That's because they went to a common template for the bodies about two years ago. It's freaking hideous. The low dollar teams were crying that they couldn't compete because they didn't have the money to develop cars for the superspeedways, short tracks, 1 1/2 mile ovals and road courses. Big dollar teams spent time in the windtunnel tweaking every inch of the car to get the most downforce and least drag within the rules. The result was a common car regardless of badge and a lot of very restrictive rules regarding shock travel and other issues regarding performance. Very similiar to what F1 has done. First it was smaller engines, then they got rid of traction control, now they're talking about common engine templates. NASCAR is already developing a common engine to go with the common body.
Amazingly, in both sports these moves have done little to narrow the gap. You still have two or three front running teams (Roush, Hendrick and Gibbs in NASCAR, Renault, Mclaren and Ferrarri in F1) and the lower dollar teams still crying about the performance gap.
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