After Sunday's O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, NASCAR took six cars that competed in the race, two from each manufacturer, for wind-tunnel testing.
The cars taken included the #19 and #20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas of Martin Truex Jr. and Erik Jones, the #1 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet of Kurt Busch, the #24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of William Byron, the #4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford of Kevin Harvick and the #21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford of Paul Menard.
“The reason that this weekend got chosen by us is it’s early in the season; we changed the inspection process; we changed the splitter rules. Those two things we knew were going to have an effect on the aerodynamic properties of all of the manufacturers’ cars,” NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller said Monday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
“Now that we’ve raced a few times, we’ve seen what the racing looks like. We figured it was time for us to sort of fingerprint the cars. We want to just understand as a sport where we are, to get data where we are on downforce levels and evaluate our product.”
NASCAR also took two cars from each manufactuer for wind-tunnel testing after last year's O'Reilly Auto Parts 500. The #1, #4 and #20 cars also were among the six cars taken for last year's test.
The #18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of Kyle Busch was a part of the test last year after winning the 2018 race. NASCAR didn't take the 2019 race-winning #11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of Denny Hamlin for this year's test, because race-winning cars are now torn down during post-race inspection. That was not the case when Busch won last year's race.
The cars chosen for this year's post-Texas wind-tunnel test were chosen because they sustained minimal to no damage during the race.
