Gordon: It's only a matter of time before NASCAR regulates rear ends

By SceneDaily Staff
Friday, May 09, 2008 

DARLINGTON, S.C. – The latest hot setup in the Sprint Cup garage appears to include twisting the rear ends of the cars, but four-time champion Jeff Gordon hopes NASCAR eventually regulates how rear ends are used to help a car handle.
 
Some teams, notably Carl Edwards’ No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing team, have apparently figured out how to turn the entire rear end housing so NASCAR’s new model car turns better. And that has caused other teams such as Gordon’s Hendrick Motorsports organization to try to follow suit.
 
“NASCAR did everything they could to stop us from twisting these bodies up and save us a bunch of money, and now we’re building about 10 rear-end housings a week,” Gordon said. “No matter what, these teams are just sharp, and the engineering is such that we’re always going to the next level to try to find speed, to try to find something.”
 
Teams are trying to find more downforce with the new cars, but Gordon said it makes the cars drive “terrible.” By manipulating the position of the rear end, teams are simply maximizing the areas in the rule book that NASCAR has “left loose.”
 
“The teams look at every single rule and how they’re taking the cars through inspection and go, ‘OK, this is an area they really don’t focus much on or don’t check or that they’re not concerned about, so we can work in this area. What can we do in this area that might make the car go faster?’” Gordon said.
 
And NASCAR knows the rear ends are being moved, because they see them in inspection every week. Some cars, Gordon said, can’t get on all four scales because the rear ends are “sideways.”
 
“It’s something they’re going to need to address,” Gordon said of NASCAR. “Whether they address it this year or not, I don’t know. This car was designed and built in such a way that these types of things are things they wanted to prevent, yet this is something that’s being taken to the next level.”