The cars will be slower and funnier looking than normal in the NASCAR All-Star Race on Saturday night, which begs one obvious question: Why?
Charlotte Motor Speedway might be the heart of NASCAR, but it doesn’t always produce edge of your seat racing over short runs. That’s fine for the Coca-Cola 600, but it stinks for the Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race, which has had thrilling installments over the years bu a few snoozers as well.
For 2018, NASCAR is trying to avoid that by making the cars run restrictor plates, which will slow them down and potentially bunch them up like at a superspeedway — though it probably won’t mean two-by-two packs for entire laps, as Charlotte doesn’t have straightways long enough to force that. But it should keep the cars closer.
The plates aren’t the only thing that’s different. The 2018 All-Star Race aero package features:
- A bigger splitter on the front of the cars like the ones used in the 2014 season.
- Unique aero ducts for each manufacturer.
- A six-inch high spoiler with 12-inch ears on each end, much taller than the ones normally run during the Cup Series season (which are less than three inches tall).
These elements weren’t just chosen at random. They’re basically identical to the way the cars were outfitted for the 2017 NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Indianapolis, one that set a new record for green flag lead changes. The goal is tighter racing with more passing, especially the type of slingshot passes that are very difficult at most tracks these days.
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Will it work?
The jury is still out on that. Neither Brad Keselowski nor Jimmie Johnson seemed certain that it would, but both drivers also appear to accept it as a reasonable experiment for a non-points race. It should be noted that the same package will run additional XFINITY Series races this year at Michigan and Pocono, so NASCAR should have even more data when considering whether to use the restrictor plates and aero elements for the 2019 All-Star Race.