{"id":8374,"date":"2020-07-05T20:50:13","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T00:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/?p=8374"},"modified":"2022-07-22T12:10:32","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T16:10:32","slug":"white-zone-high-downforce-package-is-a-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/07\/05\/white-zone-high-downforce-package-is-a-joke\/","title":{"rendered":"The White Zone: The high-downforce package is a joke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Who are these 80 percent of fans who say they like the high-downforce package?<\/p>\n<p>How do you look at Sunday&#8217;s Brickyard 400 and say with a straight face that this is good racing?<\/p>\n<p>NASCAR&#8217;s annual trek to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was yet another display of what&#8217;s wrong with the high-downforce package that NASCAR stubbornly defends.<\/p>\n<p>There were three, count it, THREE on-track lead changes. Two happened on a restart, one was a result of <strong>William Byron<\/strong>&#8216;s\u00a0left-front tire failure and the last happened when <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/2020\/06\/29\/hamlin-pocono-350\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Denny Hamlin<\/strong><\/a>&#8216;s right-front blew out. The others happened during pit stops under caution and under green.<\/p>\n<p>After two or three laps, there was no catching the race leader. Often, just as\u00a0<strong>Chase Elliott<\/strong> did, he would pull to a multi-second lead over the driver in second.<\/p>\n<p>Before <strong>Alex Bowman<\/strong>&#8216;s right-front tire blowout and wall hit\u00a0brought out a caution with 27 laps to go,<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Hamlin&#8217;s overtake on\u00a0<strong>Kevin Harvick<\/strong> didn&#8217;t happen on-track. Rather, it happened due to a slower stop on Harvick&#8217;s end. Thus, Hamlin passed him, as he exited pit road.<\/p>\n<p>Even as Harvick clearly had the faster car in the final 20 laps, he couldn&#8217;t make the winning overtake, <a href=\"https:\/\/racing.ap.org\/article\/harvick-takes-advantage-hamlins-crash-win-brickyard\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">until Hamlin&#8217;s right-front tire blew out<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, if not for yet another tire debacle at Indianapolis, Hamlin probably wins this with ease.<\/p>\n<p>Who are you trying to fool, NASCAR? Who in all seriousness still thinks this package is working? Do we need to have a repeat of Phoenix Raceway last November for this package to die, completely?<\/p>\n<p>Alas, my readers, I can guess what&#8217;s going to happen. Someone from NASCAR &#8212; either NASCAR&#8217;s Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer, Steve O&#8217;Donnell, or Senior Vice President of Competition, Scott Miller &#8212; will go onto &#8220;The Morning Drive&#8221; on Monday and spin why it was actually &#8220;good,&#8221; and not a damn thing will change.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s just be grateful that the championship race will happen at a track that runs the low-downforce package.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s my view, for what it&#8217;s worth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who are these 80 percent of fans who say they like the high-downforce package? How do you look at Sunday&#8217;s Brickyard 400 and say with a straight face that this is good racing? NASCAR&#8217;s annual trek to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was yet another display of what&#8217;s wrong with the high-downforce package that NASCAR stubbornly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":8376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1664],"tags":[662,1407,1039,1408,14,1269,371],"class_list":["post-8374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","tag-brickyard-400","tag-high-downforce-package","tag-indianapolis-motor-speedway","tag-low-downforce-package","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-2020","tag-nascar-cup-series"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}