November 3, 2009
By Allen Madding
For 20 plus years, NASCAR has grappled with the racing at the two superspeedways on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule and addressing airborne and violently flipping cars.
First, the sanctioning body imposed the use of restrictor plates to limit the amount of air flow between the carburetor and intake manifold on the engines at the two tracks to slow the cars down in an attempt to stop the car’s tendency to become airborne when turned sideways.
NASCAR then set maximum spoiler angles, required the additions of “wicker bills” to the spoilers as well as strips running down the roof line and down the back window of the cars. Additionally it added a metal strip across the roof at the windshield to control speed. All of these aerodynamic measures to slow the cars were somewhat effective but none reduced the series reliance on the restrictor plates. Recently, the series changed the entire aerodynamic silhouette of the cars in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and employed a new rear wing and front splitter to slow the cars aerodynamically.
Due to drivers diving onto the flat apron in the high banked turns of the two tracks and setting off huge multi-car crashes, NASCAR instituted out of bound lines at the superspeedways painting a yellow line around the bottom of the racing surface and enforcing penalties for passing below the lines.
Then NASCAR began policing “bump drafting”, a technique where a driver aerodynamically sucks up to the car in front of them and bumps them launching both cars forward at an increased rate of speed. The technique worked well on straight-aways but caused crashes in the turns. This past weekend at Talladega, NASCAR implemented a rule to address drivers touching another car in the turns at Talladega.
Despite all of the measures that NASCAR has employed to date, cars in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series continue to become airborne and flipping violently at both Daytona and Talladega. Even this weekend with the newest rule in place, Ryan Newman and Mark Martin were in breath-taking crashes with Newman being trapped in his No. 39 U.S. Army car, requiring extrication.
To date, with all of the rules that the series has put into place at the superspeedway events, the cars continue to become airborne, flying into the retaining fencing, throwing debris into the grandstands, and landing upside down trapping drivers in their cars. The rules currently used to slow these cars and keep them on the ground are simply not working.
In the mean time, NASCAR continues to allow teams to utilize non-production car based engine blocks to build the high horsepower engines that produce the high speeds at the superspeedways. In the last few weeks, NASCAR approved Ford’s FR9, the new engine block from Ford for competition in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The FR9 is the first engine block purposely designed and engineered for the sole purpose of NASCAR racing. It is not built off of the dimensions of the production Ford 351 and is not compatible with the components of the production 351 Ford engine.
Further, showroom production Ford Fusions are not offered with a V-8 engine. Ford offers the American public the choice of a 2.5 liter four cylinder, a 3.0 liter or a 3.5 liter V-6. So why is NASCAR teams competing in a Ford Fusion with a V-8? And, why are Ford teams in NASCAR now competing with a V-8 that is a specially designed racing only engine block instead of being required to utilize an engine block based on a street production engine?
In the years since the restrictor plate was introduced for use at the super speedways in the NASCAR Cup Series, many have suggested limiting the cubic inches of the engines and tightening the rules governing what teams can use to build the engines. Instead, NASCAR has relied on the restrictor plate and allowed teams and manufacturers to build special race only parts to make higher amounts of horsepower.
NASCAR started many years ago with rules requiring street stock cars and engines and the sport grew. Slowly but surely the race cars became less and less stock and were instead stock appearing. To date, none of the models competing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series remotely resemble their street stock counterparts. The engines that power these hybrid “stock cars” are highly developed racing pieces that are no longer based off of production stock car parts.
While NASCAR continues to utilize carburetors, the street stock counterparts of these models all employ fuel injection and have for in most cases for 10-15 years. Showroom street cars have moved to smaller cubic inch engines while NASCAR continues to compete with engines the size of what are quickly becoming only available in large SUVs and pickup trucks.
The only other suggestions on addressing airborne cars and violently flipping cars has been to reduce the banking at the two superspeedways or drop them from the schedule completely.
Many would have to ask, would it not be wiser to reduce the cubic inches of the engines, require teams to compete with street stock production engine components, and control fuel management with fuel injection systems?
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
You can contact Allen Madding at ..
