The Building Speed Blog

Aerodynamic Forces

Firewalls and Aerodynamics

2014-07-29 dr. diandra 0

My friend at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, Dave Kallman (whose online column should be a regular read for race fans) asked about the confiscated firewalls from the Number 11 car at Indy. That reminded me of the first NASCAR race I was supposed to attend as research for my book The Physics of NASCAR. That was California in 2007. I was to follow around the number 19 car, at that time driven by Elliott Sadler and crew chiefed by Josh Browne. […]

Goodyear

The Dirt on Radials vs. Bias-Ply Tires

2014-07-25 dr. diandra 3

NASCAR started transitioning away from bias-ply tires in 1989. So why did they start making a comeback in 2013? […]

Aerodynamic Forces

How Fast Would NASCAR Cars Go at Daytona without Restrictor Plates?

2014-07-11 dr. diandra 6

Doug Yates was guest on Dave Moody’s SiriusXM Speedway last week. He brought up a conversion you hear a lot in the week before Daytona and Talladega. Every 25 horsepower in the engine translates to about a 1 second decrease in lap times. Dave did the math: Removing the plates would increase the engine by 450 horsepower. Four hundred and fifty more horsepower equates to 18 seconds off the lap time, assuming all other things equal. That last part was a very important qualification. It will come back to haunt us in a moment. […]

math

How Much Difference Does One Position Make in NASCAR Winnings?

2014-07-08 dr. diandra 5

Given all the rain at Daytona this weekend, there was plenty of time to think about auxiliary NASCAR issues.  Regular readers know that I’m a huge fan of the racing-reference.info website because they have a trove […]

Pit Stops

Knowing Pit Road Speed in the Rain

2014-06-24 dr. diandra 0

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. […]

Consipracies

America’s Motorsports Engineering Pool

2014-06-20 dr. diandra 14

Brad Keselowski, that never ending source of material on slow news days, had a few words about the state of American Motorsports Engineering. These quotes are from an article by Mike Pryson in Autoweek.com.

“It’s probably a larger story in itself that the American engineering pool is very shallow right now,” said Keselowski after he qualified sixth at Michigan International Speedway on Friday for Sunday’s Quicken Loans 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. “Penske is moving to any other country [to find them]. We’ve hired multiple engineers from Europe over the last three or four years and we’re pilfering everyone we can in the great country of Canada, so if you know any of them, send them our way.

“It’s just very hard to get engineers with the educational background and commitment that we need to be successful at this level from the United States. There’s certainly a shortage, not just at Penske, but throughout the garage.” […]

Vickers, Brian

Can Wind Really Turn a Stock Car?

2014-06-16 dr. diandra 2

Equilibrium. It’s more than just a neat word. It’s the holy grail for a racecar driver. […]

Drivers

The Virtual Reality of Racing Simulators

2014-06-13 dr. diandra 3

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. […]

R.I.P. Speedy Bill Smith

2014-06-03 dr. diandra 0

We lost a lot of racing people this week. Although I never knew him personally, Speedy Bill Smith was a big part of my racing education.  Bill passed away on May 30th at the age […]

Aerodynamic Forces

Knowing the COSMOS doesn’t mean you know NASCAR

2014-05-28 dr. diandra 9

Everyone’s favorite “planet” killer had a spare hour because COSMOS was pre-empted Sunday by the Coca Cola 600.  Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson edified us with some “NASCAR physics”. There were 43 drivers who had no […]