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A tire flew over the 22-foot tall fence and landed about 40 rows up.

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Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski says that the NASCAR Cup series should incorporate hybrid power by adopting a KERS system similar to Formula 1 to improve racing and attract new manufacturers.

NASCAR's Gen-6 Cup cars use V8 engines, which Keselowski believes should be retained in order to avoid similar criticism to F1 use of V6 powerplants.

Keselowski adds that adopting a similar system to F1’s KERS – which harvests energy under braking to be re-deployed – would upgrade power to around 1000bhp.

In a blog post on his website, Keselowski says that the costs of hybrid technology are not an issue because “smaller teams are always going to struggle” and “We can’t let that get in the way of making the sport better.”

Keselowski believes safety standards would need to be “rigorous” in order to adapt to “extremely dangerous” batteries.

“There are a number of compelling reasons to go hybrid,” Keselowski said on his blog. “Manufacturers are spending money like crazy in Formula E because they all want their brands associated with electric vehicles.

“Contrast that with NASCAR, where manufacturers are trying to divest themselves from gas-only V8s and other impractical engines, which aren’t relevant to today’s technology.

“Our sport relies heavily on manufacturers to be successful. Without them, we can’t operate.

“I believe that hybrid vehicles are the future. If we switch to hybrids, we accomplish several things.

“First, we engage our manufacturers in a new way that has never been seen before. Right now, OEMs spend millions of dollars in racing and they develop a few parts, none of which are really mission-critical parts for them.

“Imagine if instead, we’re helping them develop this KERS-style hybrid technology. In that way, NASCAR would be more relevant to the car world than it’s ever been.”

How it could improve the on-track product

Keselowski outlined how it could improve racing.

“Let’s say a yellow comes out. According to our new parameters, all cars would switch to electric in their hybrid engines in order to save precious fuel,” he said.

“In that moment, the field would go silent, and wouldn’t be burning gas anymore. This would be great for our fans because it would bring down the wall of useless noise for a few minutes while we’re under caution.

“But the second the race goes green, the field — at least those cars in it that still have their KERS reserve power — is firing on both the electric and the gas-powered systems.

“They’re using the energy recovered during the race. For the next lap or two, until the electricity is used up, you’re watching the most powerful race cars ever going extremely fast.

“Or think about how race strategy would change as the KERS system recharged during a race, and you had that extra boost available to you at a critical point near the end, right when you needed to make a pass.

“You hit the button and boom, you’ve got that power. We’ve got a kind of finish that doesn’t exist in NASCAR today — or anywhere in motorsports, for that matter.”

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The sports car will take to the ovals in the Xfinity Series.

The Toyota Camry is headed to its final pit stop in NASCAR’s Xfinity Series. In its stead, the Japanese auto giant will field a race car that previews the look of the upcoming Toyota Supra. Toyota formally pulled the wraps off the Xfinity Series Supra in Daytona Beach, Florida, on the eve of the Coca-Cola Firecracker 250 race.

The new racer complies with the Xfinity Series’ 2019 rule changes, which include the use of flange-fit composite bodies in place of today’s steel bodies. The composite-bodied cars are said to weigh 150 pounds less than their steel-bodied counterparts. NASCAR estimates the new panels can be installed onto the chassis in as little as two days. Compare that with the nearly two weeks it takes to form and weld the steel panels of current Xfinity Series race cars.

Per Xfinity Series rules, the NASCAR Supra will rely on a hulking V-8 engine and an old-school four-speed manual gearbox to push power rearward to a nine-inch Ford rear end with a locking differential. With the exception of its rear-drive orientation, the Xfinity Series Supra’s chassis and powertrain are entirely unrelated to the upcoming production car.

Although Toyota is keeping mum on powertrain information for the new Supra, the two-door sports coupe is all but certain to follow in the tread marks of Supras past and rely on a straight-six engine for motivation; it’s likely to be sourced from BMW. A manual transmission is still in questionbut is not expected to be offered initially.

Despite its vague connection to the production car, the Xfinity Series Supra strikes us as a step in the right direction for the famed nameplate. In conjunction with the race-ready GR Supra Racing concept that Toyota unveiled at the 2018 Geneva auto show, the NASCAR Supra further solidifies the production car’s sporting bent.

Look for the Xfinity Series Supra to compete in its first race at next February’s Daytona 300 in Daytona Beach, Florida. While Toyota will continue to race the Camry in the 2019 Monster Energy Series, we expect the company to transition to Supra-style bodywork in that series within the next few years as well.

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NASCAR teams are great at bending rules until they break, working around new rules that dock car performance, and using existing rules to get an advantage. That last part is why you might see a race car with a windshield wiper sticking straight up on a sunny, dry day, and why NASCAR may start mandating when teams can and can’t have a wiper on their car at road-course races.


In true NASCAR fashion, teams found a way to get an aerodynamic advantage out of a wiper, of all things, by running up the windshield in a fixed spot—in a pretty goofy-looking manner. It’s a relatively recent thing at road courses, with photos from the 2016 Sonoma Raceway event appearing to show no cars running a wiper in the sun and only a few teams doing it during a sunny 2017 race.

But NBC Sports quoted NASCAR senior vice president of competition Scott Miller as saying that would probably change next year, because NASCAR’s looking to get more strict on when during a road-course weekend teams can use the wipers. A good guideline on this would be “when it’s raining.”

From NBC Sports:

If the whole “wipers” thing has been confusing you for a full five paragraphs now, that’s understandable. There are only a few tracks each season where NASCAR will actually let drivers race in the rain and it doesn’t always rain at those tracks, so wipers are hardly relevant—or so most of us thought.

NASCAR lets its top three series race in the rain on the road courses, which typically have a more winding layout, lower speeds and more runoff area than the ovals, triangles and squares that make up more than 90 percent of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule.

That means cars need rarely used modifications for rain, like swapping racing slicks for tires that have tread and putting on wipers. NASCAR wasn’t telling teams when they could or couldn’t use the wipers at road courses—probably because most normal humans equate the use of wipers with rain, not sun—and teams found an advantage to using them all the time in recent years.

Thus, almost every car in a NASCAR field looks like it has a giant piece of hair in its eyes while racing on a road course, because almost every car is using a windshield wiper in full sunlight. A source with knowledge on NASCAR aero told Jalopnik fixing a wiper to the car gives teams a minor aerodynamic advantage or they wouldn’t do it at all, but that a wiper isn’t going to win or lose a race.

Photos from Sonoma Raceway in June show that most cars did run the wiper, though, including race winner Martin Truex Jr.’s Toyota. The Stewart-Haas Racing Fords, which have been dominant this year, didn’t run wipers and all finished in the top 10 there.

Photos also show that not every race team had the same ideas when fixing the wiper to a certain position on the windshield:

NASCAR: where minor performance advantages outweigh goofy appearances, until somebody makes a rule that teams can’t do all of that stuff anymore.

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