NASCAR DAYTONA 500 FEBRUARY 20, 2022

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NASCAR Daytona 500 results

Results Final
Pos Driver Car Make
1 A. Cindric Ford
2 D. Wallace Jr. Toyota
3 C. Briscoe Ford
4 R. Blaney Ford
5 A. Almirola Ford
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It appears that the new NASCAR cars have some issues with the wheel mounting. Apparently, the new wheels attach to the axle with a series of pins and sockets. Pins on the axle and socket holes in the rim. Then the wheel is held in place by one large nut. If the rim is not fitted into the sockets when the nut is applied, the nut will not stay on and the wheel will come off of the car.

This method is different from the typical, one nut wheel mount on most cars. Typically the axle has splines and the rim has matching splines in the hub. That way, you can only get the wheel on the axle by lining up the splines. With the NASCAR method, it you don’t get the pins in the sockets, you don’t know that until the car is out on the track and the wheel comes off.

Wheel Woes
Kaz Grala caused the first caution of the race after his right rear wheel flew off following a green-flag pit stop. As the wheel bounced down the track and a caution was displayed, Chase Briscoe got out of the gas and was hit from behind by Ford teammate Austin Cindric. Briscoe spun, but the damage was minimal. Grala got a new wheel and continued on.

NASCAR comments on their new car after Daytona; Wheel issues?
Two cars saw wheel issues with the new single lugnut rim; NASCAR is looking into it
For 2022, NASCAR has launched the Next Gen car. It’s a spec chassis that’s identical from team to team in a drastic effort to level the playing field and reduce costs.

A lot has changed on the machines, really, everything has changed. Many parts and pieces saw their first real test in Sunday’s Daytona 500.

There were a few issues regarding wheels…

Kaz Grala is driving for the new NASCAR entry, Money Team Racing. The car has an issue following a pit stop where the entire rim and wheel assembly came off the car.

Here is a short video of the incident.

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But, Grala wasn’t the only car with a wheel issue. Another car broke a rim. It came completely apart and then the detached tire carcass rolled across the track to bring a caution.

“We had contacted NASCAR a week before and said that the wheels we were getting were not all the same,” Penske said after celebrating Austin Cindric’s Daytona 500 victory. “We felt we needed to modify the holes where the drive pins go. We didn’t really get any feedback, and at that point, we went ahead and opened the holes up.”

It's not clear why NASCAR went with this design.