NASCAR: William Byron wrecking the Next Gen car is a good thing

William Byron wrecked the newest prototype of the Next Generation NASCAR Cup Series car at Auto Club Speedway. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Third-year Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR Cup Series driver William Byron completed a two-day test of the newest prototype of NASCAR’s Next Generation Cup Series car at Auto Club Speedway earlier this week.

In total, the 22-year-old Charlotte, North Carolina native logged over 150 laps around the four-turn, 2.0-mile (3.219-kilometer) oval in Fontana, California during this test session.

But after a relatively clean 400-mile Cup Series race at the track on Sunday that saw him finish in a season-best 15th place, he wasn’t able to keep it clean during the second day of the test.

This, however, isn’t exactly a bad thing.

Here is what Byron had to say about the wreck, according to Motorsport.

"“We were probably six or seven laps into a 25-lap tire run. I had been a little free for a couple of corners, but nothing major. That time, I just got loose and figured I’d be able to save it but wasn’t able to.“It just came all the way around. I had a number of similar moments in the race Sunday and was able to drive out of it. That’s what caught me off guard the most. It’s part of testing, though, learning where the line is with what the car can do.”"

Yes, Byron is one of the youngest and least experienced drivers in the Cup Series at 22 years old, but he is one of the sport’s fastest and most efficient drivers in clean air.

He is coming off of a sophomore season in which he took five pole positions, second only to perennial Championship 4 title contender and 2014 champion Kevin Harvick of Stewart-Haas Racing.

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It’s not like NASCAR is trotting out some rookie or lower-series driver to complete the test, and it is certainly not like him wrecking illustrates how horrible a choice he was. It’s also not a simple case of a young driver being stupid despite what social media will have you believe.

In reality, this crash serves two separate positive purposes. First of all, NASCAR now has additional crash data to work with that they weren’t initially planning on gathering, and given how many laps Byron logged at the track over the course of the test, that did not come at a cost of the data they were planning to gather anyway.

Here is what NASCAR senior vice president of racing innovation John Probst had to say.

"“This is exactly why we test. We were able to put almost 300 miles on the car the past two days and captured some valuable data. Because of the nature of a test, we have a lot more data available than during a normal race weekend, including the IDR (incident data recorder) and high-speed camera. We’ll take the car back to North Carolina and evaluate it. This gives us a good opportunity to make sure the car holds up as expected during an incident.”"

Perhaps more interestingly, from a competition standpoint, in a now-deleted tweet, Byron confirmed that there were actually two different incidents, but the first one took place on the first day and was just a spin that did not result in any contact.

This goes to illustrate that the Next Gen car is not going to be an easy car to drive. It is not simply stuck to the track, which has been one of the key complaints about the rules package that was introduced ahead of last year. It is clearly going to take some getting used to, and that should separate the best drivers from the rest of the pack.

As he stated above, Byron had faced similar moments during Sunday’s race in the current car, but he was able to drive his way out of them to avoid crashing.

Here is what he had to add.

"“The tire doesn’t have the same sidewall, so there is not the same amount of slip that you can hang the car out. You just have to get used to that timing and rhythm of when the car does step out, how quickly can you catch it when it slides the front tires, how quickly does it come back.“All those things are a lot different from what we do now. It takes some adjustment to learn that. The sequential shifting was really cool. I’ve done that before when I first started racing but haven’t had it since.“I think it will be better for us on restarts to focus on moves and not have to worry so much about shifting. And on road courses, you’re going to be able to be a lot more aggressive in your downshifts. That’s going to be a lot of fun.”"

Chad Knaus, the crew chief for Byron’s #24 team, further illustrated that this new car is a lot different than the current car.

"“What and when we can change things is going to be significantly different. What you would change at the track might change from what we’re doing now – you’re going to have different knobs to turn. The thing that’s exciting about it is it’s a brand-new entity, so we’re always going to be learning new things about it and finding out what matters the most. It’s still a race car, and we’re still going to be able to work on it.”"

All in all, this was a positive test, and while Byron’s incidents certainly appear embarrassing on the surface, they should serve a greater good for the sport for multiple reasons.

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The Next Generation car is slated to debut in the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season.

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