ford xtrac

What's new on the NASCAR Nextgen car they will be racing next season? What parts are mandated? What adjustments can teams make?

Quite a bit. First, the sheet metal - which isn’t metal anymore - differs from make to make. A Cup Camry looks like a showroom Camry, a Cup Camaro looks like a showroom Camaro and a Cup Mustang looks like a showroom Mustang. A lot of the body parts in these cars are being made by Roush Yates Racing, who also makes all the Ford engines in the series. The new car uses 18 inch BBS alloy wheels with single lug nuts. The wrench being used on the new wheel holds the lug nut in its socket, so there’s no more gluing lug nuts to wheels. Loose Lug Nut and Missing Lug Nut penalties are history, and pit stops will be shorter. The lug nuts are being made by Richard Childress Racing, who fielded Dale Earnhardt’s famous 3 car. Strangely enough, the wheel hubs come from Roush Yates. According to NASCAR, those are the only two race shops making Next Gen parts. They’ll use a five-speed transmission, which is planned to only be a four-speed at Martinsville so the gears can be bigger. This will be great on road courses. The 2022 schedule features six of them - Road America, Circuit of the Americas, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Watkins Glen and Sonoma. I’m still hoping for a street race at some point, but this is great. The transmission is no longer bolted to the engine. It is between the rear wheels and the car has Independent Rear Suspension rather than a solid axle. Yup, the old Ford F-150 rear axle - which everyone used regardless of the name written on the car - is history. Xtrac is the sole supplier; Jerico transmissions are no more. I’m going to assume that there’s still a lid in it so they can swap gear clusters during a race if necessary, but it not being next to the driver’s knee means it’ll be really easy to do; instead of having to crawl around inside the cockpit they’ll just open the trunk lid. Because the wheels are bigger, so are the brakes. This will really help at Martinsville. The body is now composite material, and it’s in sections - as is the roll cage. This will make racing less expensive because if you tear up the front of the car in a crash you don’t need to replace the whole car. Two different companies are making the panels. The ones nearest the driver are foam filled, as are the bumpers. The driver sits in a safety tub now. The new shocks are much more adjustable than the old ones were, so the days of bringing 20 sets of shocks to a race should be over. NASCAR has removed the weight jacker control that allowed the driver to adjust his own suspension. Apparently no one who has driven the car is worried about it. All the chassis are built by the same company - and for some reason it’s not Ronnie Hopkins Racing Chassis, who built all the chassis in 2021 except for Hendrick’s. The one thing that carried over from last year is the engine.