BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Bristol, Tenn. — As promised after last week’s NASCAR announcement to trim one-inch from the rear spoilers for 2005, the teams got to work to see what that inch meant to the cars. It didn’t take long for the results to come in. The news is that the cars will be lighter in the rear than they are this year.

According to several team engineers the first results after the trim showed about a 200-pound reduction in rear downforce – a number that represents about a third of the total rear down.

Last year’s trim of the rear spoiler, three-quarters of an inch, provided about the same reduction in rear down, but the teams have worked to regain all that was lost. Some teams, the ones who were pumping their rear shocks up to 900 PSI, were actually making a good bit more rear down now than they were in 2003, even with the reduced spoiler.

Rear down is important to a driver as it helps the car bite when applying the throttle. However, as important as rear down is to the formula, a balanced car trumps it all. NASCAR hopes that the teams are forced to start pushing the front fenders in to balance their cars so that the total downforce starts heading downward, breaking a several year escalation of increased total downforce.