Sigh. So instead of talking about a couple great races this week, we’re focusing on restarts. Again. Everyone, from pundits to drivers, is questioning NASCAR’s decisions to not call penalties on the critical restarts of […]
NOTE: I’ve revisited this topic in a more-recent blog that has additional data. I’d encourage you to look there, as well There are a lot of things people say in NASCAR that have been said […]
Why Roof Flaps? Roof flaps (the invention of which I detail in my book The Physics of NASCAR) help keep cars on the ground. This is necessary because of Bernoulli’s law, which says basically that: Faster-moving […]
There are somewhere in the vicinity of 840 parts in a NASCAR Sprint Cup Engine (at least the Chevy version and yes, I am taking someone’s word for this. I did not have time to […]
Listen to SiriusXM NASCAR radio, or peruse any of the racing websites and you will find a lot of theories about how races should be changed to make them ‘more exciting’. To try to amp up the All-Star Race, NASCAR went with four 20-lap segments, followed by a realignment (the cars were ordered in rank of average finish over the first four segments) and a 10-lap shootout. With no series points on the line, that should have made for an exciting evening of hard driving and competitive racing.
Or not. […]
Ryan Newman escaped NASCAR sanctions for his comments immediately after being discharged from the infield care center at Talladega.
“They can build safer racecars, they can build safer walls, but they can’t get their heads out of their asses far enough to keep them on the race track and that’s pretty disappointing, and I wanted to make sure I get that point across,” he said. “You all can figure out who ‘they’ is.” […]
A quick post for my friend, @TheOrangeCone that I’ll expand on later (I have theater tickets tonight!)
@TheOrangeCone asked why Kurt Busch went airborne in the Talladega crash. The answer is the same for all the cars that end up in the air: when a car rotates (so that its side or its back is leading instead of its front), it looks an awful lot like an airplane wing — a shape that is optimized to generate lift. […]
When you were a kid, perhaps you locked yourself in the bathroom, turned out the lights, positioned yourself in front of the mirror and then turned on the lights to watch your pupils grow. And if you’ve never done this, shame on you for not being curious. Go do it. Now. […]
Water is critical to the existence of human life. Why do you think we spend so much time looking for it on other planets?
It is, however, less than desirable on a racetrack. Water gets between the tires and the track, which decreases friction. Decreased friction means lower speeds and higher probability of crashing. […]
We’d been hearing rumors of penalties stemming from Kansas and everyone expected them to be announced Tuesday. Since penalties usually have some scientific component, I was sort of hoping for some new material. Tuesday came and went. Nothing. Wednesday, all heck broke loose as penalties were announced for the No 20 JGR car (engine issues) and the No 98 ThorSport truck.
The more interesting — and less discussed — penalty is the ThorSport/Johnny Sauter one. (It was a tough week for Wisconsin drivers). The team was docked 25 points, which is pretty huge for the Truck Series and the crew chief fined $10,000. (I realize that seems small when compared to the Sprint Cup Series penalties, but the Truck Series has correspondingly lower purses and salaries.) […]
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