See how Hendrick Motorsports builds a complete NASCAR Sprint Cup body in this informative five-minute video.
This excellent little video comes to us courtesy of Productions MAJ, the Quebec-based creators of the award-winning How It’s Made television series on the Discovery Channel and Science cable networks. Here we’re going to see the construction of a NASCAR Sprint Cup body—specifically, a Chevrolet SS as raced by Hendrick Motorsports. In NASCAR, the current Sprint Cup machine is known as the Gen 6, an evolution of the “Car of Tomorrow” raced from 2007 to 2012. The Gen 6 racer was designed to have a more production-like appearance than the CoT, but as we see in this video, the NASCAR racer still shares no body parts with the Chevy SS production car. It’s all built from scratch.
The first segment of the clip is given over to the construction of the front nose section, a one-piece molding in carbon fiber. In the coming years, we can expect NASCAR to employ more of these molded composite body sections, even complete bodies, due to the massive savings in time and money. Sheet metal fabrication is time-consuming and labor intensive.
Next, there’s a brief look at chassis and roll cage construction, followed by the assembly and fitting of the complete body. At this point, we see some great views of the complex, three-dimensional body templates now mandated by NASCAR to keep the playing field level, aerodynamically speaking. There’s a lot of substance in this brief five-minute treatment. Video below.
And that my friends is why NASCAR has lost so many fans in the past few years. Gone are the days of stock bodies and “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday”. Instead, we get a bunch of bellybutton look alike cars that don’t resemble the cars they are supposed to be. NASCAR racing was much more enjoyable when you had the big 3 manufacturers competing aginst each other as well as the drivers doing the same. Now you have a IROC style race where every detail of every car is madated by NASCAR to be the same as what everybody else is running in the name of “fairness”. If they want the fans back, they should go back to factory bodies modified only for safety, leave all the flaws of the factory design, and see who really has the best cars. Nothing against the craftsman that build the new race bodies, but the name of the sactioning body is the National Assoc of STOCK CAR Racing afterall. I’ll get down off my soapbox now……
Couldn’t agree more. And when we go back to stock bodies, let’s bring back the stock drive train. Then we will see how well a V-6 front wheel drive Camry can do again a Charger with the HEMI V-8 and rear wheel drive.
100% right on! I remember a race, some time in the 1960’s, at a bullring in the south where Richard Petty was disqualified because his car did NOT have door handles.
As far as carbon fiber body parts goes, I hope Nascar avoids this. They will have the same problem Indycar has now, after they run into each other ( which happens in Nascar much more than Indycar ) they will need 20-25 laps to pick up all of those razor sharp shards which explode everywhere.
These days ‘Stockcar’ means absolutely no stock original parts. Yeah a V6 Front drive Camry would be great asset. Though in Oz we only get 4 cyl versions.
Production cars,, The Chev is a 4 door Commodore, Dodge have a 4 door in the Charger. Ford have what besides the Mustang with a V8?
And a decade ago none of these cars were even available.
Front drive on an oval,, the r/f would last maybe 10 laps.