Charlotte Motor Speedway
Graphs and Charts

Reverse Engineering NASCAR Stage Lengths

Stage Racing The 2017 NASCAR season brought us stage racing: Segmenting a race into three parts, each of which has a winner (and point reward). If you’re me, the first thing you wondered was not […]

Building Cars

Safety vs. Speed: 2017 Changes to the Chassis

The Evolution of the Stock Car ADDITION: If you are more comfortable with Portuguese, check out this translation by Artur Weber and Adelina Domingos – and thanks to them for being interested enough in my […]

Auto Club Speedway of California

Driving Concussed

Driving Concussed This week brings the return of Jeff Gordon to the track, but under conditions I’m sure all of us wish were otherwise. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is out again (and will be next week) […]

Consipracies

Analyzing Chase Tracks

Every year about this time, someone grumbles that The Chase needs a road course. The frequently-cited rationale is that the regular NASCAR season has two, so a champion should prove he or she can perform […]

Drivetrain
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. […]

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. […]

Busch, Kyle

Do Drivers Slow Down When They Get Older?

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 […]

Aerodynamic Forces

Sprint Car Safety

NASCAR fans are used to having our drivers walk away from spectacular crashes.  Unfortunately, we are reminded all too often — like last night — that racing, regardless of all the technical improvements we’ve made, […]