Browne, Josh

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. […]

Browne, Josh

Next-Gen Tires: Chewy on the Outside, Crunchy on the Inside

2013-05-24 dr. diandra 4

Listen to SiriusXM NASCAR radio, or peruse any of the racing websites and you will find a lot of theories about how races should be changed to make them ‘more exciting’. To try to amp up the All-Star Race, NASCAR went with four 20-lap segments, followed by a realignment (the cars were ordered in rank of average finish over the first four segments) and a 10-lap shootout. With no series points on the line, that should have made for an exciting evening of hard driving and competitive racing.

Or not. […]

Almquist, Kirk

Memories of Martinsville

2013-04-06 dr. diandra 2

Martinsville is my favorite track and it has absolutely nothing to do with the hot dogs.  It’s a short, flat track out in the middle of nowhere.  It doesn’t have the high speeds and pack […]

Browne, Josh

Is Tire Fall-Off the Way to Fix “Broken” Tracks?

2012-04-06 dr. diandra 7

There’s been an awful lot of talk recently about changing the layout at various track to make racing more exciting. Bristol is the most-talked-about track, with Bruton Smith planning a $1M revamp of the track to take it back to the way it was before he changed it in 2007. […]

Browne, Josh

Pit Road Speeding Explained

2009-07-27 dr. diandra 17

The black helicopters were out over Indy on Sunday, or so suggest some Juan Pablo (a.k.a. Juablo) fans. This happens every time someone leading a race (or contending for the lead) gets a pit road […]

Aerodynamics

Behind the Science of Speed

2009-04-13 dr. diandra 2

The Science of Speed video series is now up at www.science360.gov. We did a press conference at Texas Motor Speedway Friday April 3rd afternoon announcing the series. If you told me three years ago I’d […]