Earnhardt: Chassis changes helped make Logano's All-Star win possible
Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he doesn’t think Joey Logano’s late-race pass for the win in Saturday night’s NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race would have been possible without some of the aero and chassis changes implemented by NASCAR.
Joey Logano, Team Penske Ford race winner
Jose Mario Dias
Last week, NASCAR released a list of technical changes to the cars, hoping it would reduce downforce and sideforce.
Some of the changes were for the all-star race only. The updated brake cooling rules will remain in effect the rest of the season.
“I think that taking the skew out of the housing and limiting the toe and doing things like that will certainly slow down the mid-corner speed a little bit and there will be a little bit more off-throttle time,” Earnhardt said after his third-place finish in the all-star race.
“I think that any time we can get more off-throttle time, there will be more opportunities to out-drive a guy into a corner, beat a guy into the corner or drive up to a guy's bumper to get him loose or move him out of the way or however you need to do it.”
The perfect example, Earnhardt said, was on how Logano was able to run Kyle Larson down in the final 13-lap segment to secure the $1 million win.
“You saw (Logano), he could get right up to (Larson). Man, if we were running the '14 or '15 package, (Larson) could have went wherever (Logano) was going and kept him about 10 car lengths behind him the whole time,” he said. “He didn't ever have to worry about it.
“So the fact that (Logano) can drive up there right to him and (Larson) can't do anything about it – we’re going down the right direction with all that stuff.”
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