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Sprint Cup
CUP: Under The Hood - Setup
Getting the setup correct in the shop is one of the keys to going fast on Sunday...
“Under The Hood Presented by Quaker State” is a series of behind-the-scenes articles about Hendrick Motorsports.
Editor’s note: “Under The Hood Presented by Quaker State” is a series of behind-the-scenes looks at what Hendrick Motorsports does to remain at the front of the hyper-competitive world of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing. This week, Alan Gustafson, crew chief of the No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet driven by Mark Martin, talks about chassis setup.
NASCAR’s rulebook tightened considerably when the new-style Sprint Cup car debuted in 2007. Where teams use to have considerable latitude in building cars, that went out the window with the change in car design.
When what was then known as the Car of Tomorrow rolled out in ’07, what vanished was the freedom car builders had to contour fenders and roof lines, change the mounting points of the bodies and raise or lower the location of frame rails.
All of a sudden, creativity went on the window and precision became the order of the day. With all cars held to tight tolerances, making sure that all the variables in a car’s setup are correct when it leaves the shop is critical.
According to Alan Gustafson, crew chief of the No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet driven by Mark Martin, the key to winning begins at the race shop. Engineers use a host of research tools to determine what the car’s setup should be that week.
“The majority of the setup starts now from the development tools that we use,” says Gustafson. “We use our seven-post machine to do suspension analysis and then we’ll use the (computer) simulation program that we developed to do a lot of suspension analysis and aerodynamic analysis, because they all kind of tie together - the platform of the car you want to run. When you figure that stuff out, then you go to the hard nuts and bolts of the surface plate, the guys assembling the cars.”
What goes into a setup? Many, many variables — choices of shock absorbers, springs, sway bars, rear end housing, tire pressures, caster, camber and many more.
At Hendrick Motorsports, each of the crew chiefs gives his respective team members a list outlining everything that goes into that week’s setup. In the shop, the car is set up on the surface plate, an absolutely dead-level flat metal plate that allows the crew to prepare the car and ensure every measurement is accurate.
“NASCAR’s got a lot of rules now with wheelbase and strut width and rear-end offset left to right,” says Gustafson. “There are a lot of NASCAR’s parameters that we’ve got to meet that dictate a lot of the setup. There’s rules on maximum front camber now, where in the past, we didn’t have those rules. We have to work in those confines. So we’ll go through that setup on the surface plate at the shop.”
Setting the car up is neither quick, nor easy.
“It’s a pretty tedious process,” says Gustafson. “If we have different packages we want to try, it can take two to three days, and usually on average, it’s about a day.”
Gustafson counts on his team members to provide feedback while preparing Martin’s car.
“Fortunately for us, we’ve got really good guys on the surface plate. It’s hard — we do the best we can to get every fine detail worked out,” he says. “There’s a lot of variables involved. The surface plate guys are kind of the catch-alls. If something don’t make sense, if some instructions go against the directions they know we’re trying to accomplish, they’ll bring it to my attention and we’ll adjust it accordingly.
“Sometime it’s new stuff that we’ve never run into before, then you’ve got to work through it and you try and do as much design work and calculation as you can - go to the computer, or ‘the box,’ as I like to call it. We’ll work back and forth, making sure all that stuff works out correctly.”
Only when the car is right will it be loaded onto the No. 5 transporter and taken to the track.
And the fact that the team gets it right is why Martin had one of the best seasons of his career in 2009, winning five races and finishing second in points. It’s also one of the key reasons he and the team are fighting for a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
“We’re battling as hard as we can go,” says Martin. “I couldn’t be more proud of the rock that Alan Gustafson is providing this team and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to stay solid, keep fighting hard, work on our stuff and see if we can get in this thing.”
Read More... “Under The Hood Presented by Quaker State”
NASCAR’s rulebook tightened considerably when the new-style Sprint Cup car debuted in 2007. Where teams use to have considerable latitude in building cars, that went out the window with the change in car design.
When what was then known as the Car of Tomorrow rolled out in ’07, what vanished was the freedom car builders had to contour fenders and roof lines, change the mounting points of the bodies and raise or lower the location of frame rails.
All of a sudden, creativity went on the window and precision became the order of the day. With all cars held to tight tolerances, making sure that all the variables in a car’s setup are correct when it leaves the shop is critical.
According to Alan Gustafson, crew chief of the No. 5 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet driven by Mark Martin, the key to winning begins at the race shop. Engineers use a host of research tools to determine what the car’s setup should be that week.
“The majority of the setup starts now from the development tools that we use,” says Gustafson. “We use our seven-post machine to do suspension analysis and then we’ll use the (computer) simulation program that we developed to do a lot of suspension analysis and aerodynamic analysis, because they all kind of tie together - the platform of the car you want to run. When you figure that stuff out, then you go to the hard nuts and bolts of the surface plate, the guys assembling the cars.”
What goes into a setup? Many, many variables — choices of shock absorbers, springs, sway bars, rear end housing, tire pressures, caster, camber and many more.
At Hendrick Motorsports, each of the crew chiefs gives his respective team members a list outlining everything that goes into that week’s setup. In the shop, the car is set up on the surface plate, an absolutely dead-level flat metal plate that allows the crew to prepare the car and ensure every measurement is accurate.
“NASCAR’s got a lot of rules now with wheelbase and strut width and rear-end offset left to right,” says Gustafson. “There are a lot of NASCAR’s parameters that we’ve got to meet that dictate a lot of the setup. There’s rules on maximum front camber now, where in the past, we didn’t have those rules. We have to work in those confines. So we’ll go through that setup on the surface plate at the shop.”
Setting the car up is neither quick, nor easy.
“It’s a pretty tedious process,” says Gustafson. “If we have different packages we want to try, it can take two to three days, and usually on average, it’s about a day.”
Gustafson counts on his team members to provide feedback while preparing Martin’s car.
“Fortunately for us, we’ve got really good guys on the surface plate. It’s hard — we do the best we can to get every fine detail worked out,” he says. “There’s a lot of variables involved. The surface plate guys are kind of the catch-alls. If something don’t make sense, if some instructions go against the directions they know we’re trying to accomplish, they’ll bring it to my attention and we’ll adjust it accordingly.
“Sometime it’s new stuff that we’ve never run into before, then you’ve got to work through it and you try and do as much design work and calculation as you can - go to the computer, or ‘the box,’ as I like to call it. We’ll work back and forth, making sure all that stuff works out correctly.”
Only when the car is right will it be loaded onto the No. 5 transporter and taken to the track.
And the fact that the team gets it right is why Martin had one of the best seasons of his career in 2009, winning five races and finishing second in points. It’s also one of the key reasons he and the team are fighting for a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
“We’re battling as hard as we can go,” says Martin. “I couldn’t be more proud of the rock that Alan Gustafson is providing this team and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to stay solid, keep fighting hard, work on our stuff and see if we can get in this thing.”
Read More... “Under The Hood Presented by Quaker State”
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