Friday 5: Next Gen car’s durability could lead to more aggressive racing

When Ross Chastain’s car slapped the wall while leading last weekend’s Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, it showed how resilient the Next Gen car can be and what fans could be in store for, as the series heads to a road course and three consecutive short tracks.

For years, a complaint about the previous Cup car was how contact could bend fenders and lead to tire rubs, cutting tires or forcing drivers to pit. That limited some of the drivers’ aggressiveness at road courses and short tracks.

Even with the Next Gen car, it doesn’t mean that drivers can turn races into a “Days of Thunder” montage of constant beating and banging. Still, to see Chastain come back from that hit and finish second at Atlanta was something to note. 

Chastain’s crew chief, Phil Surgen, told NBC Sports that if Chastain had been driving last year’s car and made that same amount of contact at Atlanta, “there’s no way we could have been competitive.

“I would have been most worried about the right-rear corner,” he said of the previous car. “Crush panels. The body laying on the tire, and then it probably would have pulled the bumper cover off the quarter panel, and the spoiler hung so far over, it probably would have torn the spoiler back. It would have been a mess.”

Instead, the team didn’t have issues with the rear spoiler that would have affected the car’s aerodynamics. 

“Largely, the thing held up fantastic,” Surgen said. “The composite body didn’t pull apart anywhere. Obviously, it got pretty pushed in and cracked, but it all held together, and it popped back out so we didn’t have any tire rubs.

“Under the surface, the rear bumper structure is bent, the body mounts are bent, the inner wheel tub, where the crush panels used to be, is made of