The Building Speed Blog

Safety

Transportable SAFER Barriers?

2015-03-26 dr. diandra 2

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? […]

Energy

Do Tires Affect Gas Mileage?

2015-03-20 dr. diandra 0

When winning means a few hundredths of a second, nothing is too small to be ignored. I’ve talked a lot about energy and the importance of using it as efficiently as possible in racing. Gasoline provides a […]

Drivers

Age and the NASCAR Driver: Can They Still Compete?

2015-03-06 dr. diandra 10

Jeff Gordon’s decision to step away from full-time NASCAR Sprint Cup racing has resulted in a lot of discussion about aging drivers. We’re on the verge of a turnover as a number of drivers (Johnson, Stewart, […]

Asphalt

Are SAFER Barriers Everywhere the Solution?

2015-02-25 dr. diandra 2

TL;DR:  No. As the extent of Kyle Busch’s injury Saturday evening at Daytona became evident, Twitter erupted in angry calls for SAFER barriers to be put up on every wall at every track. An interesting division […]

a scatter plot showing no correlation between starting and finishing positions in the Daytona 500 from 2012-2014
Graphs and Charts

Does Daytona Qualifying Really Matter?

2015-02-20 dr. diandra 6

Okay, it obviously does if you’re one of the cars that fails to make the race. But beyond that- given the huge amount of attention that’s been given to the ’embarrassment’ that was this year’s […]

Computational Fluid Dynamics

Engine Rules Changes for 2015

2015-02-06 dr. diandra 5

There’s a lot of talk about all the rules changes for 2015. The limiting of the horsepower has been a hot topic of discussion, with people suggesting that NASCAR is basically mandating spec engines.  Here’s […]

Building Cars

Exotic Materials in NASCAR Engines?

2015-01-23 dr. diandra 2

I was at a panel discussion some years ago at a motorsports engineering meeting about materials allowed on the car by different racing series. They had the tech people for IMSA, F1, Indy and NASCAR up […]

Lug Nuts

2015 Rules and Lug Nuts

2015-01-09 dr. diandra 1

Forty-three days till the Daytona 500. The shops are buzzing with activity as everyone adjusts to another new rules package. The engine folks are working overtime dealing with the changes there. The only thing that’s slowed down is planning for on-track independent testing, since that’s been eliminated this year. But more time in the wind tunnel, on the seven-post machine, at the computers. […]

Cautions

Did Drivers Drive Differently During the Chase? I: Lead Changes

2014-12-12 dr. diandra 5

The primary motivation for all the changes to the Chase format was to up the excitement factor – the “game seven moments” as NASCAR brass put it. While the fact of the matter is that […]