| | | | | | | | |  | | | | The annual night race at Bristol has come and gone, and brought with it a huge shot in the arm for NASCAR’S top division. The great finish, the great side-by-side racing and all around good show will no doubt be blogged about for weeks to come.
Perhaps even a new rivalry has been born. NASCAR needs this new feud between Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards. It is good for our sport. We trust that it won't get out of hand and in the long run, nobody will get hurt.
There is a difference between a good old-fashioned rivalry and just plain stupidity. What we don’t need is guys wrecking each other at a superspeedway.
Rivalries in NASCAR have long been a great source of inspiration for fans in the earlier days to buy a ticket and pass through the turnstiles. Now even more so, to at least turn on the television.
The ratings again have been decent, all of this is a positive sign for our sport. The Daytona 500 fight between Cale, Donnie and Bobby has long been heralded as the spike that put us on the map. Somewhere between the vanilla homogenized ice cream players and pro wrestling, we need this rivalry. Taunting, pushing and shoving in the NFL makes for good TV, it also brings excitement and new viewers.
In the earliest of days prior to television, we had rivalries and photo finishes. The problem then was that it took an absolute miracle to happen for the local media to write even the slightest blurb about stock car racing.
Icons Chris Economaki and Dick Berggren knew this and bucked the conventional stick and ball wisdom to report on their passion of auto racing. Even the most casual of fans will now know about what we do via the electronic media. Our NASCAR world is changing everyday and some of this is good stuff!
Petty and Pearson, Cale and Darrell, Earnhardt and Waltrip, the years have been good to us and history continues to repeat itself.
Enter the new players. While it is typical in this point of the season to see drivers changing rides and teams, the new blood coming in is also a welcome transfusion. While some of the old guard ponder their exit strategy, we now have Joey Logano stepping into a heralded ride at Gibbs racing.
Scott Speed has proven that he is ready for the big time although the Red Bull program is still faced with challenges of growing pains. Stewart and Newman are filled with enthusiasm, but they also face similar challenges to growth and development that the team Red Bull is working through.
Where will some of these other guys land? What happens to Tony Raines? Easily the most unheralded talent in the garage area.
There is so much going on at this time in NASCAR, and it is all good stuff. Unfortunately, some guys will be left out in the cold without a ride. It is progress. This sport waits for nobody. The machine keeps on rolling and you are only as good as your last performance. At the moment, NASCAR’S last performance at Bristol was a dandy.
Andy Belmont and his wife Jennifer co-own the ARCA REMAX SERIES number one driven by Tom Hessert III and NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES number 12.
Andy has raced for some 35 years winning races and championships, including the 1987 NASCAR Dash Series Rookie of the Year, 1988 Dash series owner champion and 1992 runner up for Winston Cup Rookie of Year. He is also a Top 10 points finisher 5 times in the ARCA REMAX Series.
| | | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | | | | Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the United States of America’s original mecca of speed. The place of American racing history, the folkore, the incredible races, the offenhouser, the novi, rear engines, leather helmets and warriors with giant arms and no power steering.
Indy is where legends solidified their place in history and tragedy and survival became commonplace. How dare we taint such an iconic destination with the travesty at The Brickyard 400 this past weekend?
Heading to Pocono, Indianapolis for the stock cars is in the rear view mirror. Problem is, the speaker deck panel under the back window has a tremendous glare that is shining back in everyone’s eyes. This debacle will live to haunt all involved in what was easily the worst race of any kind on this year's schedule in any series -- perhaps of all time -- on the grandest stage. The blogs are everywhere. There is nothing positive coming out of this year’s stock car race at Indy. Well, maybe.
To the paying fans, someone should figure out how to turn each and every one of the tickets sold, into a credit somewhere up the line. If it is truly about the fans, IF IT IS TRULY ABOUT THE FANS, a discount should be offered on something. Not sure what or how, but the fans deserve more. In today’s day and age of four-bucks-a-gallon gas and five-bucks-a-gallon diesel to get there, four and five night minimums in trashy hotels with complimentary cock roaches, the fan limit has been reached. At first one would think this is similar to the Super Bowl hype and then a 49-10 blowout.
Not so, this is far worse.
Changes need to be made. Time alone will tell if anything will actually be done. The time has come my friends to change this car. Period.
Conceptually, the thought process behind the car is phenomenal. Make it safer, make it easier to police and regulate, make the cars the same so everyone is on equal footing. Make it a weekly International Race of Champions with great drivers in equally prepared race cars. It all sounds good.
But, since the beginning of time in auto racing, there have been haves and have nots. From day one in the racing world, the smartest guy with the best engineering minds and best drivers won the races. Not always was it the best financed, but money is no doubt a big help. Can you say “Smokey Yunick” or “Junior Johnson” ... men whose minds crafted great cars that stretched the boundaries of rule books, but put out great race cars?
Raise up the splitter in the front so the car actually has some real shock travel to work with. Take the darn wing off and put a spoiler on it like the Craftsman Trucks have. This isn’t rocket science we are talking about here. Somewhere in between the safety standards of the new car and the competitiveness of its predecessor, there is for surely common ground that needs to be found. Just copy the darn trucks for gosh sakes; it is the best NASCAR racing out there.
This common template thing may be easier to police in the inspection line, but it appears it will have some level of effect on corporate spending from at least one of the big three Detroit car manufacturers. It has to be harder for Detroit to swallow the promotional costs if they continue to have trouble connecting the dots of selling this thing to the public. It isn’t really a Dodge or a Chevy or a Ford or a Camry. It is a spec race car.
While most everyone in the garage and the big office have tried to be diplomatic in not blaming anyone, it is time to stop wasting energy on figuring out who not to blame. Why tell me, can’t someone step up and thump their chest and say OKAY, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Let’s roll up our sleeves and fix it right now. These teams have funding, they are smart. Give them some room to move.
The tire deal goes without saying. Stop, change the weekend schedule. Extend practices, bring in tire options and try them. Make me believe there isn’t at least one tire in the warehouse that would have worked. Don’t keep putting Band-Aids on the deal. Be proactive and fix it. Don’t hope that it will go away. There have been enough events so far with enough feedback to make quality decisions on where changes need to be made. Take the blinders off, let the horses look around.
The good thing is, the bad publicity raises the awareness level of the most casual of sports fan. All of America knows about this bad race, which can be a good thing. More folks will tune in for the shortest of times to see what is going on. Maybe we keep them and new fans are born. But, maybe we have upset the current fans, the old timers who have still stuck it out, to the point that they go find something else to do.
There are lots of things to be concerned with and the ripple effect is in the midst of happening. People, all people, from the front office at the racing hierarchy to the most casual of fans know there are changes that need to be made. Can we just make them? Can we try making a change for the sake of making a change? Can we deviate from what has been policy and look for an answer?
At this moment in time, the drivers have become so homogenized that there is no real spokesperson. The last guy who had everyone’s attention and the ability to get things done left us in February 2001 at Daytona. Since his passing, there has been not one person to step up and fill his role. Not that they haven’t tried. In today’s big time stock car racing, every time a guy steps up or steps out of line, the penalties border on ridiculous. Wasn’t that going to be left alone?
At one time, we applauded the national TV audience fight at the 1979 Daytona 500. It was the day our sport became front and center on television.
Since that time, we have slowly eroded away our ability to speak up and speak out. No tempers are allowed to flare in a sport where egotistical adrenalin filled warriors are expected to be at the top of their game.
I just don’t get it. We need the feuds, we need the rhetoric, and we need better race cars.
| | | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | | | | If only we could get a commercial break from TNT.
"NASCAR would like to thank its loyal fans and we hope you enjoyed today’s broadcast." Repeat, "We hope you enjoyed today’s broadcast."
Are you kidding me? It is a NASCAR event, but they don’t administer the telecast. So let's not throw NASCAR under the bus! The bus needs to run over and back up over the TNT management team. "Wide open coverage" means we have to put up with inserted commercials. Okay I get it, we have to pay for all of this right? Honestly though, do we need an insert every lap and a half? Every lap and a half?
If you watched the last two Cup races on the boob tube, do you have "The Closer," "Subway," "Coors" and so on firmly etched in your mind? My father-in-law, a life-long NASCAR fan, got up in disgust at lap 100 of the Daytona race and went to bed vowing to never watch another TNT broadcast. Not a very enjoyable telecast.
Everyone has opinions on the subject and if enough folks make noise about it, they might adjust the deal and get it right.
Kudos to Kyle Petty and Wally Dallenbach. Good chemistry there and good experience with a real sense of humor to entertain you. I am certain they have the talent to get it right.
TNT has a long way to go to catch up to Fox, Speed and ESPN. Give them time I suppose? Many writers and bloggers have beat it to death, and rightfully so. The only good thing that comes from this type of merchandising is that we turn on the radio and listen to MRN. Barney Hall is still the class of the field. Or, we just go to the race in the first place. | | | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | | | | Hooray for Tony Stewart for not being a part of the new established status quo. Like it or not, NASCAR has a real problem on its hands with only a few car owners owning all the cars. Can you say CART? How did that disaster work out for everyone?
We need more owners and we need more free enterprise. Call me crazy, but didn’t everyone see this coming when Gibbs first went to Toyota? Certainly it will all shake out in the wash on just how much help Chevrolet is offering in support. Both of Stewart’s championships came in GM products. His open wheel teams are still Chevrolet. It just makes sense.
Stewart himself is still very much the marketing draw. This is not new territory. Alan Kulwicki owned his own team and won a championship. Sure it was hard, but it isn’t impossible in today’s environment.
With proper funding, engineering and all the other components, it will work and Stewart is banking on it. The measure of success is the key, as in what does one expect of the whole situation? Sure wins and championships are the obvious benchmarks, but in my mind, being competitive and owning the deal are extremely important.
Everyone has a different vantage point. There are two sides to the coin. If you just want to be a hired gun to drive these cars, retire and take your cash and get out when the time is right and head to the lake, that is one thing. If you want to do this, live it and be a car owner after you get out of the seat, that may be just as rewarding as sipping brews at the lake. I’d sooner be at a race track somewhere!
| | | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | | | | The annual Independence Day celebration of our country’s birth brings with it a huge weekend at Daytona Beach for those of us in the stock car world. The much maligned NASCAR COT car comes out to play at the Daytona International Speedway, restrictor plate and all, an event that generally provides its own brand of fireworks.
As a kid, one of my favorite races was "the Paul Revere 250" which was run at night on the road course with the Grand American Camaros and Mustangs. Very cool stuff watching Smokey Yunicks black and gold Camaro go around with Paul Goldsmith at the wheel. Tiny Lund was always fun to watch!
Last week's blog prompted some letters from our RaceGear.com fans. Apparently we have struck a chord! We are listening loud and clear. The voices of the owners and drivers are not falling on deaf ears mind you. The powers that be understand this car has kinks to work out, plain and simple. The curve may be higher than expected. Change of anything in all walks of life is difficult. Making us racers change our thought process from what "was" the normal is no small task. Just a tick worse than throwing out that pair of jeans we have been wearing forever.
Much is being made of the testing rules being relaxed. It isn’t that big of a deal really. So we were not allowed to go test at a track we raced at like Darlington or Richmond unless it was authorized. No big deal. Get tires from Hoosier, go to Kentucky, Rockingham, Greenville Pickens, Caraway. Do you really think there are any rules written that we don’t try to figure out how to get around? It is the way of our world!
Complaining about the car isn’t going to make it any better, any more than whining about the cost of racing. Racing has always been an expensive sport, contrary to what anyone wants to tell you. In 1976 my take home pay was $110 a week. Our right rear tire for our Saturday night modified stock car, one of which we needed new every weekend, cost $130. So what has changed? We still needed gas money to get there and a few bucks for the diner on the way home. We learned the lesson of needing to look for sponsorship at an early age in racing… the soap box derby when I was 12. Controlling costs in racing is a very difficult item. You simply cannot please everyone.
My suggestion has always been for racers and team owners of all kinds to look in the mirror. A tough examination. Some of the expense wounds are self-inflicted, like temperature controlled buildings for the haulers to be kept in. I just always wonder about the necessity of some of this stuff.
Winning the race of the biggest baddest buildings, motor homes and airplanes have not helped the budgets. Dad always said, "The checkered flag has no eyes." We may not have the nicest tool box (and we are working on it) but we have the Roush Yates smoke under the hood!
This week's event should be fun to watch. The cars punch that big hole in the air and get a great push from behind. A couple years back with the "conventional" car, bump drafting became more and more prevalent. Al Unser Jr. and Earnhardt Sr. showed us how with the IROC cars.
The rear bumpers went from a single piece of tubing to support the front and rear fascia (bumper cover) that are made of a Kevlar composite. As we continued to pound on one another, the tubing went from a small round tube, maybe an inch and a quarter in diameter, with a wall thickness of one eighth or less, to having "rail road iron" under the head and tail light panels. Two to three rows across, with support pillars up and down from end to end. The harder the bump, the more material we would put back there under the rear bumper especially. Then the rule change…
A bulletin came out that we needed to go back to the flyweight materials. The thought was simple: with softer materials underneath the body panels, we wouldn’t hit each other so hard and risk damaging the aerodynamics on the body. Wrong! We left the soft bumper structure underneath then plated the tubing. "Nobody said we couldn’t plate the things," we reasoned.
So we will see lots of bump drafting this weekend. Probably going to see some torn-up sheet metal as well. But the brand of racing is good. It is a chess game at best. Some drivers really enjoy plate racing, the ones who are always successful. Others despise it, the mind games and the partner you need to find to help you along, who would hang you out to dry in a heart beat! We will see. | | | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | | | | The constant whining about the cars has to stop. - Andy Belmont
ARCA Car owner and former NASCAR driver Andy Belmont shares his insight on what the crews in the shops are working on and talking about.
Much has been written these last few days about the drivers-and-owners-only meeting that was held last weekend at the Michigan Speedway, regarding the drivers whining about the new COT car. NASCAR president Mr. Mike Helton addressed the elite group and suggested that the negative comments about the cars needed to stop.
Here is my take: It’s about time!
We are told it was a short meeting. To the point. He didn’t ask folks to stop being themselves or to not be personable. He just asked them to remember where they are.
If you have ever been summoned to the NASCAR trailer, you would understand. Mr. Helton is stern when he needs to be and your buddy most of the time. In successive weeks we have had our tails chewed fairly hard, then the following weekend, Helton himself picked us up in his personal vehicle and gave us a ride. He is a good guy in an unenviable position. Someone has to be the heavyweight and he is the right guy. He is NASCAR’S version of Pete Rozelle or Paul Tagliabue of the NFL.
Each and every week in the top level of NASCAR, 43 cars take the green flag. That's 43 drivers in a country of some 300 million people. This is a country with just shy of 1,000 race tracks of all kinds. Grass-roots racing feeds the hopes and dreams of many children that they can grow up to be a Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart. To be John Force or Warren Johnson, to be Danica Patrick.
Put this into some sort of perspective if you will. Since its inception, the 600 Racing Company alone has sold some 12,000 "Legend" series race cars. That is 12,000 race cars for kids of all ages to learn on. Some will run that division forever, most will try to graduate and become the next David Ragan, Joey Logano, Reed Sorensen and so on.
There are so many forms of racing in our country. Go-karts, World Karting Association, quarter midgets, Quarter Midgets of America. So many kids whose parents have mortgaged the family fortune so the kids can race. "Groceries or a new right rear tire?" Moms and Dads at all levels, some working two and three jobs, trying to help their kid make it in racing, to be a driver or a mechanic or an engineer. More than one family has gone broke trying to get their kid to the top.
Over there at the top ... as you wander through the infield, over there is the Motor Home compound. This is no trailer trash area. These are million-dollar motor coaches, some forty or so of them parked together. Transported there by "coach drivers" who drive them, clean them, stock them and leave, so the modern-day NASCAR driver has his own place for solace or whatever.
Not far from the Motor Home compound there is a helipad. Some of the drivers have their own helicopters for the short jaunts. The plane lot is not far away. Watch for the police escort entrance to the track: A NASCAR driver is somewhere in the mix, arriving from his personal aircraft of some sort.
What we are trying to put across here is that the constant whining about the cars has to stop. Everybody gets the fact that the new car is different. It is hard to drive, perhaps that is a given. Change in itself causes controversy.
So all of the races haven’t been barn burners. Remember Jeff Burton leading every lap at New Hampshire some years back? No matter how hard people work on that competition issue alone, in all eras there have been good races and bad ones too. Remember Petty and Pearson crashing across the line in the mid '70s Daytona 500? That was awesome! GO see it again and again at Daytona USA. Ned Jarrett once won a race by eleven laps at Charlotte. Now that must have been a snoozer! There were no bloggers then, so it wasn’t as big a deal.
Let’s look back…..If you will, imagine a different era. The cars were incredibly more dangerous and ten times as hard to drive as today’s chariots. Minimal if any fire suits, a street car bucket seat, no head rest, no neck restraint, no power steering, no window nets, no cool boxes, no cool suits or whatever. It would be hard for me to imagine A. J. Foyt, Richard Petty or David Pearson bitching to big Bill France. It just wouldn’t happen. If it did, it never got to the media. NASCAR became successful being ruled by one leader, a dictator perhaps, but a successful one that made the sport of racing stock cars an entertainment medium that people have made lots of money off of.
The drivers tried to form a union, tried to boycott. The show went on without many of them. (Talladega '69 I think it was.) Those who sat out had long-term issues to deal with. Some careers were completely derailed. Be careful what you wish for, I suppose.
The bottom line here is that today’s top level drivers have it made. So quit your bitching. | | | Permalink | Comments (1) | | | | | | Car owner and former NASCAR driver Andy Belmont shares his insight on what the crews in the shops are working on and talking about.
Blown tires happen. It's a fact of life. Out on the highway, you see the "alligators" that get spit off the wheel of trucks all the time. How many times have you had to swerve to miss one?
Tires blow out -- truck tires, trailer tires or race car tires -- because of heat or a puncture. Simple as that.
Race car tires in the tread area are extremely thin and in most cases, soft. This helps the tire grip the race track. In turn, the tire rubs the track adn creates friction, which we all know creates heat. The tire has to be thin to disipate the heat. Fairly simple.
A soft, hot tire is prone to picking up debris. The slightest little piece of asphalt stone sticking up the right way can puncture a race tire. So it's pretty important that when officials see the least little piece of debris on the track, they get it picked up so we don't run over it.
Now back to brake heat, which we discussed last week. Brake heat is what heats up the brake rotors. Intense braking doesn't give the outside air time to cool it down as much as we need, so then the brake rotor heats up the sidewall of the tire.
We have seen lots of blown tires at the short tracks, and the brake pedal gets the blame for heating the inside bead up until it gets soft and blows out. Now it looks like we have a similar situation with the new COT car. These cars are requiring a ton more braking than we are accustomed to using at the bigger tracks. So this has created a new dynamic to deal with.
Next thing we are dealing with is trying to get grip, plain and simple. Better grip means you drive it off in the corner harder and it sticks. Again, very simple. To get the grip is not so simple. We are now dealing with tremendous side load on the tires at the speed we run. We spend an immense amount of time working on getting the camber and what is called the camber gain correct on these cars.
If you are standing looking at the front of the car, the top of the right front tire (passenger side) is tilted toward the motor. The top of the left tire (the driver side) is tilted toward the infield pit area. This is called camber. Now as the cars springs and shocks go up and down this tilt changes as the car goes through this up and down motion. This is called camber gain. How much tilt does it "gain" or "lose" as it travels this motion?
This camber gain is a complex thing to get right. There are so many parts that make this all work and we can cover that in a next installment. Suffice to say that we haven't seen the last blown tire in racing!
Andy Belmont and his wife Jennifer co-own the ARCA REMAX SERIES number one driven by Tom Hessert III and NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES number 12.
Andy has raced for some 35 years winning races and championships, including the 1987 NASCAR Dash Series Rookie of the Year, 1988 Dash series owner champion and 1992 runner up for Winston Cup Rookie of Year. He is also a Top 10 points finisher 5 times in the ARCA REMAX Series.
| | | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | | | | Why there are so many tire problems for some and none for others?
When they simply fall off, you have to consider if it’s due to an obvious reason: Was the tire not on tight enough? Sometimes it’s just that simple. On the other hand, there could be a ton of factors to consider. Here are a couple.
First and foremost, the wheel mating surface – which is the back side of the wheel opposite the lug nuts -- usually is going up against a thin metal spacer we call a shim. The shim slides over the wheel studs in the wheel hub and is between what is called the "brake hat" and the wheel itself. It’s there because the brake rotor slides over the rear hub, and something has to hold it in place.
Now picture a soup bowl lying upside down on top of a dinner plate. There is a ring of bolts around the outer edge of the bowl holding it to the plate. A brake hat, which is made of aluminum, is like this inverted bowl. The brake hat has a brake rotor attached to it that is made out of steel.
The steel brake rotor is subject to thousands of heat cycles. Every time you hit that brake pedal, the brake pads hit the rotor and cause friction, which creates heat. The brake pads make immense heat. As soon as you let off, the fresh outside air cools that brake rotor down a little.
All of these heat cycles, as we call them, cause expansion and contraction. The weak link is the aluminum brake hat that sits over the rear hub on the rear housing. It isn't recommended that you bolt the wheel directly to the brake hat, so this shim we mentioned is in between.
So there are a handful of dynamics at play here: A hot brake rotor that has heat transmitted from it. A brake hat that it bolts to is sandwiched between a wheel spacer, a wheel and a rear end hub. The hub has heat from the axle inside it, which heats up the brake hat from the inside, and the brake heat from the outside. The wheel has tire pressure and side flex twisting it on corner entry. Put this all together and frankly, it is amazing that more wheels aren't falling off! Tells you what a good job these guys do on pit road.
The side load on the wheel and the force against it is immense. The impact guns on pit road, driven by tanks of nitrogen, spin the lug nuts on at tremendous speed. In pit stop practice we check the lug nuts after each stop to see how tight they are.
Of course, everyone has a different idea of how tight they need to be. I have heard everything from 50 to 90 foot pounds with a torque wrench (a tool to check tightness). With that kind of range, maybe they just weren’t tight enough?
The next thing that can happen is fairly simple and it happens to everyone. Lug nut glue. The lug nuts are pre-glued to each wheel so the nuts are already in place during quick tire changes. The problem that can stem from this is fairly simple. When you glue the nuts on, excess glue drips through the wheel and squeezes all around the hole in the wheel. When the nut gets spun onto the lug stud, some of the glue residue gets built up on the stud itself. Do this a couple times and it packs down in the threads on the stud. Although the lug is tight, it’s gripping onto a soft surface.
When everything goes back through the heat cycles and side load, all this motion loosens the glue up. Next thing you know, the lug nut is loose.
So there are a couple things we deal with on the wheel situation. In my next blog, I’ll let you know about those seemingly minor issues that can cause blown tires.
| | | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | | | | There has been much talk these last few days about the strange look of a handful of Sprint Cup COT cars last week at the Lowe’s speedway. The look is indeed strange, as the cars appear to be dog tracking down the straightaway. We have all seen it on the highway, following a tractor trailer sometimes you will be able to almost look all the way up one side and you wonder “what is that all about?” Usually a broken or worn bolt in the suspension gets the wheels of the trailer out of line with the box it is carrying, so the box isn’t traveling straight down the highway. Well this is about the same thing, almost.
What the guys are doing is turning the wheels a little by putting toe in them. It is quite difficult to do this and get it right. This is all about engineers working overtime to make these new jalopies handle better and go faster! Modern day ingenuity at its finest.
The rear housing and axles are still square under the chassis. Basically, the bodies have zero offset from left to right. This means the body is centered on the chassis from left to right. NASCAR has gone to great lengths to make gauges to check that the body is perfectly centered on the chassis from side to side, as well as dimensionally correct front to back. What they haven’t made gauges for (and you can bet they are on the way) is how to check that the cars go straight down the straight away as intended.
How they are doing this is complicated. Again, the rear housing is centered under the car within the tolerance left to right that NASCAR has allowed. Then what’s done is to put toe out in the right rear tire, pointing the leading edge of the tire at the grandstands. Then, they go and toe in the front of the left rear tire, pointing it at the grandstands the same amount. So in effect, the tires are still parallel with one another, but pointed at the fence instead of straight ahead under the body. Then the front tires are set up the same way, so all four tires are “tracking in the same plane.”
This puts the car in what is called “yaw” while it is sitting still. Putting the body into “yaw” on the old cars was something that was done purely with the body. They would be twisted all around. The rear bumper cover would be to the right of the car, then the deck lid and back window and roof and everything else would have a weird look to it because it was no longer symmetrical from side to side. The car being in “yaw” all the time creates side force aerodynamically. You will still see this on the current Nationwide cars and ARCA REMAX Series cars. This relates to down force as well and makes the body of the car plant the tires harder into the race track. More grip is the term we use. More grip means the driver is more comfortable keeping the gas pedal planted in the firewall longer, keeping the throttle plates on the carburetor open sooner and longer, making the car go faster.
It will change. A memo will go out from NASCAR this week to all teams that will suggest that they don’t go so far on this adjustment. You can bet there will be a method to police this fairly soon. Until then, the cars will look weird going down the straightaway at the “downforce” type tracks.
All of this causes more expense. It is what we racers do. It is our job to find speed! We are given a rule book. We do as is outlined in the rule book (within reason). But if something isn’t addressed, then we push it to the limits until they stop us. The violent look of the cars causes axles to wear out, so there will be better axles. The axles have a spline on the end. When looking at the end of an axle, it almost looks like a gear in a watch or clock works. The end fits into what is called a drive plate that has a similar shape. Kind of like the imprint a starfish makes in the sand. Take out the starfish and you have a star imprint. Well the axle has this gear look to the end of it that fits into a shape just like it in the drive plate, which goes over the wheel studs on the rear hub. This is what drives the wheels. These “driveplates” are a hardened metal that wears out fairly frequently and require a lot of grease to keep from wearing.
Most teams only use them a race or two at most and throw them away. Now, there are new and improved drive plates being made, as well as new and improved axles, with better metals, to handle the abuse of the excessive toe in and tow out that is put in the wheels doing this. The load that is put on these parts is pretty incredible if you think about it. Today’s top cars are making in the area of 850 horsepower with a conventionally aspirated (read that carburetor not fuel injection like your family car) 358 cubic inch motor. Pretty amazing stuff in its own right. Now try to move that 3400 pound car with 800 plus ponies. Add drag to it from the body and the big wing and all that we are doing to them. Now, go 180 plus miles per hour with it into a banked corner! An unreal load is put onto these parts. An incredible “G-load” that we can talk about in another article.
For now, we will probably see it a few more weeks. Once the method of checking it and bringing it back to some level of normal is figured out, the strange sideways look will go away, well for a little while anyway. Until we figure something else out!
Andy Belmont and his wife Jennifer co-own the ARCA REMAX SERIES number one driven by Tom Hessert III and NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES number 12.
Andy has raced for some 35 years winning races and championships, including the 1987 NASCAR Dash Series Rookie of the Year, 1988 Dash series owner champion and 1992 runner up for Winston Cup Rookie of Year. He is also a Top 10 points finisher 5 times in the ARCA REMAX Series. | | | Permalink | Comments (0) | | | | | | | |
