NASCAR takes 11 engines from the top Sprint Cup teams for first major engine dyno test in over a year
By Mike Mulhern
mikemulhern.net
BROOKLYN, Mich.
NASCAR, under increasing pressure from teams and Detroit manufacturers to provide some better engine horsepower data, will do a major engine dyno test of motors from all the top Sprint Cup teams this week at the NASCAR R&D headquarters near Charlotte Motor Speedway, testing engines from Sunday's Michigan 400, won by Toyota's Brian Vickers.
NASCAR hasn't done such a major engine comparison for at least a year, and some in the sport have been pushing for several months for the sanctioning body to do a big test like this and provide data on whose engines have just what horsepower and torque.
Rick Hendrick's Chevy men have dominated the sport, and one question is is it a horsepower edge.
Whether NASCAR will provide the data from this week's test is unclear.
But these are the drivers whose Michigan engines are to be tested this week:
-- The Chevy engines from Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer and Juan Pablo Montoya.
-- the Toyota engines from winner Brian Vickers, David Reutimann and Denny Hamlin, representing the Red Bull team (TRD), the Michael Waltrip team (TRD also), and the Joe Gibbs team (engine boss Mark Cronquist).
-- the Dodge teams from Sam Hornish Jr. and Elliott Sadler, representing Roger Penske and Richard Petty.
-- And the Ford teams of Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle, representing the Roush-Yates operation.
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Mike, any idea/word how much
Mike, any idea/word how much time NASCAR might use these engines to test different fuel injector configurations?
Not yet, but that's a great
Not yet, but that's a great idea....and it is curious that just as nascar brings up the concept of FI it suddenly decides to do its first major engine test in over a year.
so mike... whats the
so mike...
whats the horsepower numbers ? does hendrick engines have ALL the power like you have suggested ? how did the winning toyota stack up ?
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That's item one for this
That's item one for this weekend at Atlanta. Guess I should have been up in Montreal checking it out.....if I could just find a cheap hotel up there race weekend...
The latest I'm hearing is that it's not necessarily engine horsepower but engine cooling: if you can keep the engine cool enough, you can make the front end more aerodynamic (more tape, fewer ducts, etc), and the car will turn better. So engine men are under the gun to make their engines either run cooler (like with higher pressure water circulation systems) or run better at higher temperatures.
But then like I was asking some engineers at Bristol -- isn't this whole thing like XXX-backwards? If the problem is aerodynamics (aero-push in traffic, yada-yada), why do we have to try and solve it with motors? If we have an aerodynamic problem, let's solve it with aerodynamics.
Of course my simply solution has fallen on deaf ears -- slow the damned cars down. We don't need to be running 210 mph into the first turn at California, for example. Why is that so hard to understand? Slower speeds mean better racing....