The “long crash” sequence in the movie Talladega Nights was a fun parody of the way Nascar’s race cars can seem to flip over endlessly when they crash at the high speeds of the superspeedway tracks of two miles or longer.

But following a couple such crashes recently at Daytona and Michigan International Raceway, Nascar’s Research and Development team sprung into action. They’ve produced some new aerodynamic parts that will be installed on all of the cars for all superspeedway races from now on. According to Nascar, these parts raise the cars’ takeoff speed when they have spun sideways by 25 percent, which should be enough to eliminate most such launches.

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“Went to work here at the R&D center using CFD and wind tunnels to essentially see what we can do,” reported Eric Jacuzzi, Nascar vice president of vehicle performance in a video posted to Nascar’s website. “We want that liftoff speed as high as we can get it to keep the cars on the ground.”

Jacuzzi should know about such things, judging from his academic credentials. Following his Kettering University bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, he picked up a Master’s in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan followed by a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from N.C. State University.

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A triangle of fabric bridges the gap between the deployed roof flap and the roof, increasing the flap's effectiveness. NASCAR

The cars already have aluminum rails running longitudinally on each side of the roof to spoil airflow crossing sideways over the car. The change is a clear plastic two-inch extension to the right-side rail. There are cutouts to prevent this extension from blocking the existing roof flaps from flipping open when the car is sideways, letting them also block the airflow as designed.

There was consideration of extending the right-side plastic rail forward from the roof and down the windshield, but driver pushback nixed that idea. Drivers complained that the clear plastic windshield tear-offs their crews remove mid-race to provide drivers a clear view wouldn’t work with that railing installed.

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The left-side roof flap has a fabric triangle that seals the opening between the flap and the car’s roof on one side, and the new rules require that same fabric to be installed on the right-side flap too. “If you’ve paid attention, on the left-hand side flap, it actually has that,” Jacuzzi pointed out. “We added it to the right to help the car in the earlier part of the spin. It makes this flap work a lot better and keeps higher pressure there.”

The new side skirt is in white here for visibility, but they will be black during races, so fans won't be able to see them. NASCAR

The final tweak is a skirt extending downward 0.75 inches from the bottom of the car on the right side, just ahead of the right rear wheel. Nascar is mandating that it be painted black so fans won’t notice it. “What we saw was there was a little bit of pressurization happening beneath the car in front of the tire and this kind of helps us deal with that,” said Jacuzzi.

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“Going forward, this will be specifically on the superspeedways and we’ll continue to work on some ideas we’ve had and some learnings from the wind tunnel and CFD,” he explained.  If they are successful, one day the long crash scene in Talladega Nights will just be a funny anachronism rather than a genuine worry for drivers at superspeedway tracks.