Bristol Motor Speedway made its name as a high-banked short track, but Bristol banking has changed over the years. Bristol Motor Speedway announced that they are grinding down the upper groove of the track to […]
Being the data geek that I am, I was really curious if the decreasing number of cautions was specific to this year. It’s not: Cautions have been decreasing since 2005,as the graph below shows. The squares are the cumulative number of cautions per 100 miles, obtained by adding up all the cautions in a season and dividing by the total number of miles in the races. (This is a more accurate number than total cautions, given rainouts, shortening races and different venues from year to year.) […]
There were a lot of engine problems at the Kansas race last Sunday. Also, a lot of theories as to why there were a lot of engine problems. Let’s start with the cooler-than-expected temperatures. […]
The plot below shows the cumulative number of cautions per mile since 2007. I’m using number of cautions per100 miles to 1) make up for races that were not run to completion; 2) compensate for […]
I honestly cannot help it – scientists are naturally skeptical. If you make an assertion, I will have to question you on what data you have that supports it. This is second nature to the people I work with, but I realize it is damned irritating to non-scientists (aka “normal”) people.
So when I started reading everywhere that “cautions were down 35%”, I had to go look into it. This is a preliminary post – more detailed analysis will follow as soon as I’ve read my students’ final projects and gotten comments back to them. […]
Fans tend to lump all 1.5-mile tracks into the ‘cookie cutter’ bin. Crew chiefs don’t — because each one has unique challenges. […]
There’s been an awful lot of talk recently about changing the layout at various track to make racing more exciting. Bristol is the most-talked-about track, with Bruton Smith planning a $1M revamp of the track to take it back to the way it was before he changed it in 2007. […]
Straddling the fields of science and motorsports as I do, members of one community often email me articles about the other community. It’s interesting to see what ‘outsiders’ think is interesting about the other world. Last week, it was a series of articles about how NASCAR’s popularity is waning because kids are too busy playing video games. […]
Every week at least one driver says they are bringing back “the same car we raced at…”. But unlike Indy or ALMS racing, each shop builds multiple cars, each specialized for a specific track. Let’s […]
It didn’t take long after Brad Kezelowski pulled out his cellphone during the 2-hour-long Daytona red flag for the conspiracy theorists to leap into action.
The argument goes like this: Cellphones should be banned from the car because a driver could use his specially prepared cellphone to a) change the Engine Control Unit (ECU) and/or b) transmit data from the car back to his crew chief during a race. We will not address the suggestions that the driver could use the cellphone to talk secretly to the crew chief during a race because anyone who has been in a race car or worn a helmet knows that’s just plain dopey. […]
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