NASCAR officials once again met with the independent driver council on Saturday morning at Daytona International Speedway with the upcoming "Kentucky Package" at the forefront of the conversation.
The sport is just a few days away from arriving at Kentucky Speedway on Wednesday with the intent to test a new lower downforce competition package. This is the second time the driver council has met with NASCAR officials, and like the first one in June at Dover, it was a productive forum that allowed the competitors and sanctioning body to exchange ideas to improve the sport.
Representing NASCAR at the meeting was president Mike Helton, chief marketing officer Steve Phelps, executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell and vice president of innovation Gene Stefanyshyn.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Larson, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch, Clint Bowyer and Joey Logano represented the drivers in the meeting. Those drivers were voted on by their peers to include all three OEMs and a mix of both veteran and younger representatives.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. practices at Daytona.
Earnhardt called the meeting productive as the two sides discussed which tracks the new package might be utilized on should Kentucky be deemed a success, as well as which tire compound best suits the package.
"I felt great about all of it actually," Earnhardt said of the meeting. "The meetings we've had with them have all been productive. We talked about the direction they wanted to go, we talked about what changes they wanted to make with the low downforce package, and some other tracks as well."
Earnhardt warned fans and observers not to take too much stock into the results of the "Kentucky Package" because it’s only step one of a larger plan. With that in mind, Earnhardt says he’s just excited to get to Kentucky and work toward the goal of improving the on-track product in NASCAR.
"Whether it works or not isn’t really the question," Earnhardt said. "I think the opportunity to even try it is pretty cool. I’m not expecting Kentucky to reveal a lot of obvious answers on the direction we need to go. We are going with a low downforce package that the drivers want, but we are not really able to get the tire we want, the softer tire to really fit with that or work with that. The tire is a bit better but not quite enough.
"I think that is understood amongst NASCAR, ourselves and Goodyear. The Kentucky weekend won’t be a weekend we take a ton of stock in as far as what this package is really going to be able to lend us and if it would work somewhere else."
It’s worth mentioning that a Goodyear tire test is scheduled for July 13 at Chicagoland Speedway and it will include trying a tire currently known as the Kentucky Package.
Before addressing the coming aerodynamic alterations, Gordon was very complimentary of the driver council itself, calling his inclusion one of the most significant moments of his career.
"I must say, in all the years I’ve been in the sport, these two meetings that we’ve had have been some of the highlights of my career," Gordon said. "I think it’s huge to open the lines of communication in a sense where, you have every manufacturer represented. You have a lot of different teams represented.
"And basically, when you get in that room, you realize that everybody goal is to just try to do whatever we can to continue to make this sport as great as it has been and possibly even better."
The four-time champion explained that the amount of feedback NASCAR and drivers are able to provide together is only going to be a benefit for both the teams and the industry as a whole.
"Yeah, maybe one person might have in the back of their mind that oh, that’s going to affect our ability to compete at the level we’re competing now," Gordon said. "That doesn’t matter. There's too many other people that are weighing-in on that that would outweigh your reason.
"But everybody gets to throw ideas out and it’s phenomenal. It’s phenomenal to be able to throw those ideas out and feel like you’re being heard. Discuss it as a group and knock holes in it. And that’s from NASCAR’s side as well as the drivers’ side. I only want to see that grow and continue."
