NASCAR concerned with flying cars, vows action (cont'd)

Ironically it was the second time in less than a year the two drivers were involved in a crash that sent a car into a frontstretch barrier. In spring 2009 at Talladega, the pair made contact heading for the checkered flag, Edwards' car turned around and flew -- also making contact with another car on the way -- into the catchfence above the wall. A number of spectators were injured.

But Keselowski's car getting airborne at a 1.5-mile track was a bigger issue than Edwards' action Sunday, Helton said.

Growing concern

Since Ryan Newman's flip at Talladega, cars going airborne are becoming more frequent.

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"The car getting airborne was a very serious issue," Helton said. "We've not seen a car get airborne much on a mile-and-a-half race track and that's something that is very important to us. We're going to study [it] very closely and figure out things that we can do to help prevent this very quickly in the future."

History has shown stock cars can fly -- to a great degree in the last two decades as stock car speeds rose -- even going back to the early 1980s when Cup cars were "downsized" from a fairly bulky configuration. But flying cars have been extremely rare at tracks other than Daytona and Talladega.

NASCAR has tried a variety of aerodynamic configurations to keep cars on the ground, including a longitudinal "shark fin" that debuted at Daytona.

The same configuration was used at Atlanta, though not in the same dimensions. And the roof and cowl flaps on Keselowski's car -- mechanical devices designed to alter airflows and air pressures to help keep cars on the ground -- all deployed as designed.

The car still flew, and Darby reiterated it's virtually as inevitable as it is unpredictable.

"There's two things," Darby said. "There's many times where cars spin, and if you look back to before we even had roof flaps, they'd spin and just lift straight up into the air. That's the situation that's been brought back under control through the use of roof flaps and different fins on the rear glass, rails on the roof and side-skirts below the doors and all of those things.

"The things that you aerodynamically prevent -- and I'll go all the way back to Geoff Bodine's truck getting up into the catchfence at Daytona [at Speedweeks 2000], where he collided and ran over the rear tire of the truck that he collided with and that shot him up in the air -- in those kinds of situations, the energy that ultimately launches those vehicles, I don't know if you can aerodynamically overcome."

Later this month, NASCAR has scheduled all-inclusive tests for Cup Series teams at the 2.66-mile Talladega track and the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway, where flat-blade spoilers -- historically part of a stock car's look in the entire modern era that began in 1971 -- will be used.

Darby said not to expect the spoiler's return to be a cure-all.

"What we know is the difference in liftoff [speed] between the spoiler and the wing is either so small that we can't measure it, or there isn't any," Darby said. "But with that being said, there are additions that are being made to the car, that we did make for Daytona and Talladega that enhance the liftoff speed.

"Our aero crew is currently on their way again to Detroit to run a whole series of tests to look for more information to see if there are more additions to the car that we can make to improve on what we have. That's pretty routine and we do that all year."

But after the tests, spoilers will replace the wings currently mounted on the rear decks of Cup cars. It'll mark the end of the wing's three-year lifespan on NASCAR's new car. (Continued)