Todd Bodine CoT fan

I promised last week to post a transcript of Todd Bodine's comments from our March 13, 2007 ON PIT ROW episode. I thought that Todd's descriptions of the handling aspects of the Craftsman trucks and their relationship to the (then) Car of Tomorrow design were the best I had heard. I hope it comes through in print.  It got started when I said to Todd that I think it looks like the truck is more fun to race that the current car.

Yeah, it really is. And there's two major factors for that. The aerodynamics are the absolute biggest factor.  We have a thing that's called side force, it's the amount of pressure that the air pushes on the side of the car or the truck. And obviously with the big flat sides that the truck has, it has more side force. And the more side force you have, the more sideways you can run it and still gather it back. The freer you can run it so you can go faster. So it makes it really exciting there. And at the same time, the wheelbase is longer than a cup car so that makes it a little easier to drive and you put those two things together it makes for more exciting racing.  And plus the truck punches such a big hole in the air it has a really good draft. And you put all that together it makes it a lot of  fun to drive and really close racing. And thats why everywhere we go people tell us the truck race  is the best show of the weekend, and it usually is.

And that's what they've done with the car of tomorrow. They've tried to go more toward the aerodynamic principles of the truck.  A bigger hole in the air, a splitter on the front end instead of a valence and a wing on the back which is the biggest difference and was probably the best thing they did because the back of the car doesn't rely on down pressure on the trunk. When a car gets up beside you or behind you, it will take that down pressure off. The wing relies on horizontal air movement so you get a much cleaner air flow and the car behind you doesn't effect you as much. So you're going to see a lot closer racing, I think. You know there's a lot of guys that don't like the new car and a lot that do like it. I'm one of them that really likes it and I think it's going to be a great future for NASCAR and the sport in general.

After some general conversation about splitters in truck racing (Todd like's 'em) We asked Todd specifically about the bumping and banging that we all expect at Bristol and is the splitter configuration more vulnerable than the traditional set up.

Yeah, that's a very good question. It's actually much less vulnerable. With a truck you don't rely on the front fenders as much as the cars do. Don't get me wrong, they still matter. The car of today probably relies 80 percent on the front fenders for downforce. And with the splitter, you can't hardly knock it off. You can rub it off by dragging it on the racetrack but that just means you need to put more spring in it so you don't drag it. It's really up to the teams whether they want to drag the splitter or not.  You just don't see the trucks have much of a problem with the splitters.

We talked about other subjects including the usual questions about how his 2006 championship had impacted his life and life's work and about driving for a Toyota team.  He was terrific and both Steve and I are now solidly fans of the Onion.

But there is no earthly way you will get me to transcribe another sentence. What a pain.

Comments

[Steve]

Todd had it down. But, maybe because it debuted on a short track, the first CoT race seemed "Much Ado About Nothing".

Steve