Aerodynamics

Aerodynamic Forces

How Fast Would NASCAR Cars Go at Daytona without Restrictor Plates?

2014-07-11 dr. diandra 6

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. […]

Aerodynamic Forces

Knowing the COSMOS doesn’t mean you know NASCAR

2014-05-28 dr. diandra 9

Everyone’s favorite “planet” killer had a spare hour because COSMOS was pre-empted Sunday by the Coca Cola 600.  Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson edified us with some “NASCAR physics”. There were 43 drivers who had no […]

Aerodynamic Forces

The Arguments for Slowing Down the Gen-6 Car

2013-12-15 dr. diandra 16

It’s got to be a little frustrating that there are less than 90 days left before the start of the 2014 season and the rules package for the car isn’t set.  Teams hope for a […]

Aerodynamics

The Science of Speed: Week Ending 11/14/13

2013-11-14 dr. diandra 0

Hard to believe it’s winter, but we got our first snow already. Here’s the news of the week. It’s holiday shopping time – great idea for your gearhead: magazine subscriptions. Racecar Enginering has some special […]

Aerodynamic Forces

The Flap over Roof Flaps

2013-07-05 dr. diandra 5

Why Roof Flaps? Roof flaps (the invention of which I detail in my book The Physics of NASCAR) help keep cars on the ground.  This is necessary because of Bernoulli’s law, which says basically that: Faster-moving […]

Aerodynamic Forces

Sprint Car Safety

2013-06-13 dr. diandra 11

NASCAR fans are used to having our drivers walk away from spectacular crashes.  Unfortunately, we are reminded all too often — like last night — that racing, regardless of all the technical improvements we’ve made, […]

Aerodynamic Forces

Keeping Racecars on the Racetrack

2013-05-10 dr. diandra 3

Ryan Newman escaped NASCAR sanctions for his comments immediately after being discharged from the infield care center at Talladega.

“They can build safer racecars, they can build safer walls, but they can’t get their heads out of their asses far enough to keep them on the race track and that’s pretty disappointing, and I wanted to make sure I get that point across,” he said. “You all can figure out who ‘they’ is.” […]

Aerodynamic Forces

A Quick Post on Why Cars Go Airborne

2013-05-07 dr. diandra 1

A quick post for my friend, @TheOrangeCone that I’ll expand on later (I have theater tickets tonight!)

@TheOrangeCone asked why Kurt Busch went airborne in the Talladega crash. The answer is the same for all the cars that end up in the air: when a car rotates (so that its side or its back is leading instead of its front), it looks an awful lot like an airplane wing — a shape that is optimized to generate lift. […]

Aerodynamic Forces

From the Lab Notebook: Las Vegas and the Mysteriously Missing Oil Tank Cover

2013-03-06 dr. diandra 1

As we head for Las Vegas this weekend, I thought I’d repost on of my most popular posts from stockcarscience.com on 3/5/2008 since the redirects for the old stockcarscience.com site don’t work reliably. The post is about Carl Edwards’ 2008 win at Las Vegas when the team was subsequently fined for having their oil tank cover lid askew at the end of the race. I have edited the post extensively, adding some new information and better graphics. […]

Aerodynamic Forces

Why Safety Takes Time

2013-03-01 dr. diandra 3

I suppose it’s really our own fault because of the way we teach science.

We give you labs constructed to get the right answer on the first try. We have you measure things you already know the value of. We tell you that things were invented by a single person on a specific date. […]