Smell the Thunder

Another race and another week of pure domination by Kyle. Just brilliant don't you think. In the same way that Schumacher stunk up F1 in the early part of the decade, Kyle has taken the fight to the rest of the grid in a way that has not been seen in Cup in a very long time. Perhaps it ruins the show a bit, but you can't help but envy the talent.

I was fortunate to scrounge up some passes for the race, so I was able to be at Bristol live and in person. I had never seen a race there from outside the pits, and I totally understand why this place sells out all the time. It was a 3 hour race (barely) and I was only bored for about 10-15 minutes in the middle, which is far less than at the cookie cutter big tracks. I liked the new paint scheme on the 7 this week too. The blaze orange looked pretty good with the classic swoopy design that has been on those cars for 5-6 years now. I was obviously wrong about their pace in my prerace predictions, and it was pretty late in the race before they went a lap down. So I think they will be happy with the result and the speed of the car. I didn't have a scanner for the race, but it looked really tight in the early stages, and loose off. Whatever it was, it obviously ran ok.

I went to part of the Nationwide race the day before and that was pretty cool too. The legends race was a bit of a joke, but I guess it is fun that it existed, regardless if it was a good show or not. I don't think anyone in their right mind will say that they saw these legends in their peak form, as most of them needed walkers it seemed. Rusty was obviously up for the task, and Sterling is barely a legend and he is still an active driver, so I am a bit confused by his role in the race.

Off to Martinsville this week, and I think it will be an intriguing race. This is another homeish track for the series, which is cool for the travelling employees. It is only a 2 hour drive from Charlotte, so alot of the team members will be going home on Friday and Saturday nights to hang out with the family before enduring another fly away race next week. It will probably rain for qualifying, so the top 35 will be in play. That means the 24 will start from the pole, and I do not think you can bet against a Hendrick package at M-ville. I will go for the 24 to take home the clock, and I will pick the 83 for a top 5 or just outside. Red Bull will be embarrassed after last week and I think they will come with guns blazing. Sorry to say this, but it could be a bleeder for the 7. I cannot remember the last time they finished a race there or finished it without being 100+ laps down. It seems to be either a gear or a wreck in every race, and I will pick a gear failure or a wreck again for this weekend.

Je No Se Corned Beef

Traditions have a way of bringing people together. Especially when there is good food involved. Tuesday was St. Patrick’s day, and I busted out the crock pots and cooked my 4th annual corned beef and cabbage dinner. Sprinkle in some good friends, a bit of Guiness, and the train wrecks on American Idol and good times were had by all. I accidentally had a 5 Guys bacon cheese burger for lunch, so I was meat and potatoed out by the end of the day, but it was a good hurt. The amout that I write about food, there is no way you would belive that I am running a 4 mile road race on Saturday.

Bristol is one of those tracks that has a bit of je no se quoi, and people love to come back to it year in and year out. Like walking down the crowded streets of a small England town, there is a sense of place that cannot be matched by the newness and enormity of the recently built circuits like Texas and California. For sure a weekend to get excited about.

The Bristol cars may not be one-offs in terms of the chassis itself, but the setup and spring combinations will be. The g loading in the corners is so great that teams will deal with this with beefier bumpstops and about an 800 lb RF spring, or they will run a 2000 lb RF spring and stay off the bumpstop all together. No other track on the circuit will bring out as great a diversity in spring choice as Bristol. The decision on which of these two paths to take will be hashed out on the 7 post or simulation. The crew chiefs will also have an eye to what a particular driver has liked in the past.

Qualifying will be of particular importance this week. So many times we have seen the top 4 or 5 cars go and put half the field a lap down in the first 50 laps. You need to qualify up front to avoid going a lap down early and to avoid all of the rough racing in the middle of the field. The lap is so quick that .3s will probably cover most of the field. Normally fuel mileage is not an issue in this race, but there have been green flag stops since they repaved the track, so I would not be too surprised to see a 150 lap caution-free run.

It looks like the weather has broken for the most part in the southeast, so I don’t expect to see any snow angels. Speaking of snow angels, I will go for 2 in a row for the #2. It has been a couple of years since he has driven with as much confidence and pace as he has this year, and he will love coming back to happy hunting grounds. The Gibbs stuff runs well at Bristol too so I will tip Hamlin for a top 5. Sadly, RG usually has no luck at Bristol. I remember the spring race of 2007 when we finished 10 laps down in 37th. If I were placing bets, 30-35th is as high of a finish as I can see from here.

Rock, Scissors, Paperclip

It's the off weekend for all three of the top NASCAR series, and we have a chance to take a deep breath before the tulips come up and the circuit starts making its spring stops. Atlanta turned out to be a bit of a bust after the 47 crew members goofed and put 3/4 of the field a lap down before the first 200 miles of the race was completed, so I think we are all ready for Bristol, which is never boring.

Obviously the off week is not really any break for the teams. They still have 32 races in front of them, and plenty of development work to make headway on. Off weeks are traditionally a time to go testing and this year is no different. A popular destination for test teams this week was a track known as "Little Rock". Little Rock is a Martinsville clone circuit that was built in the infield of the old Rockingham Speedway, which was traditionally the second race of the Cup season. The testing rule states that teams cannot test at any tracks that are on the Cup, NW, and truck schedules. Rockingham is not on any of them, so it is game on. I have never been to Rockingham or "Little Rock", but I have heard that Little Rock is an excellent reproduction of Martinsville, complete with asphault straights and concrete corners. Here is a pic of when it was getting built.

Martinsville is so unique and requires such a different car build, that if you do not test, you are going to be screwed for the race. The brake heat buildup is so great, that there will be some interesting air ducting strategies to keep the brakes and the tires cool. Drivetrains also take alot of abuse, and I would not be surprised to see teams doing long runs to test rear gear durability. If you fry the gear or the brakes in the middle of the race, it doesn't matter how fast your car was.

On the performance side of the spectrum, you will see alot nice details in the cars to get the weight out of them. Obviously there is a minimum weight rule, but there is an advantage to being able to put more weight down low in the frame rails. Some of these details you will not be able to see. Last year Red Bull was busted for having a roof that was made of steel that was too thin. There is a technique where you can acid dip steel panels to remove a few thousandths of an inch of material. This does not sound like much, but with the roof panel being so large and so high on the car, it is a significant advantage if you can get away with it. A couple of years ago, one of the acid dipping companies actually put adds in the bathrooms at the Martinsville race, so it was only a matter of time before someone got busted. The only way to check steel thickness when it is on the car is to use a electronic metal thickness gauge, and I would expect an official to have one in hand again this year.

Enjoy the week off and get ready for a good stretch of some of the more unique racetracks that are coming up in the next month or so.

Doing Donuts

I had a little bit of a battle with a bag of donuts this week. Yes, a bag of donuts. My partner's family was visiting my place over the weekend of the Daytona 500. Her dad was really excited about getting a Krispy Kreme donut, so he went out and bought a dozen of them. Well...He ate 2 of them, and for some reason he put the other 10 in my freezer. I didn't realize this until last Sunday when I saw a gallon bag of donuts while I was grabbing some girlscout cookie ice cream. Since the credit crunch is upon us and everyone is trying to save money, I could not in my right mind throw them out. So I starting eating two of them each morning for this past week. Uggghh. They are good, but 2 a day is pretty rough. I guess I know how Morgan Spurlock felt in that movie "Supersize Me" when he ate only McDonalds for a month.

I was half right about the Vegas race being a fuel milage deal, since a lot of the field got pinned a lap down late when the caution came out half way through the pitstop cycle. There were a lot more cautions than usual though, so a good bit of the field was able to stay on the lead lap for most of the race. You just have to love Kyle cueing the mic and going “Goodnight Gracie” after he blew by the 31. Pure entertainment.

Off to Atlanta this week. I think it snowed in the spring (winter?) race last year on the Saturday before the race. It is beautiful in the Carolina’s today (Friday) and will be this weekend, and I suspect the weather will be just fine in Atlanta as well. I think the big story this week will be the tires. The tire this year has a good bit more grip, so the speeds should be higher than last year. The setups will most likely have to change a little to get the balance back with added grip. With more speed comes more force on the car, so teams may need to change their bumpstop package a little, or maybe add some more spring in the car to keep the splitter from crashing into the ground. The teams with the best simulation will win the day on Friday, but after Saturday practice, the smaller teams should have a chance to catch back up and be fine for the race.

Atlanta has some nice big banking that rewards “over driving” the car. Look to the drivers that are known for driving a car in deep to be good in qualifying and the race. Robby has had a good past record at Atlanta, and the team will be buoyed by the good result last weekend. With Bristol looming, you should see another smart calculated race from the 7 car, so that there is no doubt about top 35 status after Bristol. It is difficult to pick winners with the top teams trading engine troubles from week to week. Roush is in a bit of a tizzy after last week and I don’t think they will recover for this week. I will go for 2 in a row for the 18, and I will tip Newman to get out of his funk and get a top 10.

Full of It

Vegas was always a cool place to go. It was one of 2 tracks on the circuit where the city seeminly could not care less that the cup race is in town. The other being Sonoma. It always felt like more of a vaction when you went to a place that did not live for the cup race like places like Talladega and Bristol. The one thing you have got to hate about the Vegas race is all the stupid gambling cliches that the idiot announcers are going to jam down your throat in about 4 hours.

The California race was a bit of snoozer, but I think we got to see which teams will be strong in the early months of the year. Obviously every time Kyle gets into a Truck or a Nationwide car, you 'd be stupid not to pencil him in for the win. On the cup side, as I anticipated, it was all the teams that you did not hear drama from that brought their cars to the front. Hendrick, Rousch, Gibbs, Penske, and even MWR were some of the quietest in the offseason in terms of driver lineup and restructuring. Low and behold, their staff was able to focus on preparing for races instead of worrying about their jobs. It is teams like Evernham or RPM whoevertheyare that are really going to strugle until they get their core organization in order and get the boat pointed in the right direction.

Since fuel mileage could play a role in the Vegas and the Atlanta race next week, I thought I would explain a little bit about how this is figured out. It is usually the job of the race engineer to calculate the fuel mileage for the crew chief. On smaller teams, and in the early days at RGM even, the crew chief can assume this role too. It is a pretty simple calculation really. The gas man has three big red dump cans of fuel ready to fuel the car at all times during the race. After they fill these up at the gas pumps in the garage area, they weigh them on an electronic scale to get the starting weight of the fuel and the gas can. This is usually in the neighborhood of 82-88 lbs. When the car is pitted, the gas man fills the car with fuel. On a full fuel run, this will take about a can and a half or so. After the pit stop, the gas man puts the fuel cans back on the scale and gets the final weight of the can and whatever fuel is left in the can. These numbers are then given to the engineer to figure out the mileage. The difference between the starting weight of the fuel can and the weight of the can after the stop is the total weight of fuel that is used. So now...

Fuel Used (lbs.)= Weight of Fuel Before Stop - Weight of Fuel After stop

The Sunoco people will weigh a known volume of fuel before the race to assess the density of the fuel for the weekend. (Remember HS physics) This varies slightly, mostly due to temperature, but it is normally about 6.3 lbs per gallon. So the gallons used is...

Fuel Used (gallons) = Fuel Used (lbs.) / 6.3 (lbs/gal)

On a full fuel run this will be approximately 18 gallons...Now what the engineer has to do is figure how many miles were run. Normally the amount of laps run is figured in "equivalent green laps". Each caution lap is normally figured as half of a green flag lap in terms of fuel consumption. So...

Equivalent Green laps = Green Flag Laps + (Yellow Flag Laps / 2)

So if there were 54 green laps and 4 caution laps, this would mean the car ran 56 equivalent green laps. Then you just multiply this by the length of the track to get the miles ran. In this case, 56 laps * 1.5 miles at Vegas = 84 miles.

Now, the mileage is easy. Number of miles ran divided by gallons used. In this case 84 miles / 18 gallons, which gives you 4.66 mpg.

The tricky part about this is that there are a couple of fudge factors to this calculation that rely on experience to figure out. One is that if there is spillage during the stop, then you have to try and estimate what it was and how it will effect the mileage. The other is handling. If the car is tight, the driver will try to steer the car with the throttle and thus use more fuel then when he is loose and trying to slowly put power down. So sometimes it is a bit of crap shoot. (I got my cliche in for the year.)

Vegas predictions. Robby has not had as bad a start to the season as this year in long time. In the last 3 or 4 years he has had good finishes at Daytona and California and been in the top 20 in points. Now he is the thirties, with the two short tracks looming in the near future which normally don't yeild good results. So, I think the 7 car will be a bit more aggressive at Vegas to get a good result and I feel the efforts will be rewarded with a top 25 if the Toyota power doesn't blow up. I don't think you can bet against the Hendrick stuff this week. I will go for a win for the 48 and my darkhorse is Stremme for a top 10.