Brakes
The Zen of Brake Bias
With all the talk about giving the drivers the ability to change aspects of the setup from within the car, I thought some comments on what types of changes they can make would be appropriate. […]
Car Parts
Aerodynamic Forces
Dive! Dive! Dive Planes… on Stock Cars?
A persistent motorsports issue (and not only with stock cars) is the aerodynamic passing problem. You can’t pass without grip. Grip is a direct result of downforce. Downforce comes from two places: the weight of the car (mechanical grip) and the billions and billions of air molecules hitting the car (a.k.a aerogrip). […]
Andy Randolph
The Risks of Cooling Down
Engineering is a constant battle of risk versus reward. How much are you willing to challenge your equipment in order to gain speed? […]
Aerodynamic Forces
The Arguments for Slowing Down the Gen-6 Car
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 […]
DNFs
Toyota Engines: By The Numbers
There are somewhere in the vicinity of 840 parts in a NASCAR Sprint Cup Engine (at least the Chevy version and yes, I am taking someone’s word for this. I did not have time to […]
Engines
Eliminating Restrictor Plates?
Every return to a restrictor plate track brings suggestions about how we might eliminate the restrictor plate. Restrictor plates serve the very necessary function of limiting car speeds at Daytona and Talladega so that the cars stay on the ground. The negative is that they remove throttle response. One suggestion from some readers that I hadn’t heard of before suggested that NASCAR could just change the rear-end gearing parameters to shift the power curve and reduce horsepower that way. Will that work? […]
Engines
Why is Michigan so Hard on Engines?
Four Hendrick Motorsports engines failed at Michigan International Speedway . But Michigan is hard on engines. Let’s see why. […]
Building Cars
Glass Cockpits
When I first saw on twitter that Brian France had said NASCAR was looking at “glass cockpits” for the future, I was a little mystified. (You can see exactly what he said on @nateryan’s twitter […]
Engines
Pocono: The Shifty Triangle
NASCAR engines like to run at about 8000-9500 rpm (revolutions per minute); however, the tires on the car rotate around 2400 rpm at 200 mph. The gearing in the transmission and the rear end gear reduce the rotational engine speed, with different gears providing different reductions. When you talk about the size of a gear, you’re actually talking about the relative sizes of a pair of gears. The gear on the left in the diagram has 20 teeth, while the gear on the right has 10 teeth, so this gear would be a 2:1, meaning that the smaller gear rotates twice every time the larger gear rotates once. […]
Cooling
Engine Issues at Talladega: Vapor Lock, Gas Cans and Oil Coolers
An usual number of teams “ran out of gas” or had engine troubles during the Talladega race. The TV analysts had some ready answers for what might have caused these problems. Their extemporaneous theories tend to elicit sighs from engine builders, who know that problems can rarely be diagnosed at the track – and even more rarely by someone who hasn’t looked at the car.
A wonderful aspect of blogging is that we’re not called to have answers on the spot like the television broadcasters and we have the leisure of time. Let’s examine some of those theories. […]