May 14, 2021 | By Lee Spencer

Ryan Blaney gets acquainted with the Next Gen car

While NASCAR celebrated the unveiling of the Next Gen car last week in Charlotte, Ryan Blaney was getting his own introduction to the latest model drivers will compete with in the Cup Series.

Like a lot of racers, Blaney had not seen the Next Gen car—let alone sat in one—before preparing for last week’s test at Texas Motor Speedway. 

After Next Gen 101, the driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang concluded the vehicle is “definitely different.”

“With RCR (Richard Childress Racing) kind of running that deal, we don’t have a car in our shop yet,” Blaney said. “That car was in our shop to kind of get my seat in it, and I sat in it to get fitted and that was the first time I ever saw it, so I was really interested in looking at it and learning about it. I learned a lot about it at the test of how you work on it. We were able to bring some of our guys out there to really kind of get their hands dirty on how you go about this change or how do you go about this change.  

“It’s just different than what we’ve got now, and they’ve been working on for years and years, so it’s going to take everyone a little bit of time to efficiently work on these cars as fast as they can, but driving it I thought it was pretty good. You can definitely feel the differences. It has a lot less sideforce than what we have now. You could feel that kind of when it steps out. It’s just a certain kind of degree of yaw where I slipped and you’re like, ‘Whoa.’ This would be really comfortable in the car we’ve got now, but this one it’s a little bit less comfortable. But it was just good to drive it, feel it, try new things on it, what changes worked, what didn’t, what I could feel, what couldn’t I feel.”

On-track testing with an early prototype of the Next Gen car began on Oct. 9, 2019 at Richmond International Raceway with Austin Dillon behind the wheel. Since then, different drivers have performed single-car tests, including Joey Logano, Erik Jones, William Byron, Clint Bowyer, Cole Custer, Chris Buescher, Bubba Wallace, Tyler Reddick and Kurt Busch. Busch and Martin Truex Jr., shook down two different styles of the car at Charlotte last November. On April 2, each of the OEMs tested cars at Martinsville Speedway with Alex Bowman, David Ragan and Drew Herring.

NASCAR is expected to schedule a test at Daytona International Speedway with multiple cars to simulate pack racing. After getting laps under his belt, Blaney is curious how the car will perform around the competition.

“I think that’s the biggest thing is (how) the car is going to drive the way it does by itself,” Blaney said. “It is what it is, but how it drives and is effective with other cars with dirty air all around it, that’s the biggest thing...

“That’s what everyone talks about always, so that will be the big thing if we can finally get a handful of cars out there and really feel that out. I’m sure we will soon, when everyone starts getting their cars and building them, but I thought it was good, just nice to kind of get behind the wheel of it and feel it first-hand for a couple days.”

The NASCAR Xfinity Series teams debuted the composite bodies at the second Richmond race in 2017. The Five Star RaceCar bodies were phased in for the entire 2018 season and have been used ever since. The interlocking composite panels  have allowed the NXS drivers to beat and bang to a greater degree than the current Cup cars.

Coming off of a track such as Darlington, where many drivers choose to drive the wall, how will that change the complexion of racing for Cup?

“I wouldn’t necessarily say knock the crap out of it,” Blaney said. “The performance is going to go down if you keep beating on it, but I think they’ll definitely be more durable than what we’ve got now. I hit the wall a few times at Darlington. The last time I hit it was pretty hard, and it really hurt the car. It’s amazing we didn’t blow a tire, but I think it’s something to where you have to have a little bit of forgiveness. The cars now we always talk about, ‘Man, you barely touch the wall and you get a tire rub and you blow a tire,’ and that’s no good. Or you barely kind of door somebody on accident and you get a tire rub and blow a tire and it ruins your day. 

“So they’ve got to be a little bit more durable, and I think they will be with the way the bodies are on them and what they’re made out of. So I think it will help, but you’ve got to be able to maybe rub a wall a little bit and it doesn’t completely kill the performance of your car. You can’t knock it down and keep on digging, but I think there’s got to be some equal ground, and I think this car is going help that out a little bit as far as being a little bit more forgiving on if you did touch something, you don’t immediately blow a tire or you lose three tenths (of a second). We’ll see.”

While each of the manufacturers was able to maintain the character lines and features of the Mustang, Camaro and Camry, the seventh-generation Cup car is closer in construction across the OEM platform than ever before. Still, NASCAR continues to preach that the Next Gen car will put racing back in the driver’s hands. Blaney remains optimistic.

“I think so from what I’ve heard and learned about it,” Blaney said. “There’s going be a lot of the same parts and pieces on every car coming from the same manufacturer—different areas of the car—so I think it will put a little bit more in the driver’s hands. There’s still going be a good amount of stuff that the teams will still set up on the car that is all the team and the best teams are gonna figure that out, but as far as making your own pieces and parts, most of that has kind of gone out the window with this thing, which is something different, that’s for sure.  

“I know we take a lot of pride at Penske on making a lot of our parts unique to what we think is the best, but in this day and age you’re trying to bring the fields closer together, and that’s what the goal is for this.”