Tracks

Engines

Pocono: The Shifty Triangle

2012-06-09 dr. diandra 0

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. […]

Bristol Motor Speedway

The Reason for Decreasing Cautions

2012-05-26 dr. diandra 5

This was the first year that most people noticed a decrease in the number of cautions, but (as I’ve pointed out), 2012 is merely the latest in a six-year trend of decreasing cautions. The same downward trend is evident in the Nationwide Series. This year is perhaps notable for it being so extreme.

The data clearly shows the trend: The question, of course, is why?

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Cooling

Engine Issues at Talladega: Vapor Lock, Gas Cans and Oil Coolers

2012-05-07 dr. diandra 7

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. […]

Richmond

Is More Data Always Better?

2012-04-29 dr. diandra 3

Saturday’s race in Richmond was a festival of miscues. Carl Edwards mistakenly thought he was leading, then he jumped the restart, although he wasn’t the one to lead the restart because he wasn’t the leader. One would think we have the data that could prevent incidents like this. We probably do. But do we want to use it? […]

Andy Randolph

Kansas Wrap Up: What Caused all the Engine Failures?

2012-04-26 dr. diandra 5

The defining characteristic of the Kansas race was the surprising number of engine problems. Many of those problems can be attributed to the change in rear gear from a 3.89 to a 4.00. At 190 mph at a track like Kansas, your wheels make 2270 revolutions per minute (rpm). If you watch the telemetry on the television broadcast, you know that the engine is rotating around 9500-9900 rpm. Since the engine is attached to the wheels, there has to be something to change the rotation rate between the engine and the gears. […]

Bristol Motor Speedway

Bristol: Banking

2012-04-25 dr. diandra 9

Bristol Motor Speedway made its name as a high-banked short track, but Bristol banking has changed over the years. Bristol Motor Speedway announced that they are grinding down the upper groove of the track to […]

Cautions

Are Cautions Really Going Down?

2012-04-18 dr. diandra 0

I honestly cannot help it – scientists are naturally skeptical. If you make an assertion, I will have to question you on what data you have that supports it. This is second nature to the people I work with, but I realize it is damned irritating to non-scientists (aka “normal”) people.

So when I started reading everywhere that “cautions were down 35%”, I had to go look into it. This is a preliminary post – more detailed analysis will follow as soon as I’ve read my students’ final projects and gotten comments back to them. […]