LONG POND, Pa. – Immediately following Monday’s weather-shortened Pennsylvania 400 at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway, NASCAR impounded nine cars after the race as part of a midseason evaluation that will include taking each car to the wind tunnel, as well as evaluated the engines.
Taking two cars from each manufacturer (Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota), NASCAR took Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne, Greg Biffle and Brad Keselowski’s cars back to their R&D center in Concord, North Carolina for further analysis.
“This was our first chance really to take a look midseason and get the cars exactly as they were on the race track, take them from here and then perform the analysis postrace,” said Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer.
“Pocono presented the best opportunity for us to really evaluate where we are from both an aero and engine standpoint.”
Of the six cars taken, Brad Keselowski was the highest-finishing vehicle in second with Busch (ninth), Hamlin (seventh) and Harvick (fourth) also earning top-10 performances at Pocono. Kahne finished 15th, while Biffle encountered early race problems and finished 25th.
Keselowski tweeted after learning of the evaluation:
Would be awesome if these numbers were shared https://t.co/Tl0jGSZxUT
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) August 1, 2016
NASCAR did a similar inspection after the Sprint All-Star race at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway in May won by Joey Logano.
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