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). […]
Engineering is a constant battle of risk versus reward. How much are you willing to challenge your equipment in order to gain speed? […]
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. Â Teams hope for a […]
Kansas marks the second appearance of Goodyear’s “Multi-Zone Tread Tire”, which was first used at Atlanta Motor Speedway over Labor Day weekend. Stop for a moment to appreciate the challenge Goodyear has to face each […]
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 […]
A short note on Denny Hamlin’s comments on the Gen-6 car and subsequent fine.
I’ve talked to a lot of the people in the trenches involved in designing and creating the Gen-6 car. That includes people from manufacturers and teams. All of them have said that the development of the Gen-6 car is a major sea change for NASCAR. This is the most collaborative that NASCAR has been with introducing a new car in some time. Manufacturers and teams were consulted and they all feel that their opinions mattered and were taken into consideration. This was a very, very different process than the COT introduction, which was designed by NASCAR and plans delivered to teams. […]
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? […]
Four Hendrick Motorsports engines failed at Michigan International Speedway . But Michigan is hard on engines. Let’s see why. […]
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 […]
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. […]
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