Air Pollution
NASCAR and Electric Cars, Part II
It’s not quite January, but it’s close enough. The month is named for Greek God Janus, who has two faces: one looks to the past and one that looks to the future. The off-season is a natural […]
Horsepower
Energy
Pocono Raceway Solar Farm: Sheep Power
People often point to NASCAR as being an environmentally unredeemable sport because it involves cars burning gasoline. For some reason, people looking for an easy answer like to suggest that NASCAR turn to electric cars and that would […]
Drivetrain
How Can Changing Horsepower for Everyone Make Racing More Competitive?
I get this question a lot: If NASCAR decreases horsepower for everyone, how does that make it easier to pass? You’re basically taking everyone down by the same amount, right? To explain this, we have to […]
Aerodynamics
Daytona, Catchfences and Flying Cars
Track barriers originally were erected to keep cars separated from spectators. In addition to concrete walls to prevent the cars from driving off track, debris-spewing accidents necessitated fencing to contain airborne objects.
Catchfences should have the same properties as walls, but they can’t block the view. Chain link fence is a good compromise: It’s cheap, plentiful, easy to put up and surprisingly strong given its high visibility.
Chain-link fabric is an elastic metal mesh. It can give in two ways: gentle forces cause the mesh to deform. The diamonds stretch out of shape, but when the force is removed, the fabric springs back to its original shape. The fence can also deform by stretching the wires that make up the mesh. A large-enough force will break the wire entirely. […]
Busch, Kurt
Cooling Fuel: Safety or Performance Issue?
Temperatures at the Dover race were unseasonably high. Kurt Busch’s Stewart-Haas 41 team was told by NASCAR officials to remove “heat shields” from their fuel cans. The cans (shown at right) have an 11-gallon capacity. Not shown in […]
Computational Fluid Dynamics
Engine Rules Changes for 2015
There’s a lot of talk about all the rules changes for 2015. The limiting of the horsepower has been a hot topic of discussion, with people suggesting that NASCAR is basically mandating spec engines. Here’s a […]
Charlotte Motor Speedway
2015 Rules: Track Records I – The Example of Charlotte
@NASCARRealTime, @TheOrangeCone and @CircleTrackNerd had an interesting dialog when the 2015 rules were announced. They were debating whether the track records that are now standing are going to be essentially locked into history. The debate ended with an appeal to me and Goody’s Headache Powder. […]
Aerodynamics
How Fast Would NASCAR Cars Go at Daytona without Restrictor Plates?
Doug Yates was guest on Dave Moody’s SiriusXM Speedway last week. He brought up a conversion you hear a lot in the week before Daytona and Talladega. Every 25 horsepower in the engine translates to about a 1 second decrease in lap times. Dave did the math: Removing the plates would increase the engine by 450 horsepower. Four hundred and fifty more horsepower equates to 18 seconds off the lap time, assuming all other things equal. That last part was a very important qualification. It will come back to haunt us in a moment. […]
Engines
Engine Blowups: A Consequence of the Testing Ban?
The stock car science blog has been a little behind due to a really big project I’ve been working on that has taken up every spare moment of writing time the last few months. The good […]
Engines
Is the Tapered Spacer Rule Fair?
Combustion is the chemical reaction that converts gasoline into motion. If you remember back to balancing equations in high school chemistry, that often tedious exercise is entirely due to the fact that chemical reactions are just […]