Brains

A Blood Test for Concussions is on the Horizon

Why We Need Better Tests for Concussions Ken Willis wrote a wonderful series of articles in the Daytona Beach News-Journal entitled NASCAR and Concussions: An Old Problem, a New Concern. He starts with Dale Earnhardt, […]

Rise and Run Related to Slope
Drivers

Retirements, Replacements and Rookies

Retirement He didn’t use the word ‘retirement’, but the sad news last week was that Matt Kenseth won’t have a Cup ride in 2018. It’s partly his choice. He could have done a Kasey Kahne […]

Charlotte Motor Speedway
Aerodynamic Forces

Drafting: Regular and Bump

I looked through the blog and realized that I haven’t really blogged about drafting. I’ve blogged about all the rules NASCAR’s enacted in the last couple of years to try to control drafting, but not drafting […]

Graphs and Charts

Are Posted Lap Speeds Really Accurate?

After every practice and qualifying session, NASCAR puts out one or more sheets of paper that look like this: This tells you who went how fast qualifying at Atlanta a couple weeks ago. I only included the […]

Graphs and Charts

Reverse Engineering NASCAR Stage Lengths

Stage Racing The 2017 NASCAR season brought us stage racing: Segmenting a race into three parts, each of which has a winner (and point reward). If you’re me, the first thing you wondered was not […]

Brakes

Tire Management

NASCAR is very clear about what teams can and can not do to the tires. Teams may not use any chemical or physical means of altering the tires, which means no siping (cutting grooves into the tires), no chemical softening, not even heat blankets to pre-warm the tires are allowed. Basically, you can’t do anything to the tires. This means that when a tire blows out, it’s the tire’s fault. Right? […]

NASCAR

Is an iPod more dangerous for your ears than a NASCAR race car?

Anyone who’s ever been to the track knows that racetracks are loud. Quite frankly, it’s one of the things many people (including me) like about actually being at the track as opposed to watching on television. But could that noise be doing your hearing permanent damage? Is it any worse than any of the other sounds we encounter on a daily basis?
Let’s go to the data… […]

Bill Nye

NASCAR and Electric Cars: A Response to Bill Nye

Bill Nye is getting a lot of press lately by suggesting NASCAR ought to be racing electric cars.  I was rather disappointed with the reaction from NASCAR fans, as many dismissed the suggestion offhand, or offered ad […]

Diamond

NASCAR and Energy Efficiency

It never fails. When I give a talk about The Science of Speed at a University science department (as opposed to a talk for the public), someone will ask “How can you advocate for NASCAR? They’re the biggest waste of gasoline.”

Or something similar.

I’m going to look at this in two ways. People often confuse how much energy is used with how efficiently energy is used. One way to cut back on energy usage is to use less energy, but it’s also possible to use less energy by using the energy more efficiently. […]