With the COT, technology replaces driver
Quote selected text Published November 27th, 2007 in NASCAR News
If you’re familiar with the 1980s Steely Dan song “Glamor Profession,” you might recall the lyric, “We’ll make some calls from my car.”
If you listen to Roush Fenway Racing team owner Jack Roush, however, that’s something his NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers won’t be doing next year.
With the car of tomorrow being the only race car available for use in NASCAR’s top series next year, technology will take on an even bigger role in determining race set-ups. Driver feedback about the handling of the cars remains important, but Roush says the days of taking a driver’s suggestions on how to fix a problem are gone.
“They can’t make calls from the car,” Roush said last week.
In the past, with the car that is now obsolete, Roush Fenway drivers Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards or Jamie McMurray might make recommendations for adjustments based on what they felt the car doing on the track. Now, Biffle concedes, computer simulations and the seven-post shaker rig (a machine that simulates suspension dynamics) are far more reliable in determining what a race car needs.
“Some people may not know it, but these COT cars are all about engineering and computers and gadgets to make them go,” Biffle said in mid-October. “You still have to have a good driver, but I can’t pick a spring, a sway bar or nothing. We got rained out in Loudon (N.H.), and we called a guy in Michigan who’s got a ’sim’ program to find out what front sway bar we’re going to race.
“I feel like we’re [Formula One] racing. Whatever the computer says, whatever the seven-post shaker rig says is the best set of shocks, by God, it’s the best set of shocks - period. I’ve only found a couple of times where I’ve found a shock a little bit better than what the seven-post said, but I can’t beat it.”
Roush says the heavy emphasis on technology flies in the face of what his drivers would like to do from the cockpit.
“What Greg wants to do, what I would want to do, what Matt wants to do and what [former Roush driver] Mark [Martin] wanted to do was to sit in the car and say, ‘All right. This thing is loose in, so put some more spring in the right rear; put some more load in the right rear,’” Roush said.
“Or, ‘It doesn’t turn in the middle, so I want to go down an eighth on bar. [With the COT], the driver can’t make that determination. What the driver needs to do - given all the data and all the support the engineering people bring - what the driver needs to do today is say, ‘OK, my worst problem is I’m loose in, my worst problem is it won’t turn in the middle, my worst problem is I’m loose off,’ and let the engineers go back and in four- or five-dimensional space decide to move some weight, change the shock, change the bar and change the spring.
“Myself and all the drivers I know think two- or three-dimensionally. They certainly can’t think four- or five-dimensionally. They can’t go back and figure what the net effect will be of making the four changes that need to be made at the time. That has taken it out of the hands of the driver, not from the point of view of providing the information that’s required, but from making the determination of what to do.”
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And this is the reason why Roush’s COT program wasnt that good. He has no idea what he is doing. And if he feels its like F1, then NASCAR should search his car every race for traction control and all that crap the F1 has on their cars that take away from the driving.
Whats next ? The computer says put in a little wedge and drop 1/2 Lb. in right rear Oh and loose the driver as he is not necessary any more.
The computer can drive better as well as fix its self in the process. As in F1 it will be in NASCAR the car is faster,more responsive and flat out better than any driver can drive it…
It is now Apple VS Mac all over…
We may as well create another championship category for the damn computers then! Take away more and more from the drivers, but pay them the same if not more every year. And still award them the championships. That’s crazy. As a driver, I want all the rewards of being a successful racer fairly. I don’t want computers and crap helping me out, at least not at the level it’s being done in Cup. Of course, to some extent, having the computers help with some of the work is good, but when you start taking away a drivers ability to make a decision or suggestion about the cars handling during a race, well, that’s just stupid. I don’t know what else to say, it’s just one more thing to drive me further away from NASCAR. I just don’t understand it, it’s a damn shame.
Whatever. It has been frogressing toward this for a long time.
Where does everybody see that it says anything about the cars having computers?
The reference to a computer in the article is talking about a sim racing game, and/or the numerous rigs they have been using for years in the shops.
Why bust Jack for stating the obvivious? It just shows the hatred for him by you all. If you’re gonna point fingers why not look toward the champions team this year and his organization? Lord knows Hendrick has dealt illegal deals before…check his courtroom history. It’s his greed for money that has driven the competition to chase his $$ spending to stay competitve. Why do you think RCR isn’t as comptetive as he was in the 80’s? It’s because he was one of the first teams to have a multi million dollar sponsor in Goodwrench. Lord knows it wasn’t the talent behind the wheel as much as the monet being spent to make his cars better.
What Roush is saying is that the teams with the most engineers and technology resources will have a huge advantage over the smaller teams EVENTHOUGH Nascar tryed to say the COT was going to help the smaller budget teams catch up. Looks like to me Hendrick with around 600 employees has the advantage on the COT (and it showed this year) and then RCR , Evernham , Roush . DEI , etc. will catch up next and the small teams like BAM , Robby Gordon Motorsports , Wood Bros. , etc. will struggle to keep up. Is this NASA or Nascar? If the drivers cant help troubleshoot thier cars , then why practice? Set them up in the shop and unload them and race.
The drivers can help trouble shoot their cars, I think Jack is just trying to come up with an excuse in case they don’t do good. Kinda like how you always hear a Roush driver complain about something being wrong with their car, during the race, but when they win or finish well they say “This car was perfect there was nothing wrong with it”
In all forms of racing from 1/4 midgets to FIA/FIM Car and Motorcycle racing no matter what the rules the teams with the biggest budgets and the most resources always win.
Ask any race car builder how much it cost for a car and I guarantee they’ll say “How fast do you want to go?”
Fisha, are you the same Fisha on teh EA boards who is also a nr2003 fanatic aswell?
yeah.. but I wouldn’t say I’m a Fanatic
NO COMENT,don’t understand all this cabash.
Hey Fisha695. this is why no one is watching nascar anymore. they are taking away the best things that nascar has to offer, to let the driver say what they want done to the car and how it looks. (like take off that wing and change the front end) Does anything thing of the drivers driving the car of what they think or want. i mean really this car is meant for every one to have a chance to win a race. but now you need money to win or to get ahead of the person in front of you. you will find out when nascar rating drop even lower next year,and the CEO start losing money. sad sad sad sad sad.
This is not a case of “them” taking anything away.
With the old car, everyone knew the dynamics of every part of the car, inside and out. All the engineers worked on the same style of car from ARCA to Busch/Nationwide to Cup. All the drivers drove those same style of cars all the way through.
Teams and drivers all did things the slow way (by hand calculations and by feel) to find the optimum set-up after decades of testing the old car. Now they’ve been thrown in the deep-end and have to engineer and develop this new car. Since they are far from the optimum set-up on any given track, they need to use computers and 7-post shaker rigs to simulate everything that is needed.
Simply put, the only way to optimize these cars without taking decades to do so is to drop the big bucks on fancy computers and expensive test equipment like wind-tunnels and 7-post shaker rigs.