Who needs the "Crying Towels " ???

[RaceFanStan]

Here's the top 10 :
1. #20 Tony Stewart Pontiac
2. #8 Dale Earnhardt Jr Chevy
3. #48 Jimmie Johnson Chevy
4. #17 Matt Kenseth Ford
5. #32 Ricky Craven Ford
6. #2 Rusty Wallace Ford
7. #22 Ward Burton Dodge
8. #6 Mark Martin Ford
9. #40 Sterling Marlin Dodge
10. #12 Ryan Newman Ford

How the Makes faired :
Pontiac Won (but the next Pontiac was 24th, 2 laps down)
Chevy, 2 top 3
Ford, 5 in the top 10
Dodge, 7th & 9th
Who will be doing the most crying now ???

[Lars]

My guess is Pontiac? Tony could win in any piece of you-know-what you put him into...that's how good he is.

[NASCAR_geM]

What doesn’t make sense to me is that we don’t figure percentages of the make of cars that end up in the top 5, 10, 20, etc.

• Pontiac had 5 cars in the race. 1 in the top 20
• Chevrolet had 13 cars, but only 5 in the top 20
• Ford had 14 in the race, and 10 made it in the top 20 !!
• And Dodge had 11 cars and 4 made it in the top 20

Does it look to you that maybe FORD had a bit of an advantage yesterday now?

[Flintstone Flyer]

Thats why every make (except chevy) will use the Taurus Template in 2003.

Atlanta is the Aero Track. Drag plays more of a role here than anywhere else. Still a PONTIAC won?

Kenny Wallace mentioned on RPM 2nite last nite that Rusty won 10 races in '93 while Pontiac was lobbying for a change and NASCAR said no way!

IMO its still all about the money! The best funded perform the best.

[Dick Blom]

While they appear to be headed for a basically common template (Ford), doing it that way will still leave room for NASCAR to “play” around with the nose, valance height and spoiler height and call it “leveling the playing field”. But what NASCAR really wants to do is retain the ability to adjust the bodies until the results suit NASCAR. To really allow the teams and the drivers decide the outcome of the races (excepting of course the restrictor plate races) they would simply go to a single set of templates and reduce the down force with something along the lines of the 5 & 5 rule. This would reduce down force to the point of virtually eliminating “aero push” and with the new, harder tires I think we would see some truly outrageous racing with lots of side by side duels. If they would leave these rules in place for a few seasons we would see races decided by team effort, driver skill, of course financing (as always) and a fair measure of luck—not by NASCAR and their constant “fiddling” with the aero packages.

[Lars]

I think Dick hit the nail on the head.

[Flintstone Flyer]

I can go along with that. I don't like it but with the current configs what other choice is there?

Until the rules dictate a true showroom based template thats what we are looking at.