Aerodynamics

Composite Race Car Bodies

You Never Forget Your First One My first car was a greenish-brown 1969 Buick LeSabre with a 123-inch wheel base and a 230-horsepower two-barrel V-8. That puppy weighed about 4200 lbs and taught me everything […]

Energy

Pocono Raceway Solar Farm: Sheep Power

People often point to NASCAR as being an environmentally unredeemable sport because it involves cars burning gasoline. For some reason, people looking for an easy answer like to suggest that NASCAR turn to electric cars and that […]

Charlotte Motor Speedway
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 […]

Richmond International Raceway Sound Warning
Bristol Motor Speedway

The Proposal to Muffle NASCAR Race Cars

Last week, Adam Stern broke a story that NASCAR is considering 15 to 20 potential changes that would help increase the fan base. They’ve already implemented race segments and we’ve heard talk about shortening race […]

Bristol Motor Speedway

Will Tire Limits Improve Racing?

Will 2017 Tire Limit Rules Require Harder Tires? Back in the day, the only thing that limited how many sets of tires you could use in Cup-level racing was your budget. It was different in […]

Acceleration
Asphalt

How Tracks Take and Lose Rubber

The two words we heard most frequently last week in Pocono (after “still raining”) were “green racetrack”. Rain doesn’t just delay racing. When the race is finally run after a rain delay, it’s run on […]

Auto Club Speedway of California

Driving Concussed

Driving Concussed This week brings the return of Jeff Gordon to the track, but under conditions I’m sure all of us wish were otherwise. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is out again (and will be next week) […]