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 […]

Cautions

Can NASCAR Stop Secondary Accidents?

January is named after the Roman God Janus, who is the god of beginning, gates, transitions, time, doorways, passages and endings.  How’s that for a job description? Janus is usually portrayed as having two faces: […]

Asphalt

How Tracks Take and Lose Rubber

The two words we heard most frequently last week in Pocono (after “still raining”) were “green racetrack”. Rain doesn’t just delay racing. When the race is finally run after a rain delay, it’s run on […]

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 […]

Graphs and Charts

Infographic: Fuel Mileage Races

Well, it finally happened. They made it so easy to made an infographic, even I can do it. It’s not perfect – the tool I used doesn’t like graphs with fractions, so I couldn’t get it to give me any lines between 0 and 1. But hopefully you can get a relative idea of how much fuel you need to complete a lap at different tracks. […]

Safety

Transportable SAFER Barriers?

Joel asks:

Can racetracks work together to make interchangeable/transportable SAFER barriers? To clarify – could SMI or ISC tracks (politics, blah) standardize wall heights, angles, etc. so that they could use barriers at Michigan to fill in the critical areas and then move the necessary walls to Darlington or Homestead? Or even simpler – could the existing walls be setup to install barriers that could be moved from track to track? In the long term I know this is probably not the most cost effective solution. But in the short-term if there are supply problems or significant cost barriers, I thought this could help? […]

Aerodynamic Forces

2015 Rules: Track Records I – The Example of Charlotte

@NASCARRealTime, @TheOrangeCone and @CircleTrackNerd had an interesting dialog when the 2015 rules were announced. They were debating whether the track records that are now standing are going to be essentially locked into history. The debate ended with an appeal to me and Goody’s Headache Powder. […]

Drivers

The Virtual Reality of Racing Simulators

You are hurtling down the frontstretch at Michigan, your speed approaching 215 mph. Your seat moves up and down as you hit the seams, but your focus is squarely on getting into Turn 1 losing as little speed as possible. You squeeze the brakes and feel yourself moving forward, only to realize that you’re still moving too quickly. As the car starts to head toward the wall, you panic and squeeze the brake even harder.
The car snaps loose and the next thing you feel… is an engineer’s hand on your shoulder. You turn around to see her barely suppressing a smile. […]

Asphalt

Whose Fault Is It? Tires or Track?

There were 15 cautions last week at Kansas Speedway and at least 15 drivers complaining that driving on the repaved track surface was like driving on ‘razor blades’.  “The worst racetrack I’ve ever driven on.” […]