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Why Six Points is About Right for What Used to be a 25-Point Penalty

Inspection, Kyle Busch, math, Rules 2 Responses »

Jun 152011

I was watching the movie A Clockwork Orange the other night. There is a scene where Malcolm McDowell, having been “rehabilitated” and returned to society incapable of defending himself, is being beat up by an old man. He can’t even defend himself. For some reason, it made me think of Kyle Busch.

To top off an already tough couple of weeks, Kyle’s car failed tech inspection (the front of the car was too low) after his third-place finish at Pocono last week. NASCAR made a rare exception to their Tuesday penalty announcements due to the NASCAR Hall of Fame announcement being scheduled for Tuesday. Monday, NASCAR docked the team 6 points and fined crew chief Dave Rogers $25,000. Under the old scoring system, this would have been a 25-point penalty.

Six points seemed like an odd number (I know, it’s an even number – I mean odd strange). Just out of curiosity, I graphed the new scoring system against the old scoring system (shown at right). I ignored bonus points because they are variable from race to race. The bonus points put a little wiggle in the graph here and there (again, depending on which race), but they don’t change the overall conclusions.

The points toward the left and toward the bottom represent the worst finishes. The last point in the upper right-hand corner represents the winner. For most of the graph, the relationship between the old points system and the new points system is linear. Using the handy formula y = mx+b, we can calculate that for the lower part of the graph, the slope (m) is 3 and the intercept (b) is 31. Look to the bottom of the blog for a large graph showing the slope.

The 31 is simply an offset. Under the old system, the lowest score you could get (assuming you were in the race) was 34. In the new points, the lowest score you can get is 1 (1*3=3; 34-3 = 31 QED). What we’re really interested in here is points relative to other people’s points, not points overall. We could have taken the old system and subtracted 31 from everyone’s score and the results would have been just the same in terms of where people finished and how far away they were from the next person. The relevant parameter here is the slope.

Notice that when you reach position 10 or so, the data start to deviate from a straight line. NASCAR used to make progressively larger differences in points as you finished higher. There was much more difference from 1st to 2nd than there was from 9th to 10th. That was done to try to reward drivers for finishing races. The new scale is 100% linear and the motivation to win rather than place a comfortable second is that the last two spots in the Chase are determined by number of wins.

If you approximate a straight line going positions 10 though 2, you end up with a slope around 4-2/3. So at the low end of the finishing order, one point in the new series is about three points in the old one. If you look at higher finishing places, one point in the new series is about 4-2/3 points. I drew in the slopes and made the picture bigger below to make it more evident. You’ll notice that my straight line for the higher finishers is not a great fit due to the non-linearity. I didn’t even try to include the winner.

Twenty-five points would correspond to anywhere from 8 points (using slope 3) to 5.4 points (or so, using slope 4-2/3). So 6 points is on the lower end of the range, but it seems perfectly reasonable. Too bad for Dave Rogers they didn’t scale the fine as well – he’d be ($25,000-$6,000=) $19,000 richer.

Malarkey, indeed.

Clint Bowyer, New Hampshire, Rules, The Chase 1 Response »

Oct 042010

I provided an interpretation of the penalty upholding statement released last Wednesday. The whole process raised more questions than it answered. The RCR appeal is dead. I put a couple last comments at the end of the post, but those are more for archival purposes than anything else. I also have a significant (well, for me at least) personal development at the very end.

Here’s the issue now. John Middlebrook, NASCAR’s chief appellate officer, will hear RCR’s (final) appeal tomorrow. He has a major advantage in that he can pretty much run the appeal however he wants. If I were in Mr. Middlebrook’s shoes, here’s what I’d do.

There are some major discrepancies that have not been resolved. The appeals panel said that Dr. Manning contradicted RCR – Manning apparently only investigated the left-hand side of the car, and he said in numerous interviews that he told the panel he didn’t know if the right side could have been made higher because he didn’t measure it. The panel claims he said the right-hand side couldn’t have been made higher by the tow truck. This is a really serious discrepancy between what the testifying person says they said and what the panel heard.

Let’s get all the people involved in the same room and resolve the discrepancies. What exactly was RCR told the violation was? Were they notified in writing or orally? Did both sides have the same understanding of how the process would work? A new wrinkle appeared today as reported by Dave Moody. RCR and Manning claimed that they were not allowed to see the car. Saturday, NASCAR says that Manning never asked to look at the car, and that everyone at RCR was aware that there is an “open door policy”. Did RCR ask to look at the car? Did NASCAR offer to provide all the data they had?

Why didn’t Manning measure both rear sides? Did RCR tell him that they were only being accused of being too high on the left? RCR told everyone that the car was 0.060″ too high prior to the hearing. Where did they get that number? Manning learned that the number was 0.039″ only just before the hearing.

Mr. Middlebrook, the best thing you could do is to initiate reform of the process to make it more transparent. Does the R&D Center have the responsibility to show the violation? Does RCR have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, or do they just have to place reasonable doubt on NASCAR’s case? Is there really any reason why fans shouldn’t know the exact nature of the violation if the team doesn’t object (prior to appeal)?

NASCAR does itself no favors being secretive. I know, NASCAR’s corporate culture is highly focused on control, but the fact is that most people believe the only reason to keep things secret is if you have something to hide. Why wasn’t NASCAR out there Wednesday night or Thursday morning refuting the assertions that RCR wasn’t allowed to view the car?

RCR’s case is a lost cause, but there’s an opportunity to make a more important difference in the culture of NASCAR. Openness and transparency. A rule book anyone can download from the web. To do otherwise is, well, malarkey.

A couple of other clarifications:

1. The 33 car from Richmond was not illegal. NASCAR warned RCR that they were getting very close to the line, but that car was judged to be legal. Nothing that has happened affects whether the 33 should be in The Chase or not. RCR has suffered from Perry Mason syndrome — the minute someone says “I wish Fred were dead” and then, voila, when Fred dies, you know who the first suspect is going to be. NASCAR warned RCR after the Richmond inspection that the 33 car from New Hampshire would be taken for detailed inspection regardless of whether it won or finished 43rd.

2. The 33 car from New Hampshire was illegal. RCR doesn’t contest this. The body was correct, the chassis was correct, but the body was located incorrectly relative to the chassis by 0.039″ above the allowed tolerance. I don’t believe anyone was trying to cheat, because you’d have to be pretty dense to be off by this much.

3. The illegality of the New Hampshire car could not have been detected by measurements made at the track. Measuring to that degree of specificity requires a surface plate – a special installation that is either metal, granite, or poured epoxy. During a tour of Hendrick Motorsports, I was told that their surface plates, which are large enough for the entire car, have a height variation of less than 0.007″ over the entire plate. A surface plate is installed and certified for a specific location: Its accuracy depends on the surface on which it is sitting. Surface plates are not portable. The metrology system (the thing they use to make the measurements with) is very precise and also not conducive to moving. If these measurements are to be made as part of the post-race inspection, they have to be made at the NASCAR R&D Center, not at the track.

I’m working on my next invention, the portable x-ray/laser scanner, which I plan to house in a mobile system that looks like a drive-in car wash. You’d push the car in, and lasers would come from the top, sides and bottom to take a ‘fingerprint’ (carprint) that can be compared before/after. Anyone who has a few million dollars lying around to invest, please let me know.

I’ll be working on that project from a new home. I’m happy to announce that, starting November 1, I’ll be taking on a new post, as Director of the West Virginia Nano Initiative. I’ll be leading an incredibly talented group of researchers in physics, chemistry, medicine and engineering to address some of the most important problems we’re facing: improving energy efficiency and moving to domestically available energy sources; learning to diagnose and treat disease at earlier stages and more cheaply, developing new sensors that will help us learn about how the environment around us is changing and how we need to respond to those changes, and national security. I’m very excited about the new job – it’s going to be a major challenge, but it is an absolutely great group of people. Morgantown is within six hours of Bristol, Martinsville, Charlotte, Indy, Kentucky, Pocono and Richmond.

Not that that had ANYTHING to do with my taking the job…

Breaking News: A Scientific Interpretation of the Upholding of the 33-Car Penalities

Clint Bowyer, Inspection, New Hampshire, Rules 21 Responses »

Sep 292010

Here’s the fast analysis of the statement from NASCAR upholding the penalties on the 33-car from New Hampshire. More will follow after proper digestion and reflection. This is an interpretation of the penalty upholding statement (as reported by Jeff Gluck) because that’s the first tweet I saw. The panel’s statements are in italics and my interpretation in non-italics.

The Appellants did not contest that the car measured out of specifications upon inspection. RCR agreed that NASCAR’s measurements of the car did show that the car was not in compliance after the race.

The Appellants argued that, having received a warning about the car body of the #33 car being “too close” following the Richmond race, that it was inconceivable that they would bring a non-conforming car to New Hampshire. RCR to NASCAR: We’re not stupid, folks. We knew you wanted to see the car, we knew you thought we were hitting the edge of the acceptable with the Richmond car. We’re not going to try to get away with anything. OK, that’s an argument we all sympathize with, but how do you prove it? I wonder whether RCR presented any data from measurements of the car prior to it leaving the shop. Then again, remember Gary Hart daring the media to catch him in illicit activity? This isn’t really a scientific argument, it’s an article of faith.

They argued that the left rear frame member was actually bent upward as a result of the car being pushed towards Victory Lane by a wrecker after the post-race burnouts, which resulted in the left rear measurement “hard point” being too high. To this end, they also presented an accident reconstruction specialist to demonstrate that a wrecker might bend up the left rear strut in the trunk under certain conditions. The specialists, however, indicated that such an occurrence would strictly affect the left rear because of the match-up between the wrecker pushbar and the angle of the racecar’s rear bumper. He went on to say that the corresponding right rear measurements should not be affected, in his view, nor the frame member deformed as a team representative had alleged.

This is a very interesting statement. A ‘hard point’ is a point on the car that is specified as having to be in a certain position. It’s like me telling you that you can sit any way you like, as long as you keep both feet on the floor. Feet on the floor is a ‘hard point’. You can do anything with your hands and legs, but I’m declaring you illegal if you don’t have your feet on the floor. When they talk about the frame, they’re talking about part of the chassis, usually the part made with rectangular tubing (as opposed to round tubing). On the photo at right, the rear is pointing to the right. The frame is the square part; however, that’s connected to the round tubing that supports the rear bumper and the gas tank.

According to NASCAR’s statement: The accident specialist argued that it was possible that the tow truck might bend the left rear strut in the trunk. I can’t tell from that exactly which part of the car they are denoting. The next statement, however, says that ‘the specialists’ (one has to assume they mean the RCR specialists, not the NASCAR R&D specialists) said that this would ONLY AFFECT the left rear bumper and NOT the right rear bumper.

The panel then goes on to say that the specialist contradicted the team’s claims and that the team claimed that they left AND the right measurements should have been affected. I haven’t seen the tape on this, but given the frustration of the specialist reported by the folks who were there when RC came out (“they didn’t listen to anything I said”), this is a really curious piece of information. The panel thinks there was contradictory evidence presented. Does RCR?

The Appellants also contested the severity and timing of the penalty. Well, yeah, you sort of have to.

Claims that the wrecker caused the infraction were negated by the telemetry from the car which did not show a sharp impact spike; by the fact that the rear template still fit snugly across the entire rear of the car; by a visual inspection of the rear of the car which showed nothing of note in the way of damage; and a visual review of the videotape of post race assistance tendered by the wrecker which appeared as relatively gentle pushing.

This is is important because of the reference to hard data. A ‘sharp impact spike’ would be a peak on a graph of force (or acceleration since F=ma) as a function of time. The panel asserts that there was not a significant enough spike to cause the damage. I’ve shown such a spike at left. This is the same type of data you’d use to determine how hard a hit a car took in an accident. The accident reconstructionist should have been able to provide some data about the size of the force necessary to bend the strut. The panel believed the force that was shown on the ‘black box’ wasn’t enough to cause the offset.

The rear template still fit the car, which suggests that there was minimal change in the shape of the body, and that was supported by looking at the car. If I came to you and said that someone had hit my car with a baseball bat, you’d have a certain expectation for what type of damage that would cause. If that damage weren’t there, you might be suspicious about whether the baseball bat incident actually happened. The panel also looked at the video tape and found it to be consistent with the damage and the telemetry, which led them to conclude that the force of the tow truck wasn’t sufficient to cause the change in height. The panel is arguing that the probability that there was damage significant enough to throw off the measurement, but not significant enough to see or be indicated by failure to fit the template wasn’t large enough to be convincing.

Of significance to the Panel were some additional facts which came to light during the hearing. Particularly of note were the facts that both rear hard points, left and right, were high, and that the rear of the body was offset on the frame.

They’re re-iterating here that the car was high on the left AND right sides and, according to their interpretation of the RCR specialist’s testimony, the tow truck explanation would result in only the left side being high. They also noted that the rear of the body was offset on the frame. This is a cryptic comment because it doesn’t tell us whether it was left/right offset or up/down.

The Panel found that the penalties were consistent for infractions of this magnitude.

Therefore, it is the unanimous decision of the National Stock Car Racing Appeals Panel to uphold the original penalties.

I’m not saying anything here about whether I think the conclusion is valid or not – just trying to explain what I think the panel means. I’ll be on Sirius Speedway with Dave Moody Thursday at 4:40 EDT to talk about the situation.

If I were a NASCAR reporter, here are the questions I’d want answered, either by RCR or by NASCAR R&D and ideally by both.

1. Here’s a picture of the chassis. Which frame member(s) are the ones that would have to have been bent by the tow truck?

2. Did the RCR accident reconstruction guy (a very respected engineer, by the way) actually contradict what RCR said or did the panel misundertand what he was saying?

Is this really a story? I don’t understand how RCR could have taken the chance of bringing a purposely wrong car, especially one off by that much. I also don’t understand how the damage could have happened at the track. It might be as simple as someone having measured wrong at the shop. But science is about understanding WHY. Most importantly – it’s about understanding, not accepting what you’re told or basing your conclusions on which team you like best or your gut feeling. For some people, the story is over, but other people really want to understand how this could have happened. Personally, I don’t want to read any more stories about why Junior is running badly, hear from drivers who can’t speak more than three words without cussing (especially at people who are just trying to do their jobs), or hear that Danica has (still) not mastered the art of driving a stock car. If you’re not interested, don’t read the articles, but don’t belittle those of us who find the nerdy tech stuff interesting. It’s our NASCAR too.

Overpressured Shocks on the 5-Car: How Does that Create an Advantage?

Aerodynamics, Dover International Speedway, Downforce, Inspection, Rules, Shocks, Springs, Suspension 5 Responses »

Sep 272010

The 5 car got sent to the back for the start of the race last Sunday at Dover after qualifying third when their shocks didn’t clear post-qualifying inspection. Shocks and springs work together to control the rate at which the body of the car moves. The ideal attitude is the hound dog position: nose down, tail up, as demonstrated in the photo at right by my capable assistant Darwin. That position prevents air from getting underneath the car and it sticks the spoiler up in the air as much as possible, which means that more air hits it and creates more downforce.

A spring – one weapon in the setup arsenal - exerts a force proportional to the distance it is compressed. A 200-lb-per-inch spring will compress by one inch when a force of 200 pounds pushes down on it, 2 inches when a force of 400 pounds pushes down on it, etc. You can add spring rubbers to change the rate, but springs are pretty much straightforward tools.

Shocks (the exterior of on being shown at left) are a little more subtle: They exert force proportional to speed, not the distance. Shocks are great fun to play with: they have everything one likes in a mechanical device – lots of tiny little parts that can be put together in myriad ways, adjustments, oil and nitrogen gas. If you push them slowly, they present some resistance. If you try to push them quickly, they provide more resistance. Shocks make a good complement to springs in terms of damping out some of the energy from the bouncing, and for a crew chief, they also provide the ability to tune how the weight of the car shifts during acceleration, braking and turning.

Each team has a shock specialist who works with springs and shocks. A spring is a relatively simple device: it’s a metal rod that’s been twisted into a coil. A shock is much more complex, which means you can tailor the shock much more subtly than you can a spring. The crew chief will specify what type of behavior he or she wants and the shock specialist’s job is to figure out how to build the shock so that it has that specific behavior. Shock specialists are an interesting breed. Most shops have a display where they show which of their shocks were selected by NASCAR for disassembly. It’s something of an honor. The dissected shocks are displayed for everyone in the garage to see.

Although you are only allowed to use a specific set of discs and shims, the number of ways you can combine them is huge, so shocks represent a real degree of freedom for the teams to exploit to gain an advantage. Although the box that NASCAR allows the team to work within is small, this is an area where a knowledgeable person can make a huge difference for his driver.

From the outside, a shock has a body (shown mostly in brass on the drawing at left) and a shaft (the long silvery part extending downward. Many racing shocks are made to be rebuilt – the body unscrews. I’ve diagrammed the inside of the shock at right. The resistance of the shock to your trying to pull or push on it is because there’s a piston and series of shims that resist moving through the oil the shock is filled with. The piston is a disk with holes in it. The shims (the thinner disks that sit on either side of the piston) flex and bend depending of how fast you try to move the shock. The flexing allows the oil to move through the holes in the piston. You tune the shock by selecting a piston and shim stacks (one on either side) that determine how easily the shaft moves. (That’s the macroscopic view – there are a lot of subtleties that I’m glossing over here).

A shock has two motions: compression, which is pressing down on (or shortening) the shock and rebound, which is elongating it. You can tune the shock so that it behaves differently on rebound and compression by selecting the appropriate piston and shim stack – you’d like the car to resist compression and return to its fully extended position as fast as possible.

In addition to the piston attached to the shaft, there is a floating piston. That’s a solid disc with o-rings that seal it to the cylindrical sides of the shock. If you move the shaft through oil at atmospheric pressure, you incorporate air into the oil. Very tiny bubbles form, which change the oil’s viscosity. To ensure that you only have oil in the area where the shaft moves, the floating piston separates the oil. To keep it pushing on the oil, nitrogen gas fills the space above the floating piston. The gas is usually filled to a pressure above atmospheric pressure, which pressurizes the oil and creates a force pushing the shock shaft out. If you compress a shock and then let go of it, the shaft will extend all by itself. Not quickly, but over a few minutes. The higher the pressure, the harder it is to compress and the faster it extends.

NASCAR sets a maximum shock pressure. A closed container under high pressure is called a bomb. You’re just asking for a seal to blow, a piston to fail and you’ve got a catastrophic failure. Second, if you let the teams pressurize the shocks as much as they wanted, the rear shocks would essentially be non-moving. That’s not a great situation: it puts additional stress on the tires, makes for a very rough ride, and makes the car more challenge to keep under control when it hits a bump. An over-pressured shock will keep the spoiler up on the air, giving the car an aerodynamic and a mechanical advantage over the other cars.

At New Hampshire, a couple of cars didn’t pass the height sticks in post-race tech inspection. The teams were allowed to push the cars back around the garage and then the cars passed. Shocks respond differently when they get hot than they do when they are cold. If a team doesn’t pass something like the height sticks the first time, NASCAR lets them wait awhile for the car to cool down and settle. It’s much like how the recommended pressure of the tires on your car is specified when the car hasn’t been driven for awhile – the tires need to be cool. If you fill to the recommended pressure when the tires are how, the tires are going to be underinflated.

It’s very easy to overpressure a shock – gauges may differ, or the shock specialist might be rushing to respond to a last-minute request from the crew chief and miss the target pressure.

33 car penalties

Aerodynamics, Clint Bowyer, New Hampshire, Racing, Richmond, Rules, The Chase 7 Responses »

Sep 222010

After being a non-event (The 33 car from Richmond was “just barely legal” and NASCAR was checking with RCR to make sure they didn’t have a mistake on their build sheet) for a couple of days, the situation changed today when a 150-point, $150,000, 6-week crew chief/car chief suspension was announced based on violations from the New Hampshire car.

The primary part of the penalty (meaning the part besides actions detrimental to stock car racing) was

33 car body location specifications in reference to certified chassis did not meet #NASCAR-approved specs

The chassis is the tube frame that makes up the skeleton of the car. NASCAR specifies the chassis down to the exact size tube, wall thicknesses of the tube, and precise location. Prior to hanging the body, each chassis must be taken to the NASCAR R&D Center to be verified, which is done using a Romer arm. The chassis is then tagged with RFID tags that are scanned at the racktrack to ensure that no changes have been made.

After the chassis is certified, the team can hang the body. Instead of making measurements of the body directly, certain points are called out by their position relative to spots on the chassis. The violation was in the position of the bodywork, which suggests that any advantage that may have been gained was aerodynamic. A violation of the chassis might have been dealt with even more severely because the chassis is the primary protection mechanism for the driver. RCR confirmed in their statement that the body was too high relative to the chassis – something that one could argue might have provided an aerodynamic advantage by putting the spoiler up further in the air.

If this is the same issue that their Richmond car received such intense scrutiny for, it makes sense. Cars are built weeks ahead of time, as the hauler has to get them to the race track Thursday night, so it is likely that the body was already hung on the New Hampshire car by the time NASCAR told RCR that there was an issue with the Richmond car.

That moves Bowyer from first to last in the Chase, and leaves him without two very important members of his crew for the next six weeks.

UPDATE: RCR reveals that the out-of-tolerance measurement was 60 thousandths (0.06) of an inch. For reference, a sheet of paper is 0.004 inches, so 60 thousandths of an inch would be 15 sheets of paper. They also will argue in their appeal that the problem was created by the tow truck driver who pushed the #33 to Victory Lane after it run out of gas.

@bobpockrass reports that the general tolerance on the measurement in question is 70 thou, which means that the car was 0.13 inches off – more than an eighth of an inch. If you’re trying to be ‘just legal’, you don’t miss by 1/8″.

Check back: More as it develops.

Great post from Dustin Long on the inspection process.

An earlier post from me (on the old stockcarscience.com site) about the tolerances and Hendrick Motorsports’ situation last year.

Handicapping Cup Drivers in the Nationwide Series

Racing, Rules 1 Response »

Sep 162010

I was driving past a golf course on a day when Dallas hit 107 °F and was amazed that there were golfers out in the midday sun. We racing fans probably have no business calling fans (or practitioners) of other sports ‘nuts’, as we do some things most people would view as pretty odd as well. But why not take a page from golf in addressing the perennially troublesome issue of NASCAR Cup drivers in the Nationwide Series.

Briefly rehashing the arguments: Cup drivers bring people to the track for Nationwide races and raise the series profile; however, having Cup drivers winning the Nationwide series seems to go against the general concept of using the second-tier series to develop the next generation of Cup drivers. Basically, we want the Cup drivers there, but we don’t want them winning the series.

Why not handicap the Cup drivers in terms of the points they earn toward the Championship? The table below shows how points are awarded in the Nationwide series. (You also get 5 bonus points for leading a lap and 5 bonus points if you lead the most laps – those aren’t included in the table below.)

Finish	Points	Finish	Points	Finish	Points	Finish	Points	Finish	Points
1	185	11	130	21	100	31	70	41	40
2	170	12	127	22	97	32	67	42	37
3	165	13	124	23	94	33	64	43	34
4	160	14	121	24	91	34	61
5	155	15	118	25	88	35	58
6	150	16	115	26	85	36	55
7	146	17	112	27	82	37	52
8	142	18	109	28	79	38	49
9	138	19	106	29	76	39	46
10	134	20	103	30	73	40	43

How about we handicap all drivers using number of Cup wins? Assuming, of course, that they have one or more because we don’t want to get into the whole division by zero thing. If we accept that the number of Cup wins is a measure of how ‘good’ the driver is, this gives the Nationwide drivers and Cup drivers who can really benefit from running the Nationwide races a more level playing field. It’s like a handicap in bowling or golf. As a first try, a driver is handicapped by losing x% of the points he wins in a give race, where x is the number of cup wins. Carl Edwards has 16 Cup wins, so he gets 84% of the points. In the current standings, that takes him from 3630 to 3049 points. Not a huge change – it moves him to 6th place. He’s still competitive, but he’s going to have to run better to be in the hunt for the top prize.

This is obviously not a perfect system, but it moves things in the right direction and it’s simple. It allows Nationwide drivers to benefit from competing against the best stock car drivers, while still allowing them to be competitive for the title run. I’m against banning Cup drivers from driving in Nationwide cars: there are some Cup drivers who really benefit from the additional experience (e.g. Paul Menard and Reed Sorenson). A Cup driver stepping in for a few races to drive for a smaller operation can be extremely valuable to the team by giving them feedback on their setup. Kevin Harvick ought to be able to drive his own team’s Nationwide car. As Dave Moody likes to say, drivers are free agents – the series shouldn’t be able to tell them where they can or can’t drive. If the drivers are really driving because they like racing, they ought to be up for the challenge of staying in the hunt for the title, even though they are working with a handicap.

Rank	Driver	Current Points	Starts	Cup Wins	Nationwide Wins	Normalized Points
1	Brad Keselowski	3995	25	1	4	3955
2	Carl Edwards	3630	25	16	2	3049
3	Kyle Busch	3396	20	19	10	2751
4	Justin Allgaier	3261	25	0	1	3261
5	Paul Menard	3171	25	0	0	3171
6	Kevin Harvick	2908	19	14	2	2355
7	Steve Wallace	2857	25	0	0	2857
8	Trevor Bayne	2855	25	0	0	2855
9	Joey Logano	2722	17	1	1	2695
10	Jason Leffler	2720	25	0	0	2720
11	Brendan Gaughan	2669	25	0	0	2669
12	Michael Annett	2643	25	0	0	2643
13	Brian Scott	2549	25	0	0	2549
14	Reed Sorenson	2451	18	0	0	2451
15	Tony Raines	2433	25	0	0	2433
16	Mike Bliss	2394	24	0	0	2394
17	Mike Wallace	2289	25	0	0	2289
18	Kenny Wallace	2280	25	0	0	2280
19	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.*	2111	22	0	0	2111

The table at right shows the points B.R. (Before Richmond). ‘Current Points’ is the way the series is now scored and Normalized Points shows what they would have under my handicapping. Brad Keselowski still maintains a massive points lead, but face it: he’s done a pretty good job this year. After handicapping, though, he’s leading over Justin Allgaier, who is now number 2. Joey Logano is minimally affected since he’s only won one Cup race. The veteran Cup drivers, however, drop back somewhat significantly in the standings. (Although I wonder if Kyle Busch had run all the races, whether he might not still be contending for the championship, even with the handicap.) The sponsors of the Cup-driver driven cars get exposure and publicity for winning races, while the long-term sponsors for the Nationwide regulars get publicity for sponsoring drivers in the race for the Championship. (Although that may be little consolation to Justin Allgaier given that he apparently is without a sponsor for next year, despite being the top non-Cup driver in the series.)

The manufacturers championship points would probably have to remain the same, since that is (ostensibly) independent of driver. There would be some issues to be resolved. I would only want to apply this to current Cup drivers. For example, if Elliott Sadler were to run full time next year in Nationwide (without a Cup ride), he should earn full points. It seems to me that there is a big difference between someone who runs full time in Nationwide because that is the best ride they can get and someone whose primary focus is Cup, but who chooses to run the Nationwide series.

It’s not a perfect system, but I think it works. It’s simple, it’s easily applied, and it accomplishes the goal of letting Cup drivers be competitive, but without running over the Nationwide regulars.

Just a thought.

A New Trackside Sign: Speech Limits

NASCAR, News, Rules 6 Responses »

Jul 292010

The important stuff first: Best wishes to Jack Roush (one of my personal heroes) for a speedy recovery from his accident, to Marcus Ambrose for finding a ride for next year, and condolences to the fans in St. Louis who won’t have the opportunity to see Nationwide or Truck racing in 2011.

Jenna Freyer of the AP reported that some NASCAR drivers have been fined recently for negative comments about the sport. She wrote:

“The Associated Press has learned that NASCAR warned teams during the offseason that public criticism of the sport would no longer be tolerated, and at least two star drivers have been fined — one as much as $50,000 — for comments that were deemed destructive to the industry.”

When I first started in academia, I firmly denied the idea that we live in an ivory tower. Getting out of academia and working with companies and sanctioning bodies has been a real eye-opener for me. As a scientist, I have the right to make any assertion I want — as long as I can back it up with data. The whole point of scholarship is pursuit of the Truth (which we share with the field of capital-J Journalism). One of the most disappointing things I’ve learned as a result of my time with the ‘real world’ is that there are entirely to many people who believe they can dictate what people think by telling them what to say and do. In science, the determining factor is not who you are, but the veracity of what you say. I have the right – in fact, the responsibility – to correct something that is incorrect. It doesn’t matter if the speaker is a graduate student or a Nobel Prize winner.

Of course, when you start getting into the world of opinion (and yes, there is plenty of opinion in science because there are many things we still don’t know), the rules become fuzzier. We all know scientists who are so in love with their own theories that they are not as objective about their work as they should be. We have, unfortunately, had a number of recent cases of scientific misconduct, in which data were fabricated or even cherry-picked to make them look more convincing than they really were. When those cases are uncovered, the punishment is very clear – you lose the right to be a scientist at a reputable institution. The funding agencies can go through due process and deny you the ability to compete for grants to support your research. Papers in which incorrect data are published must be retracted. But unless I have evidence that someone has knowingly done something malicious, my accusing them of misconduct is libel, not opinion.

Imagine you are one of the people in the NASCAR hierarchy who makes decisions about debris cautions or determines whether a car meets NASCAR’s somewhat fuzzy technical specifications. How would you feel if one of the drivers got up and told the world that he lost the race because the officials called a fake debris caution to make the race more exciting? That’s not “destructive to the industry”, that’s making a value judgment of the integrity of the official and the officiating body. I agree with NASCAR that they should have every right to discipline people they license to participate in the sport if those people make unfounded statements that question the integrity of the sport.

Ramsey Poston refused to get into specifics, saying only:

“It is the sanctioning body’s obligation on behalf of the industry and our fans to protect the sport’s brand. Any action taken by NASCAR has nothing to do with the drivers expressing an opinion — it’s focused on actions or comments that materially damage the sport.”

That’s come across in very different ways in different stories, which range from “NASCAR fines drivers for making disparaging comments about the sport” to tweets that “NASCAR muzzles drivers”. Drivers (crew chiefs, owners, mechanics and anyone else) should have the right to state substantiated opinions. Denny Hamlin ought to be mad about losing a race due to a late-race debris caution, and he ought to be able to state facts. If no one on his team saw any debris, that’s a perfectly fair thing to say. He can do that without suggesting that there is a conspiracy. NASCAR, for their part, ought to be able to point out the debris when they call a caution and everyone involved in racing ought to understand that sometimes you can’t tell whether the unidentified debris is metal or rubber, and that it is better to call a caution than to find out what the thing in the middle of the best driving line is made of by having someone run over it at 200 mph. The NASCAR media got on the TV broadcasters last year about not showing caution-causing debris. The broadcasters responded by trying to make sure they showed the debris and, in at least one case, wondering out loud where the debris was because they couldn’t find it.

Tony Stewart lit into Goodyear for a bad tire choice at the first Atlanta race in 2008. He wasn’t the only driver upset about tire problems – Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman (among others) said similar things, although in more reasonable and measured ways. Goodyear invited Stewart to visit their tire operation and explained the process of specifying and making tires to him and he appeared chastened. He still felt it was a bad tire, but he was a little more constructive with his criticism. The simple act of Goodyear taking the time to explain how they work and how they are really doing the best they can raised my opinion of them. Stewart’s admission that he overreacted raised my opinion of him, as well. Sometimes, you’re just wrong and the best way to deal with it is to admit that you were wrong.

@jim_utter asked whether anyone could show him one instance in which fans didn’t go to the track because of something someone said. (Bonus points to @spencerlueders, who replied “The weatherman” Spencer is, if I remember right, a science-loving motorsports lawyer who sent me a neat email when I did Charlotte Talks.)

I think most fans have the same reaction I do when I hear a whiny driver making no sense: “What a schmuck.” It has absolutely no impact on my attending or watching race. Far more important are ticket prices, where and when races are located, whether I have a job, and how my favorite drivers are doing. NASCAR’s taken the other road and refuses to talk about it, which has only stretched out the discussion because people wonder who was fined and what exactly they said. If NASCAR is (as I suspect) in the right (in this case) and it’s analogous to fining a pitcher for making remarks about the integrity of the umpire, they would have done themselves so much more credit by being open about it. If they want to “protect the brand” by trying to make sure no one says anything negative about it — even when true and justified — then that’s a strong reason for me to stop watching.

Is there any reason why NASCAR can’t collect the debris that causes cautions and put it on display, like they do the shock absorbers they select for dismantling? Yes, this could result in embarrassment because sometimes a caution is called and it turns out to be a hamburger wrapper or a piece of foam – but honestly, if you can’t appreciate the importance of being very careful when you’re talking about people’s lives, you really shouldn’t call yourself a racing fan anyway.

My friend The Rocket Scientist likes to engage me in the occasional debate of whether NASCAR is a sport. (It’s a boring debate that doesn’t really interest me, but I sometimes play along just because it gets fun. Like the time someone suggested that a sport was anything people paid to watch. TRS noted that this would technically make stripping a sport.) It’s become a running game with a group of friends: what makes a sport a “real” sport? During the World Cup, another friend, Owl, suggested that a true sport doesn’t allot points for style.

I’ve got a new one to run by them: A true sport doesn’t have secret rules.

Qualifying Trim vs. Race Trim

Drag, Engines, Glossary, Oil, Qualifying Trim, Race Trim, Racing 3 Responses »

Jul 092010

Thanks to Woogaroo for the suggestion of doing something on race trim vs. qualifying trim – two words you hear thrown around a lot, but often without a lot of explanation. I’ve embedded the video, but just in case, here’s the direct link to the YouTube version.

Something in racing you’re wondering about? Send questions to admin(at)buildingspeed.org.

What the Media Hasn’t Told You: An Open Letter to Randy LaJoie

Dean Sicking, Drug testing, Gary Nelson, journalism, People, Randy LaJoie, Safety, Steve Peterson 1 Response »

Jun 252010

It was quite a surprise getting into the car Tuesday and turning the radio to my favorite Sirius NASCAR show. A very distraught Randy LaJoie was explaining that NASCAR was about to announce that they had suspended him for testing positive for marijuana. The details are widely available, so I won’t repeat them here and, frankly, that’s not the point of this blog. He smoked a joint while partying with a group of people at the racetrack. It was a one-time thing, not something he does regularly but — as Dave Moody pointed out — not a real bright thing to do given NASCAR’s zero tolerance drug policy. Plus, it’s illegal. Randy is jumping through the NASCAR hoops necessary to get reinstated.

I have to say, though, that the admission wasn’t as much of a surprise as the media and fan reaction. It ranged from sort of funny (“@JosephPaulillo: Knew something was up when LaJoie told Coleman during the race, “clear turn 5E, except for the minatour.”) to just plain stupid, the worst of which was a ‘respected’ NASCAR writer tearing apart LaJoie’s apology. How unfair of Randy to have taken all the fun out of kicking people when they’re down by beating everyone to the punch.

I finally reached my limite with the Sirius Speedway caller who actually said, “Don’t worry, Randy will get his life back together and he’ll be fine.”

Give me an effin’ break. Randy doesn’t have anything to “get back together”.

When you reach the point in your life when you really start thinking about what your purpose is on this Earth (which I have recently), you run into a lot of people whom you hope justify their existence by being loving parents, working at homeless shelters and donating to food banks because it is hard to see how what they do in their day jobs makes the world a better place. But my perspective may be skewed because just about everything I’ve seen about the incident focused on LaJoie as a ‘two-time Busch champion’.

I’m not sure where being a racecar driver comes in in terms of making the world a better place. There are some people who have made a point of doing things beyond the track. Over in the ALMS, driver David Brabham spends a lot of his own time and money trying to make the world a better place. Alcohol companies can’t sponsor cars is France, so the Highcroft Patron car at Le Mans instead featured an effort to eradicate malaria – a disease most of us in the U.S. and Europe don’t worry about since it doesn’t affect us. Jeff Gordon, Richard Childress and others have put their own money into medical facilities. This is in contrast to the ‘let me sign this and put it up on ebay and let other people donate money’ approach.

One of the things about being ‘on the inside’ is that you learn things about people that most fans don’t know. Sometimes it’s not a pleasent experience (you find that a driver you really liked is an inconsiderate sexist snob), but sometimes you learn things that you just feel compelled to pass along.

Randy LaJoie is a good racecar driver, but when St. Peter looks down a list of Randy’s accomplishments as he stands at the pearly gates, there’s going to be a long list of names. Those are the names of people whose lives Randy LaJoie has saved.

Randy doesn’t have formal engineering training, but he’s got all the skills of a scientist or engineer. When he was driving (which he refers to as “being my own crash-test dummy”), he realized that it was really important that the driver stopped when the car stopped. Randy’s company, The Joie of Seating, makes seats for race cars.

The Joie of Seating makes seats for NASCAR drivers. Remember Michael McDowell’s crash at Texas? One of Randy’s seats was part of the safety equipment that helped McDowell walk away with nothing more than a few bruises (ribs and ego).

But — and more importantly — Randy makes seats for the everyday racer. The Saturday night men and women who can’t afford carbon fiber, but need a safe, well-fitted seat. They also make seat for kids. The problem with kids is that they outgrow things. Quickly. An entry-level seat for a racecar can cost a couple of hundred to more than a thousand bucks. If you’re not one of those parents into mortgaging the house for your kid’s career, you’re faced with a dilema. Do you buy the seat big so that it will last for two years and try putting some extra padding on so your daughter can’t slide around if she’s hit in her quarter midget?

If you buy a seat from Randy, he’ll trade out seats as your kid grows because he knows a seat is safe only if it fits right. He could make more money by selling more seats, but that’s not really why he’s in business. Randy started a not-for-profit 501(3)c foundation to promote racing safety at short tracks so that all the safety innovations developed for NASCAR’s top series can start being used at the local tracks.

I got to interview Randy for The Science of Speed video series. We spent a whole morning in his shop asking the guys working at the shop if they could please hold off hammering for a just a few more moments and playing with the shop dog.

My favorite part of the interview with Randy was one we used to end of the video segment on safety. He says something like (and I’m paraphrasing – you should really look at the very end of the video if you want to appreciate his passion for safety):

When I was racing, I wanted to reach Victory Lane. Now, when one of my customers calls me on Monday and tells me that they caught on fire, rolled the car, wrecked their… butt^*… off, and they’re fine, well, that’s my Victory Lane.

Before anyone throws stones, maybe we should all think a little about what we contribute to the world. We’ve all done stupid things (and I’ve probably done more than my fair share). The difference is that most of us were lucky enough to not be caught. We were allowed to make our mistakes in private.

I’m not arguing that doing good things gives you the right to do bad things, but in the great karmic balance of things, this is not the incident for which Randy La Joie will be remembered. And as proud as I’m sure he is of his racing championships, that’s also not what he is going to be remembered for.

Along with the late Steve Peterson , Dean Sicking and his crew at the University of Nebraska, Gary Nelson, and Tom Gideon (formerly of GM Racing, now with the NASDAR R and D Center), Randy La Joie is one of the people who evangelizes for safety simply because it is the right thing to do, not because they are concerned that losing a popular driver might affect the popularity of a sport and its ability to make money. These are folks who don’t care if you are Jimmie Johnson or a no-name nine-year old in a go kart.

Randy, no one can question your passion and dedication to racing safety. You are one of the people who makes the world a better place – screw ups or no. You became one of my heroes the morning I spent with you in your shop, and you still are.

^{Footnote: *} My favorite part of the morning was when he gave us this great soundbite and we (the crew) were trying to figure out who should ask him if he could do it again exactly the same… without the cuss word!

How many…uh…cows…you got under that hood?

Drayson Racing, Energy, Engines, Greenness, Oil, Racing 2 Responses »

Apr 262010

In February, I had the privilege of attending the 12 Hours of Sebring, an American Le Mans Series (ALMS) race. The ALMS series isn’t as familiar to people in the US as NASCAR, the series that originally got me interested in cars. Drivers in both series have accents; however, in NASCAR, you’re distinguishing the Virginians from the North Carolinians, while in ALMS, you have to be careful about confusing the Spanish, Mexicans and the Brazilians or the Australians and the Brits. (And then there are the ‘citizens of the world‘, but that’s a story I will tell later).

In comparing the two types of racing (stock cars vs. sports cars), NASCAR is like hockey and ALMS is more like baseball. At a NASCAR race, you constantly scan the track to see where the action is. Except at superspeedways and road courses, you really can’t hold a conversation because of the noise. You have to wait for cautions to communicate with your seat mates (or text them).

ALMS tracks are longer: three to five miles compared to the typical half-mile to two-and-a-half mile NASCAR track. When you go to an ALMS race, you position yourself near your favorite turn. The cars run past, then you have a minute or so to talk before they come back around again. Drinking while watching racing is common (if not mandatory); however, NASCAR’s official alcoholic beverage is Coors Lite, while ALMS’s is Patron Tequila. I’m a sucker for good tequila and a British accent, so I had a lot of fun at Sebring. Besides, where else are you going to see an Aston Martin sponsored by Lowes?

ALMS is a good platform for automotive industry companies pursuing greener products. The Michelin Green X Challenge, which rewards the fastest and most energy efficient cars, considers only gasoline usage at the moment, but as the
series evolves, they will likely expand to include another major contributor to petroleum use in cars: oil. One of the series’ sponsors, G-Oil, is a motor oil with animal origins. One of the principles of “green racing” is to minimize petroleum usage to lessen our dependence on foreign energy sources, so using a domestically available source for motor oil certainly addresses that point.

Oil plays many roles in the engine, including protecting metal parts from wear due to friction and carrying heat away from the engine. A typical passenger car uses about 5 quarts of oil. Changing the oil every 5,000 miles means you go through about 100 quarts of oil in 10 years. That doesn’t sound like much, but multiply that by the number of cars in the country and the number of people who don’t recycle used oil. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says that two hundred million gallons of used oil are improperly disposed of each year. So not only are we increasing our dependence on petroleum, the used oil can contaminate groundwater and kill vegetation.

Gasoline and petroleum-based oil come from the same source: crude oil. Crude oil contains a veritable zoo of hydrocarbons – chains (or rings) of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms attached to any free carbon bonds. The number of carbon atoms in each molecule ranges from 1 to 80 or more. The chart below gives you an idea of how many carbons are in the molecules that make up various petroleum products. Red lines represent gases, blue lines represent liquids and green lines represent solids. The darker blue tells you where the majority of the molecules in the substance come from.

The same length carbon chain molecules can be used for different things, depending on how the atoms are attached within the molecule. Isomers are molecules with the same atoms, but different arrangements of those atoms. For example, there are 355 isomers of C₁₂H₂₆ (a molecule containing 12 carbon atoms and 26 hydrogen atoms). So even though a narrow range of carbon number is present in gasoline, There may be as more than 500 different molecules involved.

A barrel of oil is 42 gallons, with a typical barrel providing about 19.5 gallons of gasoline, 9 gallons of fuel oil, and 4 gallons of jet fuel. The remainder is used in a wide variety of products, including grease, kerosene, bitumen (the binder in asphalt), crayons and plastics. Motor oils are about 90% base oil (the ‘motor oil’) you see in the chart above, and the other 10% are additives to decrease friction, increase viscosity, prevent corrosion and oxidation, etc.

Saturated and unsaturated fats are just as important for cars as they are for our bodies. (The general agreement as far as nomenclature is that fats are solid and oils are liquids.) Each carbon atom can make four bonds. Hydrogen can make just one. Saturated fats – like animal fats – have single bonds between carbon atoms, and single bonds between each carbon and hydrogen atom, as shown in the top part of the figure below.

Unsaturated fats (or oils) have a double bond between the carbon atoms and each double bond decreases by one the number of hydrogen atoms in the molecule. Unsaturated fats have fewer hydrogen atoms than saturated fats. If there’s one double bond, the fat is unsaturated, and if there is more than one double bond, the fat is poly-unsaturated.

Double bonds are more exposed than single bonds, making them more likely to react. A particular challenge is oxidation, which cleaves the carbon chain at double bonds. The extra reactivity of unsaturated fats means that the human body can break them down faster and easier. Unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are used more quickly in the body’s metabolism, while saturated fats hang around and clog up your arteries.

In your car’s engine, hanging around is what you want. Motor oils use saturated fats because they are more stable. You’ve probably never had motor oil go rancid on you, have you? Saturated fats stay in their fatty form far better than unsaturated fats. Saturated oils are good for your car, even if they are not so good for you. One of the problems with double bonds, though, is that they are much more likely
to oxidize, which cleaves the double bond and produces two shorter molecules, neither of which has as much protective ability as the original long-chain molecule. The propensity for oxidation increases with temperature, and engines get very hot.

The desirable properties of the oil come from the particular molecules that are present. Motor oils are usually somewhere around 16-20 carbons per molecule. It doesn’t really matter where the oil comes from: it can be separated out of crude oil or, in the case of G-Oil, it can come from animal fat.

G-Oil is made from beef tallow – tallow was historically used for candles, as it was cheaper than wax. Oil obtained from refining crude oil is obtained by separating out different components from the crude oil. Animal or plant fats offer some advantages in terms of processing because they contain high levels of triglycerides.

Triglyceride is a very large molecule composed of one glycerol molecule and three fatty acids.
The fatty acids are represented R1, R2 and R3 in the picture to the left. The triglycerides go through a process called transesterification, which frees the fatty acids from the glycerol. Remember learning about how the pilgrims made soap from animal fats and ash? This is exactly what they were doing. The glycerol is used in soap and the fatty acids that were left were used to make candles or other products. This is also the first step you would use to make biodiesel from fat.

It turns out that the fatty acids in beef tallow have very high proportions of carbon chains in the C16-C18 range, which is the target range for motor oil. Green Earth Technologies, the company making G-Oil, has a patent pending process that converts the fatty acids into the types of chains needed for motor oil applications.

You might wonder why they don’t use plant fats, and that’s just because the animal fats are closer to the right composition of molecules. Plant oils have a much larger fraction of unsaturated hydrocarbons. The G-Oil website points out that grape seed oil is rich (70-80%) in Omega-6, an 18-carbon chain with two double bonds. These molecules degrade much faster than those in the animal fats. The end message is that the plant fats are better for use by people and the animal fats are better for use by cars. Green Earth Technologies points out that the amount of beef tallow they use is a small percentage of what is already being produced as a by-product of meat processing.

The oil — and all of it’s additives that protect it from oxidation, ash production, etc. — are biodegradable, meaning that it breaks down within about a month when in contact with common environmental bacteria. Which means that, no, the oil will not biodegrade in your engine. I guess if you are a committed vegetarian, you might choose not to use this produce because it is animal-based, but other than that, this is pretty nifty idea.

Perhaps most importantly, you don’t have to sacrifice performance for being green. The oil was tested against a couple leading synthetic and crude-oil-based motor oils and G-Oil compares very favorably. The ALMS series believes that motorsports is a good platform in which to test things that eventually could appear in passenger cars, as is noted on the hauler set up of Drayson Racing (shown below). Lord Drayson, the co-owner of the team with his wife, is the UK’s Minister of Science and Innovation, a very cool guy who actually tries to explain what is going on in Science and Engineering to the public via twitter. I wonder what U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu drives…?

I haven’t explained the role of nanotechnology in lubrication: that will be coming in my next post because it turns out the solution is bigger than I originally thought!

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