Burning the Midnight Cacti

So we finally made it to the end of the season. The last race was a bit anti-climactic as the 48 was never really in danger of losing the championship, and the race for the 35th owners points position was not really all that close either. Congrats to the 7 car team for keeping their driver in the top 35 and the guaranteed spot in the Daytona 500. With a new year always brings renewed optimism, so 2009 could be happy hunting for the 7. Time will tell.

Before I delve any deeper, just wanted to post the next 10 of the 25 days of RG items that are available at stores.ebay.com/thehotpass. I am taking next week off of the blogging to go home for my HS reunion, so I won't have time to do a good blog. So here are the goods.

This week was the Baja 1000, and since I am late in posting, everyone knows that Robby's fate was not the desired result. Robby was nice enough to bring the cup team members to last years race. I was lucky enough to go on that trip, so I thought I would share a story from last years race.

This year the race was a loop, but last year it was a just a big drag race from Ensanada in the north to Cabo at the southern tip of the baja peninsula. It was cool, because we got to drive the whole length of the peninsula and the landscapes were mostly beautiful and ever changing. We stayed in Phoenix after the cup race and flew to Ensanada early Monday morning. We went through customs, and then to a hotel for a team breakfast and briefing. The race truck was taken through tech inspection in the afternoon, and the team was divided into groups. In my group were three of the cup guys that were given a 15 passenger van, and we drove in a convoy with one of the support trucks with about 3 of the baja team guys. The support truck was outfitted with spare tires, radiators, tools you name it. The support trucks basically blast out into the desert ahead of the race truck and setup a pit stop area. The first pit stop for my group was about 300 miles into the race, so we left that and drove a couple hours to a random motel in a dirty little Mexican town and stayed the night.

In the morning I coaxed the other cup guys to go to little cafe for breakfast, which was more like a shack with flies all over. We had some sort of taco dish and I definitly had Coke for breakfast. Then we drove to our first pit area, which took a couple of hours. We got to the area at 3 ish and Rob was supposed to be there at about 5. Being the engineer and having the strength of a 6 year old girl, I was given the job of being the jack person for the pit. (I was way too excited.) The other cup guys were tasked with changing tires since they are like 80lbs a piece. Normally they only change rear tires on the truck, so I was to jack the truck under the rear gear housing while the other guys did tires and fuel. We got all revved up for the stop, but then we got word that Rob wouldn't be there until 10, so we relaxed and had some dinner and made a fire with some dried up cacti. Pretty cool.

Obviously live timing and scoring is not really available on the Baja, so you only really know your running position by counting the cars ahead of you. It was dark when the first of the trucks went through, so everytime that we saw lights in the distance, we all grabbed our tools and hoped it was Rob. Frustratingly, Rob came into the pit about 40 minutes behind the first truck.

Doing the Baja pit stop was about the coolest thing I've ever done in racing. I was all nervous and revved up. The jack was a normal 2 ton floor jack...the heavy ones, so it was tough to throw it around. The truck pulled to a stop and I whipped the jack under the rear end, and I pumped it like crazy. It was a little sandy so the jack sunk a bit, which threw me, but I kept pumping. I finally got the truck the inch in the air it needed just ahead of the tire guys getting the nuts loose. They got the new tires on, the fuel guy finished, I dropped the jack, and the truck sped off into the night. 40 seconds of fury and adrenanline, and it was over.

We hurredly packed up the equipment and started off to the next pit. Unfortunately, the truck broke down with drive train problems just 10 miles from our pitstop. We did a quick u-turn and caught up to it. It was parked in a ditch, and the guys did a trans cooler change, and some creative rerouting of oil lines. An hour later, the truck belched forward and hurtled into the night again. Still hopped up from all of the action, we got back in the van and zinged away to the next pitstop, 200 miles away.

All Quiet on the Testing Front

My appologies for being so late again with the post. Being back in the working world is tough I guess. My appolgies for to the THP users for this being so Robby-centric, but Robby's is the only cup team I've ever worked on, so my oppinions have been shaped from my experiences there.

Want to get some buisness out of the way before I touch on some of the craziness that has gone down in nascar world this week. First of all, THP store has been so successful that we are are going to make a charitable donation to somewhere. There will be discussions this week as to which charity we are going to pick, but we will make an announcement before Thanksgiving. Secondly I would like to announce that starting on Monday the THP store will be inaugurating "The 25 days of Robby". Each weekday for the next 5 weeks, THP will be posting a different RG item on the THP store with a 'buy it now' price, so that you don't have to wait to have your presents shipped. The schedule is below and has thumbnails of the first weeks items.

Ok...So a wacky week in NASCAR. Obviously the DEI Ganassi merger was the biggest news, and unfortunately left one of my friends jobless. However, since this is an engineering discussion, the biggest news in the technical side of NASCAR was the testing ban that was announced on Friday. How is the testing ban going to shake up the grid next year and what does this mean for the teams week to week preparations are the two big questions in my mind.

I don't think the testing ban will shake up the grid. The bigger teams have been ramping up their simulation programs in the last bunch of years and they are getting to the point where they are reliable enough to unload with a decent setup. Every team that has won a race this year has spent a ton of money on simulation. Next year they will continue to do so, and will keep using it to win. Most of the small teams get simulation support, so they are not totally in the dark. At RGM we did simulation work a little bit, and it definitly helped about half of the time. However, you need a team of dedicated personell to babysit it and make it useful, so the less funded teams are still going to be at a disadvantage. You will also see 7-post testing become even more of a priority, as this will be one of the best ways to tune the car before the race. At the very least it will keep the teams from slamming the splitter on the ground off the truck.

On a week to week basis, it should make running a cup team less expensive without testing. Unfortunately, some of the cost savings will come from lost jobs for people who are on test teams. When a big team goes testing they send a whole different team of mechanics and engineers to the track, and just a couple of the race weekend people. So putting a car together for a test did not really mess up the flow of trying to get cars to the track. At smaller teams the race weekend people are the test people, so it is very draining, and takes time away from getting the car for the upcoming race prepared. So the big teams will cut some more jobs, and it will be buisness as usual for the small teams.

Last race of the year and in my mind, the points race for the top 35 is hotter than for the championship. Robby, Marcus Ambrose, and the 84 (Vickers this week) will be desperate to beat each other for the final guaranteed spot in the top 35 and a automatic qualification for the first 5 races next year. Robby is a bit ahead of the other 2 and I will pick him and the 84 to be in the top 35 at the end of day. Ambrose has had an awesome last couple of weeks, but I think the 84 withe Vickers will be too strong, and Rob will have the fire to make the last hurdle, and keep his team in buisness to fight again next year.

Spring in the Dessert

Most of the time I just write about food, but I figured I'd take a stab at writing something technical. But first, since I consider myself a tiny bit of a writer, I'd like to give a shout out to Michael Crighton who died this week. He obviously wrote Jurassic Park among other books, and produced E.R. (which I have never watched). I think Jurassic Park was the first book that I read twice. I was about 12 or 13 when that came out, so it was right up my alley. Then Jeff Gordon drove the Jurassic Park car, and it just couldn't get any better. I think my favorite video game for Super Ninetendo (besides Mario Kart) was the Jurassic Park game. I found an downloaded an emulator a few months ago and I was playing on the plane all the time when I still worked for Robby. I was obsessed with it. Anyway...I thought that Crighton was a cheesy writer, but then I heard a portion of an interview with him on NPR this morning and it changed my mind. He said something to the effect of "When I was in medical school everyone was taking notes about how to be a doctor and I was taking notes on how the doctors interacted." I effed that up, but bottom line, he was switched on and I can appreciate that.

Technical discussion starts now. I wanted to demystify one of the more basic setup choices for crew chiefs and engineers...spring selection. Sping choice is based on one of two things, aerodynamic attitude and/or mechanical grip. At 1 mile and under tracks (like Phoenix this week) the choice is mainly based on mechanical grip. The softer the springs (in general) the better mechanical grip you will have and the faster you will corner. At 1.5 mile and over, the springs are used to tune the aerodynamic attitude of the car, so heavier springs can be tollerated because the car will make more aerodynamic grip than mechanical grip. If the springs are too soft at a big track, the car will roll alot and it will result in less downforce.

The difference in rate between the left and the right side springs at an end of the car is important too. For example, if you run a 200 lb spring on the LF and an 800 lb spring on the RF, you have 600 lb of "spring split" and the car will want to push like crazy. Consequently if you run the same combo at the rear, the car will tend to be looser, all things being equal. So you have to test to work on how to get the car balanced and fast with the right spring combination.

So where do you start? Well, big teams will do alot of simulation to figure out what springs will yeild the most grip at a given track. Then they will go out and test and see if the driver feels a good balance around the spring rates that the computer spits out and you adjust from there. You can also go to the 7 post rig and run a lot of tests to figure out how much grip you can get without messing up the aero platform. Smaller teams just rely on past notes and experience and sortof wing it when they get to the race. All the crew cheifs have other crew chief friends that they can call and get a hot setup from, so in the end, most of the grid runs about the same spring combination on any given week. I believe the technical term is the "Garage 500"

So there you go. Spring 101.

Predictions for this week. Hendrick cars are bad fast at the shorter flat tracks like Phoenix. I'm going for a Dale Jr win this week. I don't think it's the 24's year, and the 99's streak has to end sometime. I think the 9 will get back on track and get a top 5. As for Robby, his head will be in Baja as it is next week, and he hasn't run good here in a COT yet, so I'll go for a 32nd 3 laps down.

The End is Near

All appolgies for the late post this week...I just spent 5 hours in line with the whole early voting deal, after a long night of Halloween partying, so I am a bit spent. Not as spent as the people who travel with the cup teams, though. It's a long season and the end is finally in sight. Usually there is a sense of relaxation that comes at the end of the season that is similar to the last day of school. However, I fear that the state of the economy and the knock on effect on some of the less frugal race teams will have many people in the garage fearful for their jobs. In other years, being fired in the off season probaly did not seem like a big deal, but with all the rumors swirling about mergers, and teams contracting or folding there will certainly less jobs in the garage for the people who do get fired or laid off. It's a tricky little buisness and everyday is like a job interview. Now more than ever.

Hmmmm...Texas...Texas was not particularly a favorite of mine. It is so hard to get in and out of the track, and the highways are so congested that it was more of a hassle than alot of the tracks. This track is in the same mold as Charlotte and Atlanta, so the drivers who were good there should be just fine this week as well. There have been nearly 20 mile and half track races this year, so there will be no surprises.

It looks like Robby is getting the backup car out for tommorrow, so the smiles from the heady finish of last week and the solid qualifying effort will be wiped from the memories of the mechanics as they scramble to get the backup ready. Earlier in the week I would have picked RG for a top 25 again, but I can't see the backup having the pace of the primary, so a mid thirties is more likely. The team is just about safe in the top 35 though, and they will be desperate to put the 00 and the 77 out of reach, so they will fight it to the end. As for the rest of the field, the 48 is still head and shoulders above, but Carl seems to be resurgent. I will pick the 24 for the win though with the 99 in P2. I'll take the 44 for a top ten.