As expected, the Next Generation race car proved quite the animal at Auto Club Speedway where drivers campaigned the new vehicle for the first time on a 1.5-mile track a week after the car turned its first official laps at Daytona. The race weekend at ACS featured an atypically high number of spins, including several in practice and qualifying, involving drivers who are typically some of the best when it comes to car control.
Among those who admittedly struggled at times was fifth-place finisher Joey Logano, the 2018 Cup champion. “Coming to Auto Club with big challenges and wrecking the car in qualifying and the guys fixing it and giving us a shot at the win, you have to be proud of that effort,” Logano said. “We learned a lot, and there is a lot more to get better at. Nobody is really good, that is what I figured out. Nobody is good. We have work to do.”
Sixth-place finisher Aric Almirola called the new car “certainly a handful,” raising questions about how it will perform this weekend at Las Vegas and moving forward. “It was a crazy day, wow,” Almirola said. “We worked on it all day and made it to where it was driving better.” Race winner Kyle Larson called the Next-Gen car “definitely edgy.”
“Honestly, I enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to,” Larson said. “I thought dirty air was going to be really bad behind people, and it didn’t seem way worse or different than normal. … Then you have the part where, yeah, it’s on edge where if you get a little too stepped out, you spin. You have to be aware of that and your aggressiveness on the restarts, and try to work on your balance a lot.”