Speed is King

Motorsports offers automakers a fast way to develop new technologies and quick-thinking engineers. This article explores how DaimlerChrysler, Ford, and General Motors approach motorsports as an engineering tool.

Impressive as is the speed at which racecars work their way around a track, perhaps even more awesome is the speed at which engineers deliver the speed machinery.

Take Dodge's upcoming return to the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit, for example. The DaimlerChrysler division gave itself only 500 days to pull a 10-car program together and put it on Daytona Speedway in February to open the 2001 season. By comparison, automakers until recently measured passenger vehicle development progress in yearsas in three or so.

True, it is not the fairest comparison, racecar and passenger vehicle engineering serving two completely different customers with different expectations. But the ability to react quickly and accurately is an essential quality for engineers in a sport that puts them to the ultimate test every two weeks, or, in NASCAR's case, almost every week.

It's a demanding pace that can wear engineers down, according to Paul Stanecki, Manager, Aerodynamics, Ford Racing Advanced Technology. "When they leave, a lot of them are happy to get back to their lives," he said. However, the long queue of Ford engineers waiting for a hitch in motorsports speaks to its potential for exhilaration and career advancement, Stanecki added.

The amount of energy engineers at Dodge Motorsports have spent on the Winston Cup debut to date can be measured in either megajoules or aspirins, but the result is that "We're exactly where we want to be at this point in time," said Bob Wildberger, Senior Manager-NASCAR Operations, Dodge Motorsports. "We'd been perspiring from the beginning of our 500-day launch program, but we're not sweating so much anymore. We'll get to Daytona in reasonably good shape. You can never get satisfied in racing, however."

How satisfying is motorsports participation for an automaker in terms of the bottom line? The payoff is difficult to quantify, either in terms of marketing or technology development, but automakers wouldn't be in it were nothing to be gained.

"There's just no reason not to be there," Wildberger said of NASCAR. "From a marketing standpoint, the Dodge brand has continued to grow and become the performance brand of the company. What better way to show it than to enter the premier motorsports venueand that's NASCAR."

In marketing, technology development, and other areas, processes developed in motorsports can be of value for an automaker or supplier's production operations, Wildberger believes.

"Technology transfer is as important as anything else in motorsports," he said. "It applies beyond engineering, but especially to engineering. The emphasis is on quickness. Motorsports requires quick decisions, but it also forces you to make a quality decision because if you don't make the right decision, you don't win the race."

Wildberger thinks it is a mind-set that the company would be wise to cultivate on the production side. "But in racing, you really force it," he said. "There's no hiding. At the end of a race, everyone knows where you finished."

About how Dodge will do in Winston Cup its first year back, Wildberger is "cautiously optimistic." So is Tim Culbertson, Program Manager - Dodge NASCAR Winston Cup Engineering. "We will do everything we can to make this racecar as good as it can be, and I think the results will follow," he said.

His job is to make sure the engineering is on target and on budgetwhich it is. His other challenge is fighting off his hands-on engineering instincts. "I'm an engineer, man," he said. "But I have to pull back."

Working side by side with engineers from the production side at DaimlerChrysler's Auburn Hills Technical Center, Culbertson also is the mechanism by which technology is transferred between motorsports and production. He calls technology transfer a two-way street, with the flow more heavily slanted from production to motorosports than vice versa. Quality processes is an example of a technology in which production can be of great help to motorsports, according to Culbertson. In the other direction, gluing lug nuts to wheel rims was a process technology developed about 10 years ago for fast tire changing during races; it was explored, but proved unsuccessful on the production side, he said.

In his experience, Culbertson believes the benefit of motorsports to production manifests mainly in people development, whereas the benefit of production to motorsports is balanced between product and process technologies. CATIA, rapid prototyping, advanced CMM, 3/8-scale tunnel testing, and high-speed valvetrain video are examples of production processes used in the Dodge Winston Cup program.

The engine and body of the Dodge Wintson Cup racecar are derived from production vehicles, according to Culbertson. The engine that will power the Dodge Intrepid RT in Winston Cup is based on a production V8 that has been modified several times for various racing purposes. (It's called an R5 blockR for racing and 5 for the fifth iteration.)

NASCAR regulations are strict. The engine must displace no more than than 5.7 L, it must be naturally aspirated, and it must have a pushrod valvetrain with one block and one cylinder head design. "And once the engine is certified, it's the one you must run with for the whole season," Culbertson said.

Opportunites for engine advantage lie in variations allowed with, among other things, the carburetor, manifolds, and camshafts, Culbertson said. The trick is getting the proper power and torque curves for each particular racetrack.

The engine is not necessarily the most important ingredient to a racecar's success, according to Culbertson. Equally important, in his view, are aerodynamics and chassis technologies. The key with aerodynamics, he noted, is striking a proper balance between drag and downforce, as well as a proper distribution of downforce front to rear.

"There tends to be this notion that NASCAR is low-tech, but that's wrong," Culbertson said. "The technology is not glamorous. It is in Formula 1. NASCAR doesn't allow some of those technologies, but that's not to say it isn't technical. In NASCAR engineering, it's trying to make metals harder so you can rev the engine higher, or making parts lighter while maintaining durability. This sort of engineering occurs every day in the production side of DaimlerChrysler.

"Although carburetors are considered low-tech, I can almost guarantee that the NASCAR carburetor is the finest-engineered carb in the world."

The first of Culbertson's two former racing series experiences involved advanced technology, "But I'm learning more about dynamics and kinematics and strength of materials than I ever learned from that experience," he said.

Be it CART, NASCAR, F1, or any other series, technology advances are foremost a tool for winning races, in the view of Ford's Stanecki. "Technology is only good if there's someone to catch it," he said, and if there is no production use for it, so be it.

Technology transfer from racing takes two main forms, according to Stanecki: training for engineers and improvements in processes.

"Ford racing positions typically last for two to three years," Stanecki said. "You bring them in, you infect them with this disease called racing, you subject them to the harsh realities of racing, then you send them back out to infect other people."

The Blue Box (crash sensors/data recorder) program has proved to be a good training ground. Stanecki said he usually assigns a "relatively new" engineer to the program, which involves working with the various CART teams to install crash data recording devices. "They have not failed me in any of the five years we've done this, and by the end of the season the engineer usually has progressed and matured so well that they're giving interviews to the press."

Aerodynamics is an area in which technology is advancing rapidly, according to Stanecki. He and other Ford engineers have developed a computer model that takes into account the impact of wheel spin on drag and downforce. "So now that process is sitting on a bookshelf" for potential future use on production vehicle design, he said. Similarly, racecar vehicle design for CART has evolved to the point that racecar drivers can withstand crash impacts of 100 g. Though there may be no immediate practical applications of such safety technologies to passenger cars, "we know it's do-able," Stanecki said.

Better performance by Ford's Jaguar racecar in F1 is more than do-able; it's mandatory, according to Stanecki. "We're not anywhere near where we want to be, but we're working hard to change that," he said in mid-August of Jaguar's F1 performance. "Ford has invested highly in F1. You can bet we'll improve.

"We have the technology to do it. Does Jaguar have all the people to do it? Probably not. If we really wanted to, we could buy F1, but that's not why Ford is in it; we're in it for the marketing and the technology transfer."

Though the more popular racing series in which General Motors participates NASCAR and IRL offer the most bang for the buck in terms of marketing and technology transfer payoff, the less popular racing series that are based more closely on production vehicles have value as well, according to Joe Negri, Group Manager of GM Road Racing and IRL.

The Motorola Cup racing series is an example. "We learn a lot in that series that we transfer back to the production groups," Negri said. "We break parts that don't break on productions cars but which are probably borderline. So we break them first, and the production guys can look at the stresses and other properties to make decisions about whether they need to beef them up."

Stabilitrak is an example of a specific technology GM used in racing prior to production vehicles. And a number of GM performance parts sold in the aftermarket are direct results of engineering work related to the Corvette involvement in the Motorola Cup, according to Negri.

Night Vision, the GM headlight system based on military thermal-imaging technology and first introduced on the 2000 Cadillac DeVille, saw its first racing application in the 24 Hours of Le Mans this summer. Cadillac, after a 50-year absence, made its return to the race this summer. None of the four Cadillac LMPS racecars finished better than 22nd, but a tremendous amount of the knowledge was gained, according to Negri. (The Corvettes at Le Mans finished in 10th and 11th place 3rd and 4th in class.)

Better news came out of the Indianapolis 500, where a GM engine crossed the finish line before any others for the fourth straight year.

Negri's philosophy is that motorsports should be used as a training tool for engineers. The transfer of specific technologies will naturally follow. The architecture for technology transfer is not formalized at GM, according to Negri. "The best technology transfer happens over lunch," he said.

Patrick Ponticel, Assistant Editor