The second year into the Next Gen car, NASCAR continues to make tweaks and adjustments to the cars to improve safety and performance.

Recently NASCAR made some adjustments to the ride side door after a crash involving Ryan Preece and Kyle Larson at Talladega that exposed the inner portion of the door.  Continuing along those lines, teams will also have to include a steel plate on the right side.  The left side of the vehicle has long been reinforced to aid in driver safety; but recent on track incidents have shown that the safety to the right side of the car also needed to be re-enforced.

Recent adjustments to the cars – removal of front clip V-brace and removal of other front-clip components – were designed to make the impact during a crash “softer”

On the front end, NASCAR has modified the front bumper strut with an empty ballast box and a modified cross brace.

Any costs associated with the modifications will be covered by NASCAR.

Vice president of safety engineering Dr. John Patalak spoke on the changes saying, “we’ve taken a lot of the steel structural members and removed material from key elements to make this structure less stiff.  We have slots on both sides, we have deleted some cross members between the upright mounts and we’ve treated some of the areas down low that are some of the first to contact the wall on the front clip. We’ve also added slots to this ballast container as well as some holes, and it’s all an effort to increase the amount of displacement we’re getting out of the car and to reduce the accelerations that the driver is experiencing.”

Patalak added, “the right-side door bars of the center section is getting a steel plate welded to it and really what it does it’s strengthening the right-side door bars against intrusion for crashes like we saw at Talladega with the five and 41.  We reconstructed that crash at a test facility and we’re pleased with the performance where we’re hanging on to everything. We still do have bent door bars but minimal intrusion and much better performance.”

Both Ryan Preece and Kyle Larson were on hand at the NASCAR R&D center to aid in the investigation.

The changes are expected to be in place for the Atlanta night race in July.