apparently they are going to a digital dash and 2 way telemetry between the car and pit road:
http://www.nascar.com/en_us/news-media/articles/2015/9/4/nascar-digital-dash-q-and-a-darlington.html
that's just stupid: one of the things that i love about NASCAR is the "low tech" stuff- relying on the driver to tell the crew what is happening in the car and building a race strategy around that... pretty soon, all the driver will have to do is steer the car.. the one aspect of it that i have no problem with is having an in car alert when the yellow comes out.
the in car adjustable panhard bar that they came up with for this season was pushing the limits of what i think the level of tech in the cars should be.
i have no problem with the digital readout itself: if a driver prefers numbers instead of a needle pointing at numbers, then by all means use it. i just don't like the idea of the car being in constant 2 way contact with pit road. pretty soon they will probably get flappy paddle gear boxes- you know, because safety- and that's just too damn far down the rabbit hole for me..
As long as we are complaining about NASCAR let me just throw out that they need to go back to actual stock based cars (not that they ever well). Watching the low level circle track stuff is just so much more entertaining because of that.
there's a reason behind allowing 2 way telemetry. It's too easy to cheat and obtain it and nearly impossible to police if done correctly. A certain ALMS/Tudor GT class team, that shall remain nameless, has taken it a step further and been doing ECU recalibration in real-time for years. Nascar will do well with this, they'll feed the telemetry info in real time to fans following along via the site and mobile apps. It will be like you're on the pit box when seeing the info and listening to the scanner. Cool stuff.
With that being said, there's an element that's lost. A cool part of stock car racing has always been the need for the driver to be able to decipher what adjustments would best serve the car in the corners. They needed to feel it, determine the issue and correction and relay it to the team for execution. That will be lost and driver knowledge and understanding of how all the systems operate and work in conjunction with each other will be diminished. That being said, coming up in late models and short track racing, they'll all learn it to a degree, otherwise they'd never learn and know how to set up and adjust the car at those levels, get into a fast car and become fast themselves.
In reply to fiesta54:
everytime someone says this I have to ask, when you watch Tudor and WEC, do you enjoy watching GT classes only or do you follow LMP cars as well? because without the exotic looks of the LMP cars, a modern stock car is pretty much the same thing, only designed for ovals and without being designed for as much mechanical grip as possible (which follows the spirit and essence of what stock car racing is).
T.J.
UltimaDork
9/5/15 9:37 a.m.
Meh, doesn't bother me whether they implement it or not. I will still only have interest in the series when to head to the Glen or Sonoma. I find the ovals like watching rush hour traffic. They should just make the cars into drones and just put the drivers in for the last 10 laps.
Something something NASCAR was cool back when you could still buy body on frame stick axle carbureted V8 cars.
The genie's not out of the bottle. The bottle is gone and has been gone since the 80s.
Technology creep, why not use it cause we gots all this cool tech.
In reply to captdownshift:
I prefer the GT class. I like my race cars based off of street cars. I feel the same way about Trans Am, it lost it's appeal when it went to silhouette cars. Not that I was around back then.
I'm indifferent about tech in NASCAR.
Knurled wrote:
Something something NASCAR was cool back when you could still buy body on frame stick axle carbureted V8 cars.
The genie's not out of the bottle. The bottle is gone and has been gone since the 80s.
Exactly. I'm bothered by the intentional dumbing down of NASCAR racing while still calling the cars whatever is selling in the dealerships. I think it'd be cool if they raced whatever was being sold but without the artificial limitations. I.E. Race a Taurus but it has to use the actual body stamping and drive layout that is sold at the dealership. But allow virtually unlimited mods to make it fast. Then we'd see the 3.5 ecoboost dialed up to 11 and chassis development to match.
captdownshift wrote:
In reply to fiesta54:
everytime someone says this I have to ask, when you watch Tudor and WEC, do you enjoy watching GT classes only or do you follow LMP cars as well? because without the exotic looks of the LMP cars, a modern stock car is pretty much the same thing, only designed for ovals and without being designed for as much mechanical grip as possible (which follows the spirit and essence of what stock car racing is).
for me, I couldn't care less about the LMP classes … wish the broadcast would focus on the GT cars … but that's just me 
NASCAR is irrelevant at this point.
There is no tech coming out of it that isn't coming more readily from other Motorsport.
If you think of nascar as wrestling or football, then by all means, don't improve the car.
If you think of it as Motorsport, your definition is different than mine.
Nascars only reason for being is entertainment. I like my racing to have more meaning.
All the above is, obviously, my opinion.
In reply to captdownshift:
I enjoy almost all forms of Motorsports. I think some good points were made about how NASCAR already isn't at the cutting edge of new technology. So what is NASCAR doing that say Indy car isn't already doing? To me NASCAR's allure is the atmosphere that stems from shine running back in the day. I think the history is the coolest part about NASCAR and it is a shame to not really see it anymore.
Full disclosure I am 23 and never saw the history anywhere but tv.
NASCAR has a conundrum .
There are very few cars today that even come close to being a race car.
Back in the days with four thousand pound cars and 150 horsepower a showroom car could be raced.
Today, not so much. So they design a facsimile
In reply to fiesta54:
Nascar is lightyears ahead of Indy regarding the most important aspect in motorsports. Driver safety. They are proactive opposed to reactive and have been since Sr's passing. The COT was a big step and implementing roof flaps to keep cars on the ground when sliding backwards was a huge step in safety. Having seen another sanctioning body take into consider aero of cars when not going straight forward, Indy should've considered this on development of their current aero, which just finished it's second year of use. They didn't, they only looked at straight line downforce, shielding the tires and maximum straightaway speed for eye popping numbers. Not what happens when you have all that speed and turn sideways or backwards and what sort of lift is subjected to the chassis under these forces. Indy is balantantly irresponsible with this regard and deserves a boycott by fans, sponsors and drivers because of the disregard for the safety of the drivers and effects it has on the teams, volunteers, fans, friends and families. berkeley indycar, if they ran their series properly they'd make money and not cut corners in an attempt to chase every last dime at the expense of human life.
my issue with it- and the reason i started this thread- is because stock car racing has always been different than other forms of professional motorsports.. it has it's roots in the dirt ovals that are scattered around the country, and they are already probably the most highly refined and high tech "low tech" race cars on the planet. name me one other non open wheel race series on the planet that has the sustained speeds that those cars have on the big ovals..
i had no problem with going to fuel injection a few years ago- which probably actually saved money and made the smaller teams more competitive because they could spend the effort they spent on tuning caburetors somewhere else- but having 2 way real time telemetry just because they can and everyone else is already doing it is just one step too far. it just takes the driver and their relationship with the crew chief and crew farther out of the equation.
pretty soon, they will go to built in jacks and one big lug nut like open wheel cars and have 35 guys over the wall so they can brag about 3 second pit stops- but also, you know, for safety..
regarding using actual "stock" cars: no one in any "stock" racing class above the most entry level bomber classes at the local tracks has had anything resembling a truly "stock" car for decades now. they have been more or less tube chassis race cars since longer than the almost 41 years that i've been alive. yeah, sometimes they make them use "stock" frame rails or whatever, but there is nothing stock about the suspension mounting points or engine mounting locations once you go up a class or so from entry level at any track in the country, and the upper level NASCAR series are the ultimate incarnation of that style of racing.
they should consider forcing the race cars to run engines of the same design that they install in their production cars, but then you'd have teams whining because the OHC cars are faster than the OHV cars, or the turbo V6 guys have an unfair advantage over the NA V8 guys or whatever and they'd have to fight to find a way to make it even, so maybe staying with the good old reliable and easy to tech 358 cubic inch pushrod V8 is the way to go. plus, nothing sounds better when driven in anger in large packs than an 800hp naturally aspirated V8..
The primary reason NASCAR is allowing it is the teams (at least the ones with deep pockets) are already doing it via the publicly available fan view software. At least on the receiving side of the telemetry. NASCAR has mandated the sending of car data for use in the TV broadcast for a few years. We get to see it as speed, rpm, throttle, brake G's and other stuff on the TV broadcasts.
If you spend some time and MONEY on watching/logging what other teams (and your own team) are doing, you gather a lot of data. And data makes the professional motorsports world go round.
They will not be updating engine and chassis software on the fly, like some of the F1 teams do after running real time simulations in England and passing the updates around the world to the race track.
Derrick, I agree with most of what you say except I really don't see the telemetry thing being an issue. If they make it available for fans to see, don't you think the sanctioning body can monitor it too? I'm not saying that someone won't try to cheat, because we all know if you ain't cheat in', you ain't ravin' :D . I feel NASCAR is proactive in safety much more so than any other series. You guys have mentioned Indycar, but don't you think Formula 1 could use a lesson in safety? There has been a lot of talk recently about closed cockpits and I don't see why they don't close them up. I get tradition, I'm a stock car fan, but man, it sucks when your favorite driver is taken out by a spring to the head or the bottom of another car sliding over his cockpit. The teams also invest a lot of money in these guys, don't you think they should protect that investment? I realize things are much safer than back in the day and they have implemented a lot of other safety rules,( no refueling in F1, tethers for wheels). One last thing ,sorry I'm rambling, stock cars are no longer stock for a reason and having grown up in the days when the local late models started life on the showroom floor, I appreciate what NASCAR and other similar sanctioning bodies are trying to do, safety wise and entertainment wise. Thank you for letting me comment...
Iusedtobefast wrote:
There has been a lot of talk recently about closed cockpits and I don't see why they don't close them up. I get tradition, I'm a stock car fan, but man, it sucks when your favorite driver is taken out by a spring to the head or the bottom of another car sliding over his cockpit.
Unless you put a wider cockpit on the cars so there is room to access a door that opens sideways, the canopy is going to look like something from a jet fighter and will have to hinge up. Roll one on its side or roof and the driver will be trapped.
Personally I don't see the big deal with adding more technology to NASCAR but until they add more road races to the schedule and learn how to run them properly I will continue to not care about it.
NASCAR needs more road races and dirt ovals in the championship. Super speedway races should be an interesting sideshow. Right now the tracks don't seem to have any character when I occasionally catch the races on TV. They all look like the same oval.
If they did a full cup car dirt race at Eldora, I'd never miss it.
Hahahaha, NASCAR is SHOW BUSINESS.
May as well rant and rave about porn switching from film to tape (to online).
(remember 'Boogie Nights'?)
captdownshift wrote:
In reply to fiesta54:
everytime someone says this I have to ask, when you watch Tudor and WEC, do you enjoy watching GT classes only or do you follow LMP cars as well? because without the exotic looks of the LMP cars, a modern stock car is pretty much the same thing, only designed for ovals and without being designed for as much mechanical grip as possible (which follows the spirit and essence of what stock car racing is).
Honestly, when I watch Tudor and WEC I'm constantly annoyed that they don't show more GT cars, which are much more interesting to watch than the prototypes.
Really, for any kind of motorsport, the more "like real cars" the cars racing are, the more likely I'll be to watch it. NASCAR and Indy being on the end of "won't watch it by choice." F1 and V8 Supercars being the exception - mostly because of the tracks and racing style.
I agree irish. I work the nascar races more for the atmosphere than the actual racing. It's a lot of fun. They put on a really good show. But from a racing perspective, I like dirt tracks and road courses a lot more than the paved ovals.
It's crazy how many times I hear people complain about racing getting away from the stock formula and then I ask then what they thought of the last tudor race or PWC race or WEC race and they are like what? I think we have just as good of GT racing as anywhere on the planet. The problem is the overall attendance is not that large so it's hard to support. With that said....Can't wait for 2 weeks for the best day of racing in the US IMHO. :) Of course with the blancplan series coming to COTA with PWC next year, that'll be a lot of fun too.
