To the surprise of no one, NASCAR confirmed Friday it will mandate equipment changes in 2017 that will reduce downforce. Let the fun begin.
What will fans see? Car must use splitters, spoilers and deck fins that are smaller than those required this season. In other words, aerodynamic packages similar to those tested at Michigan and Kentucky.
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Put simply: Slip is good; grip is going away.
"The objective there is to give the drivers, put the driving back in their hands a bit more … take less aero dependence off the car," NASCAR vice president Gene Stefanyshyn told NASCAR.com. "That's the big thing.
"The amount we are taking off the front and the rear is the same proportion; we try to keep the balance of the car identical. So it's been taken off in the same proportion to maintain the balance of the car as it was last year."
Changes the past two years have taken away cars' mechanical ability to push themselves down against the track surface. It's not like turning off vacuum, but something like that. The net result: Cars tend to slide more in corners. That requires drivers to reduce speeds to maintain control in corners.
The objective is to allow more passing. To allow, for want of a better term, better racing.
The achievement is to give drivers more ability to handle their cars by taking away things that make them easy to drive.
For most drivers, recent reductions made racing more fun. For others, they increased the difficulty to compete.
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Here's what Jimmie Johnson told Motorsport.com.
"We are all wanting slower center of corner speeds. We all feel that will put on a better race. The slower the center of corner speed is the more off throttle time we create, the more opportunities there are to pass, the more opportunities there are to make mistakes, the more opportunities you have to work on the handling of your race car.
"The smaller spoiler is going to help us. We saw a nice improvement across all matrixes with the 2016 package and 2017 is another step of that."
Also announced Friday, in an appropriate parallel, was a mandatory set of driver safety requirements. To increase a car's ability to go out of control, NASCAR needed to make sure it wasn't increasing driver safety risks, or at least could provide ways to keep drivers from harm.
In NASCAR shops, teams were getting their first look at the new rules. Within minutes, if they had not done so already, teams were looking for loopholes and ways to turn the latest changes to their advantage.
That's racin'.
Changes in splitter, spoiler and deck fin sizes, plus other aerodynamic mandates, will not be employed at Daytona or Talladega. Those tracks will continue to use restrictor plates to control speed.
Read more about the changes and get ready for driver reaction from Kansas. NASCAR has its Sprint Cup and Xfinity series races there this weekend. Expect to hear from Carl Edwards, among other proponents of downforce reduction, and the word "fun" used frequently.
"Less aero dependency is good, so good job NASCAR," Edwards says of 2017 rules package #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/l75036pPJE
— Brian Eberly (@beberly18) October 14, 2016
Edwards told media members on Friday afternoon that he hadn't seen the rules package, but …
"That sounds good, it's neat. Anything we can do to take aerodynamic dependency away from these cars I believe makes the racing better and makes it more fun and showcases the driver's talent and crew chief's ability to change.
"That's good stuff," Edwards said. "Less aero-dependency is good, so good job NASCAR — sounds like it's going to be fun."
There's that word again.
Here's the bad news for NASCAR fans: The Chase format will not change. Apparently, legions of stock car racing enthusiasts despise the championship scheme.