Center of Gravity
Center of Gravity, Part II
Last time, I explained what the center of gravity (CG) is. This time, let’s look at why we care. […]
nascar
Center of Gravity
NASCAR Science 101: The Center of Gravity, Part I
You hear engineers and crew chiefs talking a lot about the racecar’s “center of gravity”. There’s a reason for all the talk. The center of gravity really is the point around which everything else on the […]
Brakes
The Zen of Brake Bias II
In the last blog entry, I explained what brake bias was and how it could be used to improve the car’s handling during green-flag runs. This time, let’s look under the hood (or I guess, more accurately, under the dash) and see how this is accomplished. […]
Brakes
The Zen of Brake Bias
With all the talk about giving the drivers the ability to change aspects of the setup from within the car, I thought some comments on what types of changes they can make would be appropriate. […]
Aerodynamic Forces
Dive! Dive! Dive Planes… on Stock Cars?
A persistent motorsports issue (and not only with stock cars) is the aerodynamic passing problem. You can’t pass without grip. Grip is a direct result of downforce. Downforce comes from two places: the weight of the car (mechanical grip) and the billions and billions of air molecules hitting the car (a.k.a aerogrip). […]
Goodyear
Required vs. Recommended Tire Pressures
Running on underinflated tires can be dangerous. Underinflated tires they create more friction and more heat, which leads to not only bad handling, but also can produce structural problems. […]
Aerodynamic Forces
Firewalls and Aerodynamics
My friend at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, Dave Kallman (whose online column should be a regular read for race fans) asked about the confiscated firewalls from the Number 11 car at Indy. That reminded me of the first NASCAR race I was supposed to attend as research for my book The Physics of NASCAR. That was California in 2007. I was to follow around the number 19 car, at that time driven by Elliott Sadler and crew chiefed by Josh Browne. […]
Aerodynamic Forces
How Fast Would NASCAR Cars Go at Daytona without Restrictor Plates?
Doug Yates was guest on Dave Moody’s SiriusXM Speedway last week. He brought up a conversion you hear a lot in the week before Daytona and Talladega. Every 25 horsepower in the engine translates to about a 1 second decrease in lap times. Dave did the math: Removing the plates would increase the engine by 450 horsepower. Four hundred and fifty more horsepower equates to 18 seconds off the lap time, assuming all other things equal. That last part was a very important qualification. It will come back to haunt us in a moment. […]
math
How Much Difference Does One Position Make in NASCAR Winnings?
Given all the rain at Daytona this weekend, there was plenty of time to think about auxiliary NASCAR issues.  Regular readers know that I’m a huge fan of the racing-reference.info website because they have a trove […]
Pit Stops
Knowing Pit Road Speed in the Rain
This weekend, we learned that the real weather challenge for the NASCAR Nationwide Series isn’t rain. It’s not enough rain. It wasn’t raining hard enough to put on rain tires, but it wasn’t quite dry enough to safely race on slicks. (I’ve written before about why racing in the rain is hard.) But they managed to pull it off, put on a great show and @Brendan62 finally got that long-sought-after win. […]