4 Big offseason changes:
-Biggest the new charter system
-The new lower downforce package at 32 of 36 races, all but the 2 Superspeedways, so we'll see it in action next week at Atlanta Should mean a little less on car aero and a little more on driver skill.
-The new overtime system for a green/white/checkered.
-Going from the old analog gauge displays dashboard to a new digital dashboard.
"....."The digital dash, they're going to have 16 customizable screens," Gene Stefanyshyn, NASCAR senior vice president, innovation and racing development, told the NASCAR Wire Service. "If the guy wants to put the RPM gauge off in the right corner, he can do it. If he wants to drag it into the middle of the display, he can do it. If he wants to make it huge, he can make it huge …
"They can do whatever they want to customize this. They can make it look like a traditional gauge or they can make it a bar graph. There are different color LEDs they can pick, different gauges they can pick."
Instead of seven or eight information choices, such as fuel pressure, water temperature, RPMs, etc., NASCAR plans to provide as many as 25 data options. That includes lap times, which traditionally have been communicated to drivers by their crew chiefs over the radio.....
....The customizable display available to drivers is the first phase of the implementation of the digital dash. The long-range plan is for NASCAR to use the dash to communicate information directly from the tower to the drivers.
"Phase Two, which we're working on, is the longer-term strategy of being able to send information from the tower into the car to make the officiating process instantaneous," Stefanyshyn said. "We couldn't do Phase Two if we just had normal gauges. That's why the digital dash is an important part of that step.
"We can display the checkered. We can display a red flag. We can display a yellow. We can send the flags into the car. We'll be able to send in things like where they are on a restart. We're actually going to do a graphic to show where they line up. The other thing we can send into the car is penalties. When we get to Phase Two, we'll be doing freeze-the-field on a GPS basis versus the (scoring) loops. So we'll have a ton more accuracy."
Under that scenario, Stefanyshyn said, NASCAR could reduce the number of loops needed at the race track and use the loops as a backup to the more accurate GPS readings.
The digital dash can also provide engine diagnostic codes that will tell the driver, for instance, whether one of the sensors has failed. Accordingly, a crew chief can make an informed decision on whether to bring the car to the pits.
Ultimately, NASCAR could use the digital dash to provide information to fans or to record and transmit biometrics of drivers involved in accidents, both pending driver and team approval....."
http://www.sportingnews.com/nascar-news ... new-system
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