Seth & No Nitro, same Hammond. His lakester might be a little big for the small classes but he could probably just scale it down & bang out a new one!
Sid.
I don't have any data to back it up but...
my feeling is that the old car might of been a little better overall aero wise. The new car looks more aero but has a fair amount more frontal area to make the car easier to get into. A number of the current records might of been set with the old car (which also evolved over the years). I don't have a record book with me so can't be sure of that. I think the new car started running in 2007 or '08.
I lived down a washboard gravel road (7 miles) for years. If you were accelerating on it you seemed to have more control. Once at a fixed speed the car moved around more. My thought is the salt is similar now. If your car is accelerating at a good rate, think Poteet, you have more stability vs. a car that runs the last 1-2 miles on the long course struggling to make another 30 mph over that distance. The other main ingredient I believe is traction control as it can react much fast than a human can to a spinning wheel.
Suspension can help but over say 250 can it react near fast enough to deal with the track's condition? Cars running in the under 250-275 mph range are going to probably need it for sure now and it will be more effective in the under 200 mph cars. The really fast cars can take advantage of it up to the point it isn't effective but past that point I feel it will be medium to high constant acceleration and traction control that will be needed. A number of really fast cars were still really fast the last couple years while the cars that accelerated slower struggled with handling. In Seth's case safety might increase since the car won't be going as fast if something bad happens, but the car might actually be harder to control, since it won't be accelerating as fast as it does with the larger motors. One solution might be to gear the car to just run to the 3 or 4. The foregoing is just my gut feeling and nothing more.
Sumner