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? […]
The Building Speed Blog
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. […]
Ideal Gas Law
Nitrogen and Tires
Since it’s ramping-up time for the new semester, a bit of recycling is in order. The Science of Speed is a video series the National Science Foundation made to explain some of the science of motorsports. One of the segments (which I wrote) is on Tire Pressures. […]
What’s a NACA Duct?
The words “NACA Duct” usually go by so fast that they sound like “Nackaduck”, but a NACA duct is really just a specialized type of duct. Ducts are hoses or other devices used to move air from one place to another. brings air into (in our case) a racecar in a very special way. Clear NACA ducts can be seen in the rear windows of NASCAR cars – there are usually two or three in the window. Carbon-fiber NACA ducts sit in the front of the 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. […]
Science Cafe – Cleveland Monday November 12th
Hey all! I’m doing my very first science cafe — combining my three favorite things in the world: Â NASCAR, science and beer. The Market Garden Brewery (Located at 1947 West 25th Street next to the […]
Auto Club Speedway of California
Degrees of Difference: How is Martinsville like Fontana?
I love getting questions from readers because I always worry that the geeky stuff I find interesting is only interesting to me. I love it even more when they not only give me a question, […]