RELATED: NASCAR tweaks rules package for Kentucky, Michigan
CONCORD, N.C. -- The photograph in the back of the media center at Charlotte Motor Speedway shows the No. 5 Chevrolet of Geoff Bodine sideways coming out of the turn, smoke rolling off the tires with Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott right on his bumper.
It's a photo from the 1987 running of The Winston at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
It's a photo that captures the attention of Joe Gibbs Racing driver Carl Edwards.
The 2016 base rules package adopted by NASCAR for its Sprint Cup Series continues to evolve. Additional tweaks were announced Thursday, changes that will be adopted for races at Michigan International Speedway (June 12) and Kentucky Speedway (July 9) in a move to remove additional downforce and sideforce.
There are "absolutely no negatives" to the path NASCAR has chosen, according to Edwards.
"This sport, to me, and I can speak as a fan -- until I got that call from Jack Roush, this was just something I dreamed of doing and watched on television and the things that I grew up watching drivers do with these race cars," Edwards said Thursday during his media availability at CMS.
"Like that picture with cars sideways and hanging it out; stock car racing, NASCAR racing is built on that. I can't applaud NASCAR enough for going that direction. I don't see any negatives. I think we're just going to have better and better racing."
The latest revisions to the current package consist of decreasing the size of the rear spoiler (both height and width) and adjusting the rear deck fin as well as trimming two inches from the inside portion of the front splitter.
Previous moves included changes in the rear toe settings and the removal of electric fans used to move air out from underneath the cars. Requiring teams to weld all truck trailing arms, which also addressed skew, was put into play at Kansas.
NASCAR completed on-track testing of the latest moves a week ago during a Goodyear tire test at MIS.
Edwards was not a participant in the test but said that having less spoiler is a positive.
"I can only imagine that having a smaller spoiler and a narrower spoiler and less of a hole in the air not only makes your car drive better, but it also is going to disturb less air when you have a big pack of cars," he said.
"At these big tracks, this is a big race car driving through the air at 195 mph and the smaller you can make that hole, the easier it is for people behind you to catch you and that's what we want to see; we want to see guys who can get together. We've seen a lot of that this year and as we go this direction, I really believe and would be surprised if it doesn't get better."
A shorter spoiler will create less drag, which increases speeds. But the loss of downforce and sideforce should create more off-throttle time by drivers in the corners and open up passing zones.
"We've got a spoiler that's 2-1/2 inches high and 53 inches wide; 53 wide is the same dimension as the superspeedway spoiler, but the superspeedway spoiler is 4-1/2 inches high," Gene Stefanyshyn, NASCAR Vice President Innovation and Racing Development, said Thursday. "We narrow it up and we make it shorter; we've taken downforce off the back of the car and we've taken sideforce off the right side of the car (by making it shorter on the right side of the car)."
The tapered deck fin and neutral toe changes were "sideforce reduction" plays, he said, while the front splitter change will lessen front-end downforce.
Stefanyshyn said the combined changes dropped corner speeds by 10.5 mph on average; corner entry speed was up by 2 mph.
"They're going to be going faster, but the fact that we took 10 (mph) out of the corner ... they'll only get part of it back because they'll be coming out of the corner slower," he said.
Chip Ganassi Racing driver Kyle Larson was one of the four drivers taking part in the MIS test.
"As we took the rule changes and put them in the car -- I only got a couple of laps because it started raining -- but I was already off throttle a lot more," Larson said. "I think we were about 10 mph slower in the center of the corner.
"I expect the racing to be really good. I think with you lifting, the groove will move up some. It's just going to, hopefully, be really exciting racing.
"I think you can see every race track we have been to this year has been much better racing. That was just a smaller step in downforce. Another step will just make it better, we hope."