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DISTRO 03.08.13 THE RACING LINE: EXPLORING NASCAR’S TECHNOLOGICAL DICHOTOMY
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS GRAYTHEN/NASCAR VIA GETTY IMAGES (SPEED)
SCOTT SPEED
DRIVER OF THE #95
FORD FUSION
MORE CAMERAS
“A technology that lets
you see more of the driver’s
view — more camera
angles, more ability to
see what’s going on inside
the car. It’d be cool
for the fans and it’d be
cool for us to be able to go
back and watch it after
the race.”
ROOM OF DOOM
This is another, more
scientific measurement
of the shape of the
car. Here, lasers scan
the car’s body and the
position of the wheels,
creating a millimeterperfect
measurement of
every surface.
team, where costs can exceed $400
million annually to make winged,
swoopy and entirely bespoke cars go
incredibly fast. That drastically lower
cost, combined with the incredible
popularity of the sport, means
there’s a huge amount of money to
be made racing these cars that are
charmingly still called “stock.”
Real-time telemetry at every
event has the potential to drastically
cut into those profits, both thanks to the expensive
hardware required to gather data and the flotilla of engineers
required to make sense of it all. Still, in our conversations
with many teams, that’s a Pandora’s box they are eager to
open. Steve Wickham is VP of chassis operations at Toyota
Racing Development USA. He has a strong background in
Formula One (and in souping up his kids’ scooters to make
them the envy of their friends), but he came over to NASCAR
for a new challenge.
“What we’re allowed is very limited on race weekends,”
Wickham said. “Telemetry is another evil for [NASCAR],
but it’s going to come soon.”