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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Applying Data Key To Success
NASCAR teams have severe testing restrictions...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 26, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Engineer Matt Borland (Left) speaks with Tony Stewart (Right) driver of the #14 Stewart Haas Chevrolet in the garage during testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)
Editor’s note: This is the third and final story about how Stewart-Haas Racing applies data collected during NASCAR Sprint Cup testing.

Part 1: Engineering Key To Tests

Part 2: SHR Puts Testing Data To Work

This week at Charlotte Motor Speedway, NASCAR Sprint Cup teams got a rare chance to spend virtually two full days testing at the venerable 1.5-mile track. With regular testing banned by NASCAR since the end of the 2008 season, this was a huge opportunity for teams to learn how their cars perform with spoilers on a high-speed track.

After the teams tested for two days, engineers gathered what they learned on the track and then input the data they had collected into machines called seven-post rigs, which in the shop are used to simulate the actual vertical movements of the car on the race track.

In the case of Chevrolet and Stewart-Haas Racing, one of its top teams, the engineers assembled all the data in what they call a “drive file,” which becomes the basis for their chassis setups.

“Instead of having to do it by trial and error when you go the racetrack, the seven-post gives you a huge notebook of information,” said Jim Kasprzak, GM Racing Chassis Engineer. “So, you use that information at the race track, along with (computer) simulation, wind tunnel data and everything else that you have at your disposal. But then the other piece of that is, you’ve gone to the race track, you’ve now got information from the race track, compared to the setups that you had on the seven-post.

“You now then correlate: How well did my information from the seven-post correlate at the race track?” said Kasprzak. “And so if there’s something you did at the race track that you hadn’t tried on the seven post or something that you tried at the race track that didn’t correlate with the seven post, you’ll probably take it back to the seven post and look at the stuff you ran that wasn’t in your notebook or the stuff that didn’t correlate, rerun that and try to continue to educate and get better and better correlations. So the process is just a continuous circle.”

But here’s the kicker: The learning cycle is perpetual, because nothing ever stays the same for the teams. To win requires constant innovation and improvement, not acceptance of the status quo.

“The variable that people don’t take into account is that the technology changes every week, and it’s not something that’s huge and noticeable, but things constantly get better,” said Darian Grubb, crew chief for Tony Stewart’s No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet Impala. “You’ve got engineers and dynos and wind tunnels and simulation programs and all that stuff that changes week to week.”

And since NASCAR’s testing policies are so restrictive, a key element of this week’s test was to learn as much as you could at Charlotte, because that will provide a baseline teams can use when setting cars up at similar tracks like Texas Motor Speedway, another 1.5-mile track.

“The crew chiefs and engineers on the teams are smart enough that they’ll look at the test from Charlotte and what was similar as far as setup, similar as far as trends,” said Kasprzak. “And ... they’ll go back to old notes and old notebooks. The teams that are good will very quickly recognize those trends and tune the car that way.”

Grubb concurs. “It’s knowing that feel, it’s finding that combination that works, and the next time you come back to that track you know what that feel is like and you know what you’re looking for in practice for it to be good in the race,” he said. “ ... You just know what that feel is in the car that you’re looking for, not necessarily to be good in Happy Hour as much as to be good for the race.”

Of course, the one factor in the is whole equation that most frustrates the engineers is tires. Goodyear has made great strides in its tire development in recent years — there’s nothing wrong with the new tires as such. But every time a new tire is introduced, the old setups become obsolete.

“They are the only thing you have between you and the race track,” said Kasprzak. “And any changes they do to the tires — and they’re constantly changing, tweaking compounds, constructions — you’re always dealing with that variable. And that’s the biggest variable. The tires dramatically change either how fast the car goes, the feel to the driver, what you have to do to the setup for a short run or a long run. ... It’s the biggest variable.

Part 1: Engineering Key To Tests

Part 2: SHR Puts Testing Data To Work

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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