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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Engineering Key To Tests
What Stewart-Haas Racing learns this week at Charlotte Motor Speedway will pay dividends all season long...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 24, 2010   Charlotte, NC
SHR’s engineering manager Patrick Stufflet goes through the data at Charlotte Motor Speedway. (Photo: Tom Jensen)
Editor’s note: This is the first in a multiple-part series going behind the scenes of NASCAR Sprint Cup testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

It’s fashionable in some circles to denigrate NASCAR Sprint Cup racing as low-tech. But in the garage stall of Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner/driver Tony Stewart at Charlotte Motor Speedway Wednesday morning, it’s obvious that simply isn’t true.

Charlotte NSCS Testing Speeds Afternoon Session Day 1

Charlotte NSCS Testing Speeds Morning Session Day 1

In fact, the crew in Stewart’s stall looks more like a gathering of the Geek Squad with their high-powered laptops than a bunch of grease monkeys with lug wrenches. At 8 a.m., it’s cool in the garage, but already half-a-dozen SHR engineers are huddled around their computers, furtively trying to make sense of all the data they gathered Tuesday and plot out what they’ll learn today.

Tuesday and Wednesday at the track are critical. NASCAR is allowing teams to test here, because the sanctioning body has decided to replace the controversial rear wing on Sprint Cup cars with a blade spoiler. Ostensibly, the two-day CMS test was implemented to help the teams figure out new chassis setups for the spoilers.

For the engineers, though, these two days are a treasure trove of data acquisition, a way to learn about the nuances of chassis and suspensions in ways they can no longer do since NASCAR banned testing at the end of 2008. And because CMS is a 1.5-mile track, what the teams learn here can be carried over to Texas, Atlanta, Chicagoland, Las Vegas, Homestead and other tracks of a similar size. Getting it right here will have a huge ripple effect on a team’s program.

“This is one of those rare opportunities to come to a race track and get two days of intensive testing on the race track,” said Jim Kasprzak, GM Racing Chassis Engineer, who is on site to help the GM teams this week. “As far as the spoiler goes, we’re trying to look at, ‘Well, what is different as far as the spoiler compared to the wing and how do we have to reconfigure the car, either from an aero standpoint or from a chassis setup standpoint?’ And try to get as much information and as much notes, as we go to other race tracks, particularly mile-and-a-halves, as to what we have to do at those tracks, compared to what we had to do with the wings.”

The role of GM and the team is highly synergistic, as it is with all the manufacturers who compete in the Cup Series. “The job of our race teams is to go racing and win races,” said Kasprzak. “So what we do is we develop the technology, both for test methods and analysis. And we can then take that to the teams and they can use that to improve what they’re doing on a week-to-week basis on their testing and improving what they take to the race track.”


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