BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Charlotte, N.C. — Several months ago NASCAR, along with several time-generous teams, tested several car configurations at Daytona International Speedway. The tests were part of the ongoing NASCAR strategy to find an aero package that'll give the drivers a bit more control over their destiny during a speedway event.

Those tests, which were cut short by rain, gave the sanctioning body a few ideas to work with. Perhaps the most promising of those was a car with a raised front valance and lowered rear blade. The package reduced the total downforce on the cars and forced the drivers to work the throttle on a motor with a larger restrictor plate.

The going theory, prior to the test being canceled by weather, was that NASCAR would find a few teams willing to visit Daytona in the month of December and continue on the path they were exploring.

Those plans however have been consumed by the reality that the common template cars, which will be introduced in 2003, would skew the results and make any testing with older generation cars impractical.

"We've delayed that a little bit because we don't want to muddy the waters with what we're trying to achieve in 2003," said NASCAR Winston Cup Technical Director John Darby, recently. "We can still take all the 2002 cars and test a concept. If lower downforce at Daytona and Talladega was a concept for the testing we could still use our existing cars, but for everybody to understand the concept the first huge stumbling block of confusion that comes in is why are you running at Daytona with a 2002 Monte Carlo when it's going away? We ask ourselves if it makes sense to do that, too, because even trying to force that issue to understand that all we're testing is big downforce versus less downforce, there are still enough differences in the 2003 cars where we can't apply it directly.

"So I think the feeling is although we'd still like to pursue that concept we want to hold up a little bit before to where we can do it with the cars we're racing."

Asked why the tests couldn't continue to get a general consensus on the lower downforce car while the teams worked on the 2003 common template cars Darby replied, "It's two separate projects. We work every day looking at new stuff. We have to. It's the only way we can stay level and try to improve the sport.

"We've got the 2003 car project going on and all the teams are building them. At the same time we're investigating and testing and R&D-ing on a lot of different concepts not only for Daytona and Talladega but for every race track that we go to.

"Once the engineering part of that is complete we can start applying that to real world by going and doing some testing with the ideas and concepts."

TIRES STATUS QUO FOR 2003?
According to TFR's Goodyear sources, the tire line up – and construction practices, have been fixed in stone for the 2003 season. With that comes the reality that a softer, racier, tire apparently won’t be part of the Goodyear offering for 2003.

The tires, which one noted Ford driver calls "as hard as stainless steel", were being looked at by NASCAR and a test of a softer compound tire was run in early August of this year. Those tests, which were run in conjunction with a larger greenhouse car, gave the drivers a bit more feel back in their cars – which is something that they've been looking for for some time now.

But those hopes of improved feel apparently aren't part of the Goodyear program for 2003 and with the exception of a few stand-alone Busch events the tires will follow the 2002 menu.

The one notable exception is the newly designed Dover tire, which was run in September of this year when the tour was at that venue. That tire, and its pleasant handling and wear characteristics, will be carried over to both Dover shows this year.