs up, and that’s about the – from me, that’s been about the length of the conversations from most of them. They’ll continue to work on it, and I think, like in any test, teams will leave out of here, and some will be happy and some will be in the middle of the road and then you’ll have a couple of sad ones as they go back and go to work on their equipment again.

So far it’s been uneventful, knock on wood, and it looks like there are some teams out there maybe working on some durability and some things. I know the 11 car is well over 200 laps in so far today, and there’s some other ones that are approaching 100 laps, so it looks to be going pretty good so far.

THE MODERATOR: And John, from your perspective, how are things looking for you?

JOHN DARBY: It’s definitely just another step in the launch of the Generation 6 car. But there’s probably more cars here today that I’ll term as real race cars with full manufacturer’s steel bodies and the correct components, deck lids, hoods, and everything else that goes with it. For a lot of the teams, the test is probably more real, real-life than what some of our previous tests here have been. Other than that, not a lot has changed.

I think from the rules package-wise and specification for the cars, all of that is pretty much settled down. We had most of that dialed in from our previous test here in December, so everybody has taken those specifications and going forward with them and just trying to do the best they can now as we get ready to start into the real season.

Q. Robin, you mentioned a lot of teams are working on durability, or at least some are. Does it feel good to see that these cars are holding up? I imagine you figured they would, but does it give you any peace of mind to see that they’re doing that well?

ROBIN PEMBERTON: Yeah, and John could probably add to this, but the durability part is because of the rear-axle camber that we’ve given the teams, the latitude to work in, which helps the car grip. With that being said new and those numbers new to the garage area, those parameters, you know, those guys are making sure that that part of it – it can go 600 miles or more. It’s nice to see that they put that effort into that with one whole race team and do that and probably others are working on other things.

Q. For either one of you, both of you talked about what the teams are telling you and what you’re seeing from the teams out there as far as whether they’re happy or sad or whatever. What do you guys see? Do you get the impression that this car is going to be better, that it’s going to be racier, that teams are going to be able to work more with it and do more things with it, or will you not know that until we actually get on the track and get 43 of them out there racing?

ROBIN PEMBERTON: Well, we know where the car was last year, where last year’s car was, and some of the things, the input that we’ve gotten about aerodynamics and how cars are around each other, we set out to make a car better than that, and we have given more under the underbody to work with, more area, we’ve extended the splitters a little bit, so they should react a little bit better in the draft. And if you’ve noticed, the body is a little bit different shape, so it should react a little bit different in the air.

Our goal was to start better than we left the last car, and we do have better numbers on the car, and I think the drivers’ confidence that they can hustle the car a little bit more will be there with this car once they get their setups fine-tuned. John can add to that, I think.

JOHN DARBY: Yeah, for me, I’ve got to tell you, I’m like every other race fan in the world, I’ve been jacked up about this new car since we started putting it on paper and watching it develop has been even more fun. But part of that was I had my list, also, of everything that I didn’t really like about the Gen-5 car and things that I wished we could change, and some of those changes, they’re just not practical to do in the middle of a run of a style of car because it just creates too much chaos.

So when we started putting all the parts and pieces together for the Gen-6 car, it was time to look at introducing a lot of those things, and with the help of our engineers at the tech center and a lot of just bull sessions and talks and comparing notes and everything, there’s so many things that have changed. Now, obviously the appearance of the Generation-6 car is one of the best we’ve ever had, and that’s probably the most visible change. But when I look at the list of things that changed in addition to that, Robin spoke to rear-axle camber and increasing that, we weren’t using but half of the rear tires on the other car, the fact that the weight of the cars has been reduced by 150 pounds, some of the new spindle designs that have been introduced by the teams, there’s just a whole list of things, and all of those were in an effort to close up the competition a little. I don’t know if we necessarily need to do too much of that, but at least in doing that we approached it from a different direction.

We put more toolbox drawers full of tools back in the crew chiefs’ hands. There’s more things for them to work with, to adjust with, to move around, to try and experiment with. So when you come to a test like this one or the one in December, both of them, and you see somebody doing a durability run, that’s because of a lot of the other changes that probably kind of fell by the wayside or haven’t been talked about a lot. But there’s a whole list of goodies now that everybody is playing with and experimenting with, changing the mousetrap just a little bit.

But from leaving last year’s car and working on this new one, there’s enough that’s different and changes, and a lot of them have all been pointed to making life easier and more adjustable for the guys in the garage as well as enhancing the actual performance of the car on the racetrack.

Yeah, you ask what we think of a test, I’m not a big testing fan, there’s a lot of tests that are like watching paint dry, right, but all of the tests for this car have just been fun and exciting to go to because of all of those things. Working with the teams and hearing what they’re doing with them and the progress they’re making.

ROBIN PEMBERTON: Not all tests have been fun. We’ve had a few bad ones along the way, too.

Q. A couple of questions: First, since a lot of teams had time to go through the new laser tech, are most of the cars fairly legal as far as that kind of tech template is concerned?

JOHN DARBY: Yeah. I’ll refrain from calling it a template because it’s not, and it gets people confused that it relates to the bodies of the car, which it does not. But the laser platform through its development has been something to obviously upgrade the level of inspection technology in the garage, but more importantly I think than upgrading it, it’s to help showcase some of the technology that’s out there and that’s used every day by the teams and NASCAR both.

There’s a lot of times we’re criticized for being a little bit prehistoric or doing the dinosaur walk too long on some things, and the sad part of all of that is there’s probably more technology being used in NASCAR racing than in most forms, if not all forms, of motorsports. It’s just not flaunted at the racetrack during the race.