According to Daniel Suarez, modifications to the NASCAR Cup car’s nose have made it possible for Chevrolet’s Camaro to race more strongly than usual in Sunday’s Daytona 500.
When a warning for a significant collision at Turn 1 caused the race to be stopped in overtime, Chevrolet won the biggest race of the NASCAR Cup season thanks to Ricky Stenhouse’s unexpected victory, barely defeating the Ford of Joey Logano and Toyota’s Christopher Bell.
Among the three NASCAR manufacturers in 2023, Chevy’s Camaro ZL1 has the most noticeable visual changes to the nose thanks to lower-than-normal placement of the grille and faux headlights. Moreover, it has a flatter frontal area beneath that area, which enables the front and rear bumpers of its automobiles to align more accurately for bumpdrafting on superspeedways.
After wind tunnel and track testing, NASCAR accepted the new nose and hood designs that all manufacturers were able to submit for 2023. The three designs are more comparable in the front bumper area.
“I think the Chevrolet, the way it was before, it had a pretty good point [at the center of the nose] and I think that made it a little bit difficult for us to push as aggressively as some of the other manufacturers,” Suarez said on FOX’s RaceHub show. “Right now, we’re in the same ballpark as them. I don’t want to say that we’re better. But we were definitely better than we were last year.”
Suarez, a racer of Trackhouse who made history by becoming the first Mexican to win a Cup race, finished eighth in the Daytona 500 on Sunday. He believed his performance would have been even stronger had it not been for a spin that brought out the warning flag with two laps to go in the race.
“I was actually a little bit upset, spinning while pretty much coming to the white [flag],” said Suarez. “I felt like I was sitting in a pretty decent position there, working together with Ricky [Stenhouse, the eventual winner] and the No.5 [Kyle Larson] – it was a decent group of Chevys. And then I spun out and everything went south after that.
“I was just struggling with loose balance when people would get to the rear bumper for some reason. That one, the No.2 [Austin Cindric’s Ford Mustang] came very close to me, very tight and the car behind me came very close as well and got me loose.
“It was a little bit crazy. I was just lucky that I caught a caution right after that. I was the lucky dog [the lead car a lap down that gets a wave-around to gain the lap back] and I was able to finish in the top 10 after the whole mess. But the car was fast and the team they did a hell of a job.
“We just spun out there, but we recovered and we are getting better at this kind of racing, and we are going to get one of these one day.”
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Nascar, NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity, Daytona 500, Chevrolet, Ricky Stenhouse, Daniel Suarez