NASCAR: Next-Gen Cars too hot for drivers

One of the key issues with the Next Gen car is how hot it can get for drivers.

Denny Hamlin, driving the car for the first time in this week’s Daytona test, experienced the heat in the car.

“I can’t express how hot it was,” Hamlin said. “It was really, really hot.”

Hamlin felt that heat despite having an AC unit hooked to his helmet and wearing a cool shirt under his uniform.

“It is a concern,” Hamlin said of the heat in the cars. “It’s a big, big concern. Obviously, it’s difficult because it’s the way the car is designed. The design of it having where the exhaust is all boxed in running underneath the seat. It’s hot. It’s 450 degrees down in that box. It’s super hot.

John Probst, NASCAR senior vice president, racing innovation, said work remained on the heat in the car.

“We obviously have a list of things to work on coming out of here,” he sad. “We have to work on the heat in the car; we have some ideas there. We used the afternoon today to try some big swings at things and found some directions to go, so I feel like we made some really big gains there.  NBC Sports