Understanding NASCAR (part 1--the four challenges)

[jmowreader]

I know, I know. It's just cars driving around in circles.

Soccer's just guys running around kicking a ball, unless you understand it.

So let's talk about NASCAR.

* * * * *

What's the point?
A Stock Car Race tests its competitors against the weather, the track, NASCAR's ever-changing rulebook, and the other teams. The team who wins the race is the one who best masters those four factors.

The three major factors in the weather are temperature, wind and whether there's been rain during the race weekend.

Rain first. The tires on these cars are soft enough that rubber peels off the tread and winds up on the track surface. The more running they do, the more rubber...and everyone sets up with this rubber in mind. If it rains, all that rubber winds up on the side of the track--and changes everything about the cars' handling.

Wind does a few things: it speeds up the cars on part of the track, slows them down on parts and pushes them around in still other places. The ideal is for the wind to blow down the backstretch, where there are no turns. The frontstretch on most tracks curves around the pit road, so you're slower on the front than on the back.

Temperature? Goodyear makes, IIRC, five different NASCAR tires. They run from really soft (used in colder months) to really hard (used in the middle of the summer). They only bring one tire to the track, and everyone runs on it. (Okay, okay...they bring this one tire in quantity about two thousand.) If the tire Goodyear brings is soft and a warm spell hits the track, you're going to get really bad tire wear; if a hard tire is provided during a cold snap, you won't get any traction and speeds will be down, plus there will be more accidents. Note: it is legal to save up tires you've purchased at other races and run them in the race, so the big-money teams have been known to bring one set of the softest tire and one set of the hardest, and that way they know they're covered for at least one run. NASCAR doesn't mind because these tires don't last that long and you can't bring five sets of enough tires t o last the whole weekend. Plus, cold air is dense air so your carb jetting changes, and you can't alter it during the race. Well...actually, there's no rule against it, but if you tried it you'd lose because it takes a while to change a carburetor and the other 42 guys are still going round and round.


Let's talk the track. They're not all the same. In fact, very few of them are even slightly similar. Most of the newer tracks on the circuit are 1.5 miles long, but some are longer, some shorter. Martinsville Speedway has very tight-radius turns, so braking is the test. Talladega Superspeedway has a backstretch that's almost a mile long. This is the track that caused NASCAR to discover the restrictor plate (which will be discussed in another Part to this series). They say it was because Bill Elliott made a 224mph qualifying run. Actually, it was because someone nailed the wall and almost put a whole car over the catch fence. Every driver has a track style he runs best at.


NASCAR has this neat habit of changing the rules any damn time it feels like. They say it's to "improve parity between the teams." In practice, it means you bring ten spoilers and six front valances to the track because NASCAR is famous for adding half an inch to one or removing a quarter-inch from another. (Once again, we'll discuss aerodynamics later).


The other teams are obviously a factor. One of the reasons I like racing so much is the certainty of it. You know how football fans like to discuss "what if" scenarios? "What if the Bears had played the Dolphins instead of the Panthers this weekend?" Racing doesn't do that. All 43 teams are on the same field at the same time.


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Next Part: the car

[Little Wing]

1. I wish they'd race in the rain

[MonkeyFunk]

2. I wish they'd race on ice...

I'd watch that.

[jmowreader]

10. They will on roadcourses

There are two roadcourses on the schedule: Infineon Raceway at Sears Point, CA, and Watkins Glen, NY. (Note: both of them are in wine country. Hmmmmmmm...)

On roadcourses, each team has sets of rain tires, and the cars have windshield wipers. If it starts raining, NASCAR drops the red flag, brings everyone into the pits, they change to rain tires and race.

It's too dangerous to run rain tires on an oval--one of the fun features of rain racing is running off the track, which isn't good if there's a concrete wall on the right side.

[lildreamer316]

3. Thank you

The gearhead in me is gonna enjoy this.

Restrictor plates. I have a car that is gonna be missing those.....SHHHHHH.

[Hotler]

4. I'd like to see them run more road tracks...

and get rid of the restricting plates. I want to see speed and HP. I want to see 250mph down the back straight of Daytona. Now that I got that off my mind, can anyone fill me in on what the teams were doing to cheat? I heard about movable body panels, jet fuel inthe the intakes, drilled out bolts to the manafolds, etc. More detail please i want the juicy stuff.

[madrchsod]

5. europe and australia

both run production cars on road courses..really interesting racing to say the least. oh and semi tractors racing in europe in the rain...now that`s really great to watch.

[TheMightyFavog]

6. IIRC, the semis have restrictor plates.

Their top speed is restricted to 100 mph.

If I were in Chrge of NASCAR, the first thin I would do is implement a new schedule where no fewr than half the races would be held on road courses.

I'd like to see those Neckcar boys take on a real course like Road America!

[AllegroRondo]

12. NPR just did a story about cheating in NASCAR

pretty neat stuff.

Bascially, the NASCAR rulebook is hundreds of pages long, and the press and public are not allowed to see it. So cheating is hard to catch or know about. Some things may be borderline. For example, the rulebook may say "a half inch bolt must be used". If they drill holes in the sides to make it lighter, is that cheating? Only NASCAR can say.

Some examples they used

- in the early days of NASCAR, teams would put a peice of coal on top of the springs to make the car body higher. The rules said a car had to be X inches above the ground, but a lower car had better aerodynamics. So the coal made the car higher for the judges to measure, but after a couple laps it would disintigrate and the car would get lower.

- cars used to be weiged only before the race, now they are weighed after also. The rules specify a minimum car weight, so teams would make a helmet out of lead and put it in the car for the weigh in. For the race, the driver got a normal helmet.

- gas tank size is limited to X gallons. But some teams would get around it by making extra wide / extra long fuel hoses that could hold an extra gallon or two.

[jmowreader]

17. Richard Petty REALLY got around it

They finally caught up with his ass, but for about six races Richard Petty claimed that his fuel lines were frenched into his frame rails to protect them.

Then they took the fuel hose off the frame and gas just ran out all over the inspection room floor. Turned out there was four gallons of gas in the frame tubing.

I don't remember which driver this was, but in the 1960s they caught this guy cheating his ass off. They took his car into the inspection room, removed the carburetor (without which most carbureted cars do not run), took it completely apart, then told him they were citing him with 36 violations of the NASCAR rulebook. He got in the car, started it and yelled out, "you better make that 37" as he drove away.

[elfrangel]

7. Prefer dirt track myself...

Nothing is as cool as seeing 3 cars take a turn at the same time and NOT hit each other. Plus, the rush of all that horsepower as it flies past you....WHOOOOOO! I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

[sammythecat]

8. Hurry up with part 2

I'm not a racing fan at all and this is really interesting to read. It'll certainly make it more interesting for me. Thanks.

[SeattleGirl]

9. This long-time NASCAR fan thanks you!

I know most of what you posted, but I wasn't aware of the fact that the teams can bring tires from other races and use them in the current race.

Thanks for taking the time to inform people of the intricacies of racing.

[underpants]

11. It still looks like the highway as a spectactor sport to me

and yes I have been to a race.

Eh if that floats your boat fine.

[DainBramaged]

13. This is fun, thanks

There is one "what if" and that is if every team had the same amount of money to spend on R&D, chassis, motors, and personal. THEN, it would be real interesting every week. I feel so bad for the boys in the second half of the field every week. And since performance is kept so close, why don't NASCAR limit the number of cars (chassis) each team can own at any one time?

[jmowreader]

16. That's an interesting question, and I'll answer that

It wouldn't matter much.

Let's throw out two drivers' names: Ron Hornaday and Jimmie Johnson. Put both of them in stock cars and, no matter how much funding you have behind them, Jimmie Johnson (the defending champion) WILL beat Ron Hornaday. I know this because Hornaday couldn't run for shit when he was driving for Dale Earnhardt Inc., which is one of the better-funded shops in NASCAR.

This sport requires a lot of money to play successfully; it also takes people of exceptional talent, and there aren't a lot of those people running around loose.

NASCAR does have team size limits: one owner may own three stock cars in any one series. The big shops get around this via multiple ownership: when Roush brought Matt Kenseth into the organization, the 17 was registered as belonging to Mark Martin, not Jack Roush. And in Hendrick's shop, the 48 is registered to Jeff Gordon. They do this, as you will find out, to get extra test sessions. The ultra-mega teams are not going away for one big reason: once you've got a race shop, the cost of starting another team is only a couple million dollars--a relatively low amount compared to building a whole race shop.

[EOTE]

14. F1 has all that (minus Nascar rules of course)...

Plus F1 has these nifty right hand turns, and even niftier s turns. F1 also lacks those burdensome restrictor plates (did Nascar really discover them?) and instead restricts only displacement and intake dimensions. Even with these restrictions, F1 engines produce far more power from a lot less displacement than their overhead valve Nascar brethren. I don't really have a problem with Nascar, I love cars of all types. I just can't see myself watching Nascar when there are so many other more interesting (to me) motorsports out there. To me, it's just a way of commemorating the glory days of hooch running by participating in a sport that has changed little since then.

[trof]

15. One family "owns" NASCAR, and it's made them rich.

It ain't like the NFL or American League.

"This week, the 43 NASCAR teams chasing the cup pack their racecars, pit equipment, and spare parts into tractor-trailers and head to Florida for the 36th and final race of the year, the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Built in 1995 just 30 miles south of Miami, with art deco architecture, luxury skyboxes, and a computer-designed variable-banking track, Homestead-Miami represents the new face of NASCAR. The 75,000 fans expected to attend the race and the 9 million or so who will view it on NBC will not only watch the cars bang fenders and trade paint for 400 miles at an average speed of around 120 mph; they'll also witness a final race that will determine the champion. Thanks to a new scoring format that essentially creates a playoff over the final 10 races, a handful of drivers, including crowd favorites Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon, remain within spitting distance of the championship.

Both the New South venue and the playoff system break from sacred NASCAR traditions. Yet the France family, ruler of NASCAR since the 1940s, has a rich history of doing just that, and scion Brian France is proving no exception.

Dynasty. After just a year in NASCAR's driver's seat, and amid plenty of early doubts about his ability to manage the sport, France's boldness and vision are already drawing favorable comparisons with his father, Bill France--Bill Jr. to everyone who follows the sport--who led NASCAR from 1972 until last year, and his grandfather William H. G. France ("Big Bill" ), a giant of a man who carved NASCAR out of the hard sands of Daytona Beach and ruled it with an iron fist for three decades.

The France family owns 100 percent of the NASCAR sanctioning body and controls publicly traded International Speedway Corp., the largest racetrack owner in the United States. ISC's market value is $1.4 billion; the France family has about 35 percent. NASCAR is a private company. The sport has made billionaires out of France's father and an uncle, Jim France."
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/041122/22nascar.htm