Short track races at Richmond, Va., and Martinsville earlier this season with the Next Gen car surprisingly produced lackluster racing.
During the tire test [at Martinsville] this week, the three drivers — Austin Cindric, Kyle Busch and Tyler Reddick — tried several different tire compounds.
They also utilized a plastic underbody on the cars and removed the rear diffuser extensions, similar to how the car is utilized for the series‘ annual dirt race.
It was the latter change the drivers seemed to notice most.
“So, the Bristol dirt aero kit, let‘s call it, the bottom pan area. I felt like that was a net positive,” Busch said. “We were able to get into a traffic setting situation where we started a race and kind of run around each other a little bit.
Reddick agreed.
“The underbody stuff that was tried certainly helped the situation. We are just missing the racing product a little bit, I think,” he said.
Busch didn‘t believe any of the tire compounds made much difference, particularly since there was a vast temperature change from this week‘s test (90s) and the race conditions at Martinsville in April (40s).
“There was no wear. And so with the control tire that we had, we would have some fall-off, but you could kind of recover your fall-off if you just took it easy for a couple laps and let it cool back down. Then re-attacked and we went.
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