Innholdsfortegnelse for Bookazine 2024 i Racecar Engineering

Dallara had done virtually nothing in American stock car racing before receiving the call to help NASCAR develop its milestone Next Gen car. The Italian engineering powerhouse is well known for its design and manufacturing of top-level single seaters and sportscars, but this very different type of motorsport had barely crossed its radar. Before Next Gen, which made its race debut in 2022, the extent of Dallara’s NASCAR involvement had been setting up a drive simulator for the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) team. The link was created by Dallara supplying the chassis for Team Menard during its title-winning IRL IndyCar stint in the 1990s. The team owner’s son, Paul Menard, then went on to race for RCR in the Cup Series. That was about as far as Dallara’s attachment to…

There was a clear goal for the Next Gen car when it was under design: reduce cost, without compromising quality. To achieve that, NASCAR moved towards a single supplier in some areas of the car, including the braking system. The target was to reduce the cost of the complete system by around 50 per cent, compared to the previous Gen 6 regulations, and a tender process was initiated to find the chosen supplier. UK-based AP Racing exceeded that target relatively comfortably, and won the tender. From an engineering perspective, it was no easy task to bring down the cost, while at the same time retaining the performance level seen on the previous car generation. However, AP Racing was helped in several areas by the regulations, which included an increase in…

“The TAG-510 provides the brains, but it is combined with an additional unit, called an EIU-510. That supplies specific I/O needed for combustion”Josh Wesley, senior product manager at McLaren Applied On the face of it, there was nothing wrong with McLaren Applied’s TAG-400N electronic control unit (ECU). The device was introduced to NASCAR in 2012 and, since then, has serviced the normally aspirated V8s during the Gen 5, 6 and 7 (Next Gen) regulations. The control unit is so good that some teams are still running their original ones, yet to be serviced by the British company, and still functioning perfectly well. The series-400 unit was something of a game changer in NASCAR when it was first introduced. Although it was initially more expensive than alternative ECUs, it led to…

With the birth of the Next Gen car for the start of the 2022 season, NASCAR embarked on one of its most ambitious resets of the sport, and industry, in decades. With teams no longer constructing their own chassis and components, the aim was to help them financially, while ensuring on-track competition would reach heights never seen before. The goal is that on any given weekend, every team has a chance to win. With its dramatic design departure from the Gen 6 vehicle, the hope was that the Next Gen would increase competition across the schedule. That largely held true, with the 2023 season, for example, featuring 15 different winners, and over 150,000 passes within the top 15 positions. NASCAR diligently reviews every race, both from a technical perspective and…

The centenary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023 had more than just an anniversary to celebrate. For the first time in 50 years, NASCAR sent one of its cars to compete in the great race. It was no standard car, though. Weight had been taken out of it, with considerable support from chassis design partner, Dallara. The brakes were improved, tyre development was undertaken at an incredible rate and the aerodynamics were totally different. In fact, the only two parts of the car that remained in Cup Series spec were the rear spoiler and the driver-side window, which featured standard NASCAR-grade safety netting. Under the skin of the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, the engine, suspension and gearbox were all upgraded to meet the demands of the endurance race,…

NASCAR’s Next Gen rule set not only brought about a completely different car, both conceptually and technically, but it also led to a different style of racing. Teams have had to adapt to a new way of working with the cars, and drivers have learned an entirely new way of controlling them, aided by their strategists, as they seek to move up through the field. The Next Gen, or seventh-generation, regulations were introduced for the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season, and brought a new, Dallara designed, coupé-style body shape to the track that, unlike Gen 6, is symmetrical at the rear. It also introduced 18in wheels, low profile Goodyear tyres, standardised brakes from AP Racing, revised suspension and a manual sequential gearbox. These were the headline changes, but there were…

The NASCAR Research & Development (R&D) Center sits across from Concord-Padgett Regional Airport in Concord, North Carolina. Originally born to address growing needs in safety, competition and cost containment in the sport, the Center has grown to include an engineering staff of aerodynamicists, safety engineers, powertrain experts and competition officials. The ability of the sanctioning body to conduct its own research has been crucial in driving safety, efficiencies and performance changes over the years. Obviously, requesting feedback from competitors is a key component of successfully operating as a sanctioning body, but expecting engineering assistance or in-depth study from race teams is just not practical. It is simply a case of misaligned priorities. The teams want to win the races, while NASCAR wants to have the safest and best racing possible.…

Goodyear has been the sole tyre supplier to the NASCAR Cup Series since 1997. This stands out as one of the longest continuous single supply arrangements in top-level motorsport, comparable to Firestone’s supply of IndyCar since 1999 and Dunlop’s provision of tyres to Australian Supercars since 2002. Before it became a class of one, Goodyear had been heavily involved in stock car racing since the 1950s, jostling for grid space with other tyre manufacturers. Its milestones during that time of competition included introducing the slick tyre in 1972 and bringing the first radial tyre in 1989, which proved more robust and reliable than the previous bias-ply construction. It was perhaps no surprise then that, having been closely involved in previous iterations of NASCAR machinery, Goodyear was entrusted with the development…

Anyone who has been to Hendrick Motorsports’ campus cannot fail to be impressed. Housed on 140 acres in Charlotte, North Carolina, the facility runs up Papa Joe Hendrick Boulevard to a series of factories that has steadily grown in size from 5000ft.sq in 1984 to an incredible 430,000ft.sq today. On site is a full race shop for Hendrick’s teams competing in various NASCAR-sanctioned series, a museum that celebrates its 40-year history, and a state-of-the-art engine facility that produces one of the highest numbers of bespoke power units per season in global motorsport. Since April 1984, when Geoff Bodine won the Cup Series race at Martinsville, products of Hendrick’s engine shop have powered winners every year, bar 1985. At Darlington last year, Hendrick driver, Kyle Larson, racked up the 500th win…

‘A once-in-a-lifetime project for most of us involved, who may never see another project quite as revolutionary to an ecosystem as this’ The NASCAR Next Gen car platform took to the track in earnest in late 2021, for the final team tests undertaken prior to its debut at the Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, an exhibition race to kick off the 2022 season. The car’s development spanned several years, consuming thousands of hours of design and testing work, involving numerous suppliers and a global pandemic. What follows here is a small part of the story of Next Gen’s development from an aerodynamic standpoint, as told by the managing director of aerodynamics for NASCAR. The sanctioning body’s outgoing vehicle, the Gen 6, was introduced in 2013. With its forward…

‘Each car has four conical receivers on its underside, which are used to attach magnetic targets for the OSS to create reference points for the images… [and] a zeroing point’ NASCAR needed a more efficient scrutineering solution as it sought to clamp down on aerodynamic tricks being employed by teams so, in 2017, the governing body put out a request for product (RFP) to replace the aluminium body templates it was using at the time. Hampshire, UK-based Hawk-Eye Innovations ended up winning the bid with a product that can be built up and torn down efficiently for 36 or more race weekends per year, while still maintaining calibration. Curiously, the company is perhaps best known for its tennis line calling system, but is also involved in other sports such as…

There’s a popular internet meme where a child asks his mother if they can have a certain fast food for dinner and she replies, ‘we have that at home’, accompanied by a photo of a sorry-looking microwaved burger. A motorsport version might go something like, ‘Mum, can we have NASCAR?’, to which she replies: ‘We have NASCAR at home’, accompanied by a shot of a Euro Series first-corner pile up. Admittedly, that was the uninformed, and perhaps rather unfair, impression this author had of Europe’s FIA-sanctioned stock car series before attending a round in the UK, held at the Brands Hatch Indy circuit as part of the popular American SpeedFest event. The NASCAR Euro Series is a highly competitive championship and 2024 marked its 16th season. Far from being a…