Nascar's 7th Generation: Refreshing Changes to the Antiquated Sport

 With the postponement of the Generation 7 Nascar Cup cars to 2022, fans have been eagerly awaiting the new changes to the most popular motorsport in America. We see the return of the same three manufacturers as the Generation 6 Cup cars: Ford with their Mustang GT, Chevy with their Camaro ZL1, and Toyota with their Camry TRD as shown above. Along with the drastically different stylistic appearances, these Next Generation race cars were designed with both road car similarity and road course performance in mind. One of these changes include going back to fully symmetrical car bodies (and exhausts!) to look more like their road-going counterpart. This is opposed to the Generation 6 cars, which are flatter on the right side of the car increase aerodynamics around an oval track. Another notable change would be a fully independent rear suspension as opposed to the live axel that is present on the current cars. This increases the cars' performance around a road course style of track, as well as being more similar to the road counterparts actual suspension. Finally, the most notable changes would be the modernization of the transmission and wheels. Originally, Nascar has always used 5 lug wheel design to and traditional style manual to be more similar to road going cars. However the modernization of these systems puts them more in line of technology of other motorsports such as IMSA GTD and TCR type sports. The new Nascar race cars will now use a five speed manual sequential gearbox, with a single center lug wheel to increase road course performance and reduce pit stop times. These changes should bring even closer racing and more fans to the already growing motorsport.