Skirting the Issue

Flared side skirts became an issue when social media started noticing them somewhere around Kansas. The fact that the most obvious example of this was on the 2 car and Brad Keselowski is rapidly taking over from Kyle Busch as most-love-to-hate driver in NASCAR may have brought the issue to the fore faster.

The side skirts (or ‘vertical extension panels’) help seal the bottom of the car to the track. This picture, of the 2013 Toyota Camry, shows the clearest example of the side skirt because you can see the line where the side skirt joins onto the side of the body. The cutout is for the jack – if there were no pit stops, there’d be no reason for the cutout. The side skirts help funnel the air that does get under the car smoothly out, and they keep air from coming on on the sides.

Side skirts are made of a durable rigid plastic — except for one spot on the right side of the car near the tail pipe area. The rationale for this is that exhaust pipes get very hot. Although plastics are indeed the material of the future, plastics that are really, really heat resistant also tend to be expensive and harder to work with.

The plastic from which the side skirts are made is pretty rigid. You can cut it and bend it a little, but you really can’t monkey with it too much.  Except for that metal part, near the right rear wheel.  You know… this part:

Flaring out the right rear of the side skirt started out being done by a couple of teams and now you can find most all of the teams doing it.  So now for the burning questions.

Is it illegal?

Nope. NASCAR hasn’t fined or taken points from anyone for doing it.

Is it happening accidentally?

A lot of internet pundits initially claimed that this was the result of hard racing, no ride-height rule, and drivers racing on the apron, where the possibility of banging the car on the track is maximum. But not when it’s happening to so many cars and happening every week.

And then video appeared that showed jackmen pulling out the skirt during pit stops – right in front of the NASCAR officials overseeing the pitstop.  So no, it’s not happening by accident.

Is it really an advantage?

There have been a number of times in the garage where a team started doing something goofy just to see how many other teams would copy them. There are some cases I know about where teams made a modification they’d seen other teams make without understanding it — but they also had their engineers figuring out whether it was doing anything. If one of the backmarker teams had started doing this, I doubt anyone else would have noticed, unless that team all-of-a-sudden improved.

NASCAR does have a history of allowing something and then cracking down on it when it becomes too blatant, so the first teams doing this knew they might get their hand slapped.

The argument people have made is that it changes the balance of aerodynamic force. you’re providing a couple more square inches for air molecules to slam into. In this case, I doubt there’s much of an effect down the straightaway (especially with the rear-end skew), but it probably does help a little in the corners.

It certainly isn’t hurting the cars, or teams wouldn’t be doing it.

Why are they only doing it on the right? If it increases downforce, wouldn’t you do it on both sides?

They can’t do it on the left. The left-side skirt is entirely plastic and you can’t bend it. Plus, the issue here is really in helping the car turn, so you wouldn’t want to make the same change on both sides.

Should NASCAR prohibit it?

First, let’s note that this has been going on for much longer than most people realize.  Like most things in NASCAR, it starts with one team sticking their nose out a little (or their skirt out a little) and escalates until it’s a big enough effect that those of us sitting at home notice.

It’s not like NASCAR hasn’t been aware of what’s going on.

The main reason I can see for NASCAR stepping in is that a sharp piece of metal sticking out at wheel height has the potential to turn Phoenix and Homestead into the Roman Colosseum.

Not that anyone would purposely try to cut someone’s tire down, but it makes bumpin’ and bangin’ a very different proposition.

Here’s the problem. It’s going to be tough to police. And I don’t say that just because Jeff Burton said it and he’s almost always right. It is possible for the skirt to get bent and banged by (for example) a tire being pulled off at an angle, or contact on the track.

The NASCAR pit officials can’t see everything. Their primary job during pit stops is to make sure the wheels aren’t going to come off again. Do you want them to take their eyes off the tires so they can check what the jackman is doing? Maybe with the electronic pit officiating coming next year, that will be possible.  Not this year.

NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series Director Richard Buck told popularspeed.com

“I will say the garage is comfortable with how we’re managing it right now.  It’s the same for everyone. That’s how we try to manage everything — that it’s the same for the big teams as it is for the little teams.”

NASCAR has done a really good job not knee-jerk reacting to things. They tend to wait and see how things evolve. When they threaten to get out of hand, NASCAR makes a rule. This happened with the skewed-out rear ends a few years ago. It got to a certain point and then it got silly.  The cars couldn’t even get up on the rails for tech. When NASCAR made the rule, it had all the details – how much they would allow, how it would be measured.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they do something next year, but don’t expect anything to happen in the next two races – unless there’s a catastrophic accident that can be linked back to the flared side skirts.

And on a chemical note…

I always tried, as a teacher, to find analogies to help my students understand scientific concepts.  For example, my mental picture of “potential energy” is of a cat about to pounce or a sprinter on the blocks the second before the gun starts the race. You can see the energy ready to go in the tensed up muscles and once they move, you can see the kinetic energy (energy of motion).

Last Sunday at Texas, I got another one.

A catalyst is a chemical that initiates or speeds up a chemical reaction, without taking part in said reaction itself. All I need is a good video from Texas to make my point now.

That, or chemists everywhere should start referring to catalysis as “Harvicking”.