The race weekend at Watkins Glen International will feature some new additions to the course. Tire packs will help enforce track limits as NASCAR pursues multiple goals, one of which is limiting the massive wrecks.
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The first group of tire packs will be in Turn 1. One pack will be 11 feet off the racing surface, blocking an area where drivers have previously run wide before merging back onto the course. The second pack will be nine feet off the track. The third and fourth packs will be six feet off the track.
These packs do not form a solid wall. Instead, they provide some barriers that the drivers have to avoid throughout the race, including on restarts. The drivers on the outside row can still run a little wide exiting Turn 1, but they have some room to merge back into traffic.
"I certainly understand what we're after," Chris Buescher said in response to FanBuzz on Wednesday. "All of the rumble strips did not cut it.
"It just did not do enough to keep us off the run out areas and what the run offs were doing was creating these really tight moments when everybody merged back on the racetrack and was creating these massive accidents. Will this fix that or will it have a massive accident because of a tire pack? I don't know."
Photo credit: NASCAR
The second group of tire packs will be in the Carousel area. These packs will form a solid wall spanning 225 feet. Like the packs in Turn 1, they start wide and provide some runoff areas before tightening back up.
The large tire pack wall begins 20 feet away from the racing surface. The distance steadily decreases until only five feet remains between the tires and the track surface.
Like the packs in Turn 1, this will limit the amount of space that drivers can use exiting the turn. They will have to follow tighter lines as they navigate the course instead of fanning out.
"I think Turn 1 is a really good solution," Shane van Gisbergen told FanBuzz. "I think what they've done with the tire packs there and having the gaps in the walls is...I think that's going to work okay.
"The exit of the Carousel is a bit of a worry. The angle that it comes back on, in my experience with those tire walls, they grab cars and spit them out. So, yeah, don't like the look of that, but smarter people have come up with those things."
Photo credit: NASCAR
The Carousel is a particular area of the New York road course where massive crashes have taken place in previous seasons. Michael McDowell, in particular, has been involved in two of them.
The first happened in 2014 as contact between Greg Biffle and Ryan Newman sent Newman's No. 31 spinning into McDowell's No. 95. Both cars slammed into the guardrails and sustained significant damage. McDowell lost the entire rear section of his car.
The second wreck occurred during last season's O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race. Austin Hill ran wide and then he hooked McDowell's No. 11 while merging back onto the track. This incidental contact sparked a crash that collected 16 competitors.
With the new tire pack wall in place, the drivers will not be able to run as wide in the Carousel. This, in theory, should help limit the potential for wrecks.
"I would say I like the (tire pack) off of the Carousel more," Buescher added. "I'm kind of a proponent of physical barriers and if we're going to put a wall there, then we might as well put a wall there and say that's it.
"With the sporadic tire packs, it's worked at a lot of places when they've been used more for the apex, not so much as an invisible wall in between a handful of them. I'm not saying it won't work. It's kept us exactly where they want us to be in the simulator."
The drivers don't yet fully know if the tire packs in Turn 1 and the tire wall in the Carousel will fully achieve NASCAR's goal.
They have gained some information about the placement during time in the simulator, but they will only know for sure once they are on the track with other cars for practice, qualifying, and the races.
Still, some have voiced an appreciation for steps being taken ahead of the race weekend featuring the ARCA Menards Series, Craftsman Truck Series, O'Reilly Auto Parts Series, and Cup Series teams.
"I like what we're doing. I've joked about wishing it was just gravel still, but I do understand that we don't want to slow our show down like that time and time again," Buescher said.
"I get how we've gotten to where we have, but I do think this is a good attempt, and I hope the result is positive like we believe it will be."
