(engines roar)
(cheers)
- NASCAR Rule!
I mean yeah, NASCAR does rule.
They also have rules.
And that's a fact of life.
Without them, we'd just be living in anarchy,
and well, take it from me, anarchy ain't
all it's cracked up to be.
Real life isn't always fair, or fun,
but NASCAR races try to be both.
(techno music)
So, if you poke around on the inter webs,
you can find the guidelines for NASCAR
Cup Car Livery, sponsorship, qualifying,
points scoring, Pit Road Rules,
race procedures, and penalties.
Man! That is a lot of rules!
But, what about rules for the Cup Cars themselves?
NASCAR keeps those locked up behind a username and password,
and some seasons, you might have new adjustments
to the rule books every race.
Why all them dang-nab rules?
- [Crowd] Yeah!
- This might be hard to believe, but
in the beginning Stock Car Racing
was actually racing stock cars.
Yeah, it's the National Association
for Stock Car Auto Racing.
The first official NASCAR strictly stock division race
was held June 19, 1949 at the
Charlotte Speedway in North Carolina.
Racers had to complete 200 laps on a
three quarter mile dirt oval in
completely stock production cars.
Top speed was barely 68 miles per hour.
But racing a normal car isn't that exciting,
and NASCAR's roots are in bootlegging.
Which involved a lot of tinkering
and souping up of cars.
- Did somebody say soup?
- Oh, hey Campbell!
What are you doing here?
This isn't a cooking show, this is a car channel.
- You know where the term souped up comes from?
- Gosh, no.
I actually never thought about where the
term souped up comes from.
- It comes from back in the days of horse racing.
- Are you kidding me?
- Yeah, guys used to give their horse
amphetamines to make them run faster
and they'd mix it in with the soup.
So, they'd say, "hey, that horse
must be souped up."
- Ah, thanks Campbell.
- Okay, I'm gonna go cool off.
- That's some pretty interesting information.
Eventually NASCAR enforced the homologation
rule that required manufacturers
to sell a certain number of the model
that they wanted to race to the public.
That lead to the production of a few unique models,
specifically for NASCAR races.
Instead of taking regular cars
and modifying them for racing,
Ford and Chrysler just went ahead
and made straight up race cars
with extreme aerodynamic features,
and tried to sell them to people.
The Ford Torina Talladega had a rounded nose,
and the Dodge Charger Daytona and
Plymouth Superbird had super tall
rear wings and pointed nose caps.
Those special aero NASCAR models,
they're making all kinds of downforce
and obliterating the other cars on the race circuit.
So, in 1971, NASCAR re-wrote the rules
and introduced the restrictor plate
for the first time.
A restrictor plate is a thin piece of metal
with some holes in it, installed into the car's intake.
It reduces the amount of air and fuel
that reaches the cylinders.
Less air and fuel means less boom,
slower acceleration, and a lower top speed.
We still use restrictor plates in NASCAR.
Though, these cars can still get
well above 700 hrspwrs.
Alright, now think about this.
Imagine it's 1971, and you're taking your
brand new Hemi Cuda to the oval and flooring it.
(race announcer indistinct)
Awesome!
Now imagine getting in a wreck.
(race announcer indistinct)
Unsafe at any speed?
How safe at 180 miles an hour?
Not safe.
So it's becoming even more clear
that more modifications should
be made to these cars.
Stock cars are getting less and less stock.
But, for the right reasons, both speed and safety.
NASCAR is, and almost always has been,
a clash between rules that try to keep drivers
safe while creating a level playing field,
and teams trying to exploit loopholes
in those rules to gain an advantage.
Recently, NASCAR decided to regulate which impact
wrenches could be used in the pits.
Then, a crew figured out that if they change
the gas, they can get the guns to go faster.
Be more powerful.
So, then NASCAR had to make a rule for that.
Pretty sneaky guys.
And seeing on TV, those cars look cool.
But you have no idea how fast 200 miles an hour is
until you see these cars hurling around the track in person.
(cars passing)
You got no idea what it's like to drive
one of these things, 'til you get to.
(engine roars)
- Ahhhh! That is awesome!
- Why put on the restrictor plates?
Isn't faster, better?
I don't know, let's ask professional
NASCAR driver, Parker Kligerman.
- The intention of the new rules package is
okay, what if we started to give these
cars more grip, gave them a little less horsepower.
It'll allow us to kind of race each other,
instead of racing ourselves, racing the track.
- Modern day rule changes are tested
in computer simulations, wind tunnels, and field tests.
But, there's not way to account for
every possible factor, at every track.
In addition to the large number of things
that can be changed on the car;
track surfaces change over time,
the weather changes all the time,
and the drivers themselves are
completely unpredictable.
(race car engines roar)
You don't know what the guy next to you is gonna do.
NASCAR uses science to inform
their decisions about the rules,
but often a new rule is really a
scientific experiment in its self.
And sometimes, things don't always work out like you hope.
(race crowd indistinct)
The latest Cup Cars came out in 2013,
and they're called Generation six.
Since the car shapes had become
super uniform, they adjusted the rules
to let the cars more closely resemble
the production models upon which they're based.
- It's the only Camry in the world with a V8, right?
- Rear wheel drive V8.
- Rear wheel drive, V8, Camry.
- And remember, the idea is trying
to keep the cars similar, but allowing
enough room for adjustment.
Here's a quick run down of the specs.
Every car's got a front engine, rear wheel drive layout
in a tube frame chassis.
The whole thing is basically a roll cage.
They're closed wheel, closed cockpit,
race cars with a 24 gauge sheet metal body panel.
The suspension rules call for an
independent front double wishbone setup
in a solid axle with trailing arms in the rear.
That means, the rear suspension is dependent.
Kind of like a 21 year old living at home.
The brake rotors have to be magnetic,
cast iron, or steel and can't have a
larger diameter than 12.72 inches.
Antilock brakes and traction control
systems are strictly not allowed.
But even with all those regulations,
there's still room for teams to change
subtle things that will effect their car's performance.
- We're here with Parker Kligerman, and we've been told
he is the absolute authority, as far as drivers go,
on what all the new rules are.
- It starts pretty much at the engine, right?
Horsepower is always key.
These are 900 horsepower engines
that are now restricted down to about 750.
We're all roughly close because of the way
they restrict the engines.
But from there, they become erector sets, these race cars.
So it's all about downforce and sideforce.
In stock cars, the other thing we fight,
besides aero, is heat.
We constantly try to take heat out
of the tires, out of the engine,
out of the brakes, because heat saps speed.
Next year, we are gonna be having the same engines,
they're just gonna be restricted now
all the way down to 550 horsepower.
We're gonna put a massive spoiler on the back.
It's so big, we actually put clear plexiglass at the top
so that we could see through it, through the mirror.
Otherwise you wouldn't be able too see out the back.
We're gonna enlarge the splitter, and then we
have these aero ducts, where we now have brake ducts,
that are gonna allow the air to basically
come through the front wheel wells.
These ducts right now that run
through here, come out into the tire.
They'll now be forced out right here,
and the air will be forced out and
that will create drag on the cars, to slow us down.
- Let's talk about aero.
The use of aerodynamic devices is limited
to a front splitter, side skirts, rear spoiler,
and NACA ducts in the window.
NACA ducts are low drag air inline.
Why do they call it NACA duct?
I'll tell you.
It was originally created by The US
National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
NACA.
Oh, this is pretty cool, there's also
flaps integrated into the roof and the hood
so if the car goes into a spin,
it'll pop up, keep the car down.
None of the other aero components can be adjusted or tuned.
But, that doesn't stop teams from trying to
tweak them to gain advantages anyway.
For example, at Chicagoland Speedway
in September 2017, Hendrick Motorsports
stuck a bit of tape to the top edge
of Chase Elliot's rear spoiler.
At 200 miles an hour, that little bit of tape
could've added somewhere between 30
and 50 pounds of downforce.
Which could give him a 0.2 second
advantage in lap times.
Elliott came in second.
And then after the official findings,
he and the team were penalized for breaking the rules.
But that's what I'm talking about.
The slightest edge can make a big difference.
Oh, let's talk about some of the
mind boggling tech that goes into making sure
these teams are following the rules.
We're inside the optical scan station
here at NASCAR.
- So what the camera's doing is projecting
different patterns on the car.
It takes all that photogrammetry
and it compares it to the cad of the car
As each one of the patterns is
going across the body of the car,
it's snapping pictures at all the times.
Inspector will come in, and he'll turn the wheel.
So, as he's turning the wheel, it's taking measurements.
Wheel bays, tread width, tow, camber, everything.
- Let's go outside, he's gonna show us the results.
- So it takes all that data, and then
dumps it into a results folder.
Green is good, anything red is coming at you,
anything blue is going away from you.
If I saw this quarter panel and there
was a lot of blue, that's an aero advantage.
So I would look at that and say
hey you gotta fix that.
I talked about wheel alignments on the inside,
this is what it gives us.
Camber, tread, tells us which way
they skew the rear end, whether they
go forward or rearward.
- If something is off, they gotta fix it?
- Yes.
- Or, and that gets measured again
tomorrow before the race?
- Yes.
- That's pretty cool stuff.
And these guys know what they're doing.
But the cars don't always keep that shape.
- These doors will cave in, this
down here will try and cave in,
you'll try to flare the skirts.
This will all cave in, and then when
we get off the race track, it'll
also pop back into shape.
We wanna try and steal downforce,
steal sideforce, steal speed.
So then we start making these cars change and move.
- It's like bootleggers.
- Yeah, exactly.
We're still the same guys.
We're still running moonshine.
- Hey, now let's talk about these
dang old power plants that sound so good.
(engine roar)
The engines are electronically fuel injected,
iron block, V8's with valves operated
by push rods, and you got two valves per cylinder.
Engine size capped at 358 cubic inches,
or five point eight liters.
And they can make somewhere around 850 horsepower.
At most race tracks, the engines run at
over 9,000 rpm, more than 500 miles.
If you tried to do that with your car,
you'd probably need a new car.
For 36 races, including season and non-points
exhibition races, you get 13 engines.
You gotta use each of them twice,
for two entire race weekends.
And they get sealed up to make sure you're not cheating.
And the engine also has to be the
same one used in qualifying.
If you swap out the motor, the car
and the driver lose their qualifying position,
you start at the back of the grid.
Oh, this is pretty cool, too.
Other strictly mandated equipment includes the tires.
Every team uses the exact same tires,
developed exclusively by Goodyear.
The rubber compounds made to balance
grip, heat, and tire wear characteristics.
Goodyear selects drivers every weekend
to give them feedback on how the
cars and tires are feeling for the track.
Every driver is running on the same tires
as every other driver.
Remember when I said they're trying
to keep things even?
And although the tires can't be changed,
futzing with the air pressure is allowed.
And that can have a big effect on handling.
You'll see pit crews inflating or deflating tires
during the race based on feedback
that they're getting from the drivers.
Also, the camber on these things is nuts.
In oval tracks, both tires are cambered
the same way to hug those turns.
During cornering, the right front tire
supports a load of some 4,000 pounds,
just like your mom's chair.
So making sure things are properly
adjusted is crucial.
If that doesn't sound advanced
enough for you, we've also got people
upstairs in the pit monitoring the path
of the car and the forces on it in real time,
comparing it to previous laps.
Oh, and you may have heard a little to do
about the upcoming 2019 NASCAR Cup Series Season Rules.
For some tracks, it's gonna need a lower top speed,
but it's gonna need a lot more downforce.
Why do they do this?
I don't know.
Let's ask professional race car driver, Bubba Wallace.
- It just closes up the gap from 20th on back.
That's what we're hoping for.
We could having the majority of the field
close together in racing and trying
to do whatever they can to get the lead.
We're still probably gonna battle the
dirty air, is what we call it.
You get within three or four car-lengths
of another car, and you kinda stall out.
- [Announcer] Going into three for the lead!
- We got a ton more, pretty much 1,000 pounds
more downforce added at some tracks, not all the tracks.
Different spoiler on the back, so, I'll say
I'm excited about it, just to try it out.
It's gonna be interesting.
- The rear spoiler is gonna be
eight inches tall, by 61 inches wide.
Which is taller than what they're currently running.
This means more downforce, which can
give cars better grip in trickier situations.
The splitter is gonna be larger, too.
With a two inch overhang, and a ten and a half inch
winglets on the ends under the car.
The radiator pan's gonna be wider,
measuring 37 inches in the front,
tapering to 31 in the back.
These three aerodynamic changes are
gonna increase overall downforce,
and they're gonna be used at all the 2019 races.
And this stuff's pretty interesting, too.
At oval tracks larger than a mile,
cars are gonna use aero ducts in the
front bumper to divert air off the side
of the car and away from the front tires.
So, it'll be an actual duct.
- Right here, no longer a sticker.
- That's to reduce the amount of turbulence
in the car's wake, so it's gonna be
easier for a trailing competitor to pass.
And then for racing at hard braking tracks
like Atlanta, Darlington, Pocono, and Homestead,
cars are gonna switch to brake ducts.
Now, let's get back to this infamous restrictor plate.
In 2019, only the Daytona 500 is
gonna be run with a true restrictor plate.
At all the other tracks, teams are gonna use
two different sizes of tapered spacers.
So, what's the difference?
A restrictor plate is just an eighth
of an inch thick aluminum plate
with four holes in it.
Why change to a tapered spacer?
Why are you asking me all of these questions?
You know I'm gonna answer them.
When the air runs into the restrictor plate,
the molecules gotta make a harsh
90 degree turn to get through the hole.
The restricted turbulent air flow reduces
the engines output significantly,
somewhere in the 400 horsepower range.
If you get someone with sandpaper on
their finger, and scratch the plate,
you're gonna gain like half a second.
Just makes it a little bit harder,
enforce that everybody's following the rules.
Tapered spacers eliminate that
quality control problem.
They're also aluminum plates with
four holes in them, only these plates
are about an inch thick.
The holes are tapered at seven degrees
on the intake side, so that air flows
through more smoothly.
Seven degrees is the maximum angle
air can travel along a surface
without separating from it, which
helps to reduce the turbulence.
That taper effectively turns each hole into a nozzle.
The smaller tapered spacer should knock
horsepower down to about 550,
while the larger spacer limits
horsepower to about 725.
So they tested these rules in both the lab,
and in a few 2018 events before they
wrote them into 2019 Official Rules.
And when they tried them out, the increased downforce
and lower top speed seemed to have created
a more exciting pack racing dynamic.
But what do the drivers think?
- We're all cautiously optimistic, I would say.
You know, to see what it brings
after we had a couple tests where
we seen some cool passing and such.
But, there's an element of me that wants 1,000
horsepower, and no downforce whatsoever.
That's what I wanna drive.
That's what any driver wants to drive.
But, it might not be realistic for a show.
- NASCAR's as much about the fans,
as it is the drivers.
You try things, see if they work,
and if they don't, you make changes.
That's how progress is made.
That's what's kept NASCAR on the
cutting edge of racing technology.
- That's it man.
- I like that.
- That's NASCAR, yeah, welcome.
- That was comprehensive.
It's NASCAR week on Donut.
The last race of 2018 is this Sunday at Homestead, Miami.
You don't wanna miss it.
It all comes down to this.
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