CONCORD, N.C. -- Don't get these Sprint Cup drivers wrong. They love going fast; they live by going fast. But when they get out of their cars sore just from the loads or can't get the car slowed down before plowing into another one, they know they have hit the "crazy" standard for corner speeds.
It's time to get crazy at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The 1.5-mile track will play host to the Sprint All-Star Race on Saturday and then to the Coca-Cola 600 on May 24.
Drivers this season have found themselves plowing through the turns as high as 18 mph faster than before, depending on the racetrack, with the 2015 aerodynamic package that has reduced horsepower and downforce. The cars do run slower down the straightaways, but the drivers spend so much less time off the throttle in the turns that their corner speeds have increased dramatically.
"We have a dangerous environment, that's for sure," six-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson said. "I don't think about it a ton.
"On sticker tires, when we're making these qualifying runs every now and then, it runs through my mind, I'm like, 'Man, if I failed something right now, I'd probably wake up laying on a stretcher wondering what happened.' "
NASCAR had hoped that by slowing the cars down by reducing horsepower with a tapered spacer and combining it with reducing downforce -- as well as adjusting some of the weight requirements and giving drivers the ability to adjust the track bar from the cockpit -- they could encourage more passing this year.
What has happened is the teams have engineered enough downforce back into the cars that they can go through the turns at amazing speeds.
Brad Keselowski said his Team Penske teammate Joey Logano had only a 7 mph difference in his top speed and his slow speed in qualifying with a lap of 192 mph last week at the 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway. That little of a difference in speed means IndyCar-type numbers, Keselowski said, and NASCAR drivers are forced to carry those type of loads in longer races.
"Look at Bristol as an example -- I got out of the car and literally, just where my seat belts held me down, you're carrying so much load through the corner, it just hurt," Keselowski said. "I never had that before.
"Literally you get out of the car bruising over your shoulders and collarbones to the point where we've reached so much speed and load for such a long period of laps and time ... that it's causing injuries."
Keselowski said his team has worked on his harness system to see how to keep him safe but also not hurt so bad after a race.
"I can't race with the belts [so] tight because literally I'm bruised after the race," Keselowski said. "That's where the safety has reached critical mass."
Johnson estimated that driver on-throttle time has increased 15 to 20 percent this year. Michael Waltrip Racing's David Ragan estimated that he is full throttle 75-80 percent of a lap at intermediate tracks in qualifying.
The cars drive stable in the corners, but drivers know a part can break at any time.
"If something failed at the wrong point in time right now, you're going to hurt somebody," Johnson said. "That is a true risk that's there on the mile-and-a-halves, how fast we're going. Hopefully we don't have that situation, and hopefully the soft wall and all of our stuff does its job and everybody's OK."
The other issue with such high corner speeds is that if someone wrecks in the corner, the drivers behind them have less time to react. Ragan found that out firsthand at Kansas this past weekend.
"You can't slow down as quick because you are in the throttle so much," Ragan said. "From us getting in that wreck in Kansas when Josh [Wise] and the 35 [of Cole Whitt] hit the wall -- I saw it and I checked up, and there was not a thing that I could do because I was wide open at the center of the corner.
"That's some things that we really need to take a good, hard look at."
Considering the loads on the driver's body, just imagine what they are on the tires. So far, Goodyear has brought tires that can handle the corner speeds and loads.
"We enter the corner slower and exit the corner slower, but going through the crucial part of the load on the tire and how we sustain that through the center of the corner is up, and that's a reason for concern," said four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon. "Goodyear understands what we're up against, what they're up against this year, what we're doing corner-speed-wise."
At Kansas, the teams used the same right-side tire compound and construction as they did at Las Vegas, which makes sense considering the similarities of the 1.5-mile ovals. But it was also the same right-side tire used at Talladega, where teams are flat-out virtually around the entire track.
"Goodyear is forced to bring a very hard tire," Ragan said. "When you have to run a Talladega tire at Kansas, something doesn't make sense about that."
The high corner speeds could be why drivers have come in if they have a loose wheel. NASCAR has stopped penalizing teams for loose lug nuts, figuring that they can't truly determine the tightness of the lug nuts.
"You get out there on the racetrack and we got the corner speeds are 18 miles an hour faster at Vegas, 18 miles an hour faster in the middle of the corner, and if you lose a wheel going that fast, it's not going to be very good," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. "So you have to have [pit-crew] guys that are up front and honest that you trust."
After qualifying this past week at Kansas, Earnhardt was asked by fellow Chevrolet driver Jamie McMurray whether he even lifted during his fast laps.
"It's crazy the corner speeds that our cars have this year with running a little slower on the straightaways," McMurray said. "The middle of the corner is way faster. ... I don't think you can run wide open, but it's really close."
Not only can high corner speeds pose a potential safety issue but the drivers don't see as many opportunities to pass in the corners with this package.
"I absolutely believe the center-of-the-corner speeds are way too high," said Joe Gibbs Racing driver Carl Edwards. "I feel like we should be out of the gas a lot more. I feel like our whole sport is based on guys racing stock cars around and manhandling the cars and being able to run close.
"I feel like we've gone farther and farther away from that because of all of the knowledge and engineering and the dependence on aero."