Center of Gravity
Did Danica Get the Daytona 500 Pole Because of Her Weight Advantage?
Did Danica Patrick win the Daytona 500 pole because she has a weight advantage? […]
nascar
Lexan
Reader Questions: Gen-6 Windshields on Passenger Cars?
PittCaleb asks: If we used Lexan in passenger cars, would there be any benefit such as reason repelling our ice buildup? Scratching or other potential downsides? What would the price diff be? […]
Biffle, Greg
Secrets of the Gen-6 Car: Super-strength Windshields
Don’t let its good looks fool you: NASCAR made the Gen-6 car even more safe than the CoT. […]
Cautions
Will the Gen-6 Car Affect the Number of Cautions?
I love the Gen-6 car. Not as much as I love the Nationwide cars (but that’s got more to do with what I drive than it does the cars). The big question is whether the decrease in cautions is going to be changed because of the new car.Let’s start (as we usually do) with the new car. […]
Busch, Kyle
Is There Really a Second-Place Curse?
One of the commentators after the final race in Homestead mentioned that Jimmie Johnson should be happy he finished in third because it allows him to avoid the “dreaded second-place curse”.
Anytime someone says something like that, it makes me wonder whether there really is a curse, or whether that person had just been talking to Carl Edwards. So I analyzed a little data and guess what… there really IS a second place curse. […]
Cautions
Cautions: A New Low for NASCAR
At the start of the season, the big news was that cautions were remarkably down from last year. As I showed, this isn’t a new trend – it’s a continuing trend since 2007. Since the season’s data are now complete, I thought it was time to revisit the data. […]
Concussion
NASCAR Concussions II: A Screening Test to Avoid Relying Entirely on the Driver
I was lucky enough to speak with Dr. Mark Lovell, an innovator in neurocognitive testing inbetween talks at a conference he was attending. Dr. Lovell came to my attention as the developer of the ImPACT (Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment Testing) test, which was one of the tools used to evaluate Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s concussion. […]
Concussion
Concussions – What Are They and Why Stop Racing?
We all know that concussions are caused by hits to the head, but what actually IS a concussion and why is one forcing Dale Earnhardt, Jr. to step out of the car and effectively take himself out of the running for a championship? […]
Engines
Eliminating Restrictor Plates?
Every return to a restrictor plate track brings suggestions about how we might eliminate the restrictor plate. Restrictor plates serve the very necessary function of limiting car speeds at Daytona and Talladega so that the cars stay on the ground. The negative is that they remove throttle response. One suggestion from some readers that I hadn’t heard of before suggested that NASCAR could just change the rear-end gearing parameters to shift the power curve and reduce horsepower that way. Will that work? […]
Asphalt
Dover: Why Concrete Races Differently than Asphalt
One of the questions you’ll hear drivers and crew chiefs asked a lot this weekend at Dover is how the concrete track affects the racing. Here’s how: […]