Tracks

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 […]

math

Why You Can’t Predict Anything Based on the First 10 Races

2012-04-20 dr. diandra 2

The plot below shows the cumulative number of cautions per mile since 2007.  I’m using number of cautions per100 miles to 1) make up for races that were not run to completion; 2) compensate for […]

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. […]

Asphalt

Cookie Cutter Tracks Aren’t All the Same

2012-04-13 dr. diandra 27

Fans tend to lump all 1.5-mile tracks into the ‘cookie cutter’ bin. Crew chiefs don’t — because each one has unique challenges. […]

Aerodynamics

Can You Really Bring Back the Same Car? (Or the Same Track?)

2012-03-30 dr. diandra 0

Every week at least one driver says they are bringing back “the same car we raced at…”.  But unlike Indy or ALMS racing, each shop builds multiple cars, each specialized for a specific track. Let’s […]

IndyCar

OPINION The Future of Motorsports Safety II: The Center for Motorsports Safety Research

2011-12-15 dr. diandra 2

The official Indycar report on Dan Wheldon’s death was released today. The obvious question is “what do we do now”? […]

IndyCar

The Future of Motorsports Safety I: Catchfences, Open Cockpits, High Banking and High Speeds

2011-11-14 dr. diandra 7

Since Dan Wheldon’s fatal accident at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, I’ve read many words of grief, tribute and, more recently, of thoughts about what happens next. […]

Engines

The Math of Fuel Mileage

2011-06-10 dr. diandra 6

I guess when you have people feeding you all the numbers you need through your earpiece, you think they’re easy to come by. That’s the only explanation I can figure out for the snarky comments by television commentators about crews not being “smart enough” to figure out how much gas to put in the car so that it doesn’t run out before the end of the race. There have been a lot of fuel mileage races the last few weeks. Pocono is traditionally also highly likely to be a fuel mileage race, so let’s clarify how easy (or hard) it is to not run out of fuel. […]

Aerodynamic Forces

Overpressured Shocks on the 5-Car: How Does that Create an Advantage?

2010-09-27 dr. diandra 5

The 5 car got sent to the back for the start of the race last Sunday at Dover after qualifying third when their shocks didn’t clear post-qualifying inspection. Shocks and springs work together to control the rate at which the body of the car moves. The ideal attitude is the hound dog position: nose down, tail up, as demonstrated in the photo at right by my capable assistant Darwin. That position prevents air from getting underneath the car and it sticks the spoiler up in the air as much as possible, which means that more air hits it and creates more downforce. […]