blog

A photograph of the in-road scoring loops at Charlotte Motor Speedway
Pit Road

Pit Road Speeding FAQ

2021-03-17 dr. diandra 16

One of the most common penalties in a NASCAR race is speeding on pit road. So how does NASCAR measure and assess pit-road speeding penalties? […]

Phoenix International Raceway

2021 Spring Phoenix Race Review

2021-03-15 dr. diandra 2

The 2021 Spring Phoenix Race Review highlights lots of leaders, and more green-flag passing that we’ve seen at the spring race for quite some time. […]

A pie chart showing that 50% of the drivers who get into the playoffs having only won road courses and/or superspeedway races don't make it out of the top 16.
Road Courses

Will Unexpected Winners Change the NASCAR Playoffs?

2021-03-12 dr. diandra 3

The 2021 season started out with two first-time, unexpected winners. How will they impact the NASCAR Playoffs? […]

Homestead-Miami

Spring 2021 Las Vegas Race Review

2021-03-08 dr. diandra 0

The Spring 2021 Las Vegas Race Review features higher leader changes and passing stats than usual, despite one of the larger margins of victory for the track. […]

A scatter plot showing the number of cautions in 2018 as a function of number of races
Statistics

Early-Season Predictions: Don’t Believe Anything You Read — Yet

2021-03-03 dr. diandra 0

Don’t believe early-season predictions. There is nothing in a 36-race season that can be predicted on the basis of three races. […]

Homestead-Miami

2021 Homestead Race Review

2021-03-01 dr. diandra 1

The 2021 Homestead Race Review focuses on tire fall-off, the fastest cars, and which teams were able to keep up with the track. […]

This is a MTS CT Plus Flat Trac, which Goodyear (and other companies) use for tire testing (Photo courtesy of Smithers.)
Goodyear

Nuclear Deterrence and Goodyear Tires

2021-02-26 dr. diandra 1

How does the country’s nuclear deterrence system help make Goodyear tires? And how do Goodyear tires help improve nuclear deterrence? […]

a scatter plot showing no correlation between starting and finishing positions in the Daytona 500 from 2012-2014
Daytona 500

How Does Michael McDowell’s Daytona 500 Win Impact the Playoffs?

2021-02-16 dr. diandra 2

Michael McDowell’s Daytona 500 win was one of the approximately once-in-a-decade events in which an underdog wins. How does this affect the playoffs? […]

Daytona 500

Is Avoiding Accidents the Most Important Skill for Winning the Daytona 500?

2021-02-12 dr. diandra 0

Brad Keselowski said that the reason he thinks Denny Hamlin wins at Daytona is that Hamlin is good at avoiding accidents. Is Brad right? […]

Weather

Will Later Race Starts Mean More Rain Outs?

2021-01-29 dr. diandra 2

Over the years, NASCAR race start times have been moving to later in the day. There’s been a conversation about whether those later start times will increase the likelihood of rain delays. Here’s the questions […]