Tracks

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. […]

Cooling

Plate Racing Rules: Getting Ready for Talladega

2012-05-03 dr. diandra 0

Most of the issues we were talking about at the start of the year regarding the measures NASCAR has taken to eliminate or reduce the two-car draft are still in play, so I thought I’d put the most important in one place as you start getting ready for Talladega this weekend. […]

Edwards, Carl

Richmond Redux: Relative Velocity

2012-04-30 dr. diandra 0

NOTE: Some clarifications added 1:00 p.m. 4/30/12. Thanks to all the commenters, especially @nateryan! I think Dave Moody did a good job breaking things down. The situation is confounded because there were so many different […]

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 […]

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 […]