NASCAR’s high-tech world: Leave any preconceptions behind for this deep-dive

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CHARLOTTE, North Carolina—For various reasons, this article is long overdue. We've looked at motorsport at Ars on many occasions, in many different forms. But a look through the archives finds barely a mention of NASCAR, admittedly an error on my part. Stock car racing is more popular in the US than any other motorsport, but it also has a reputation—or a stereotype—as a technology-free zone. But as anyone who follows the sport closely knows, there's little justification for that stereotype these days.

Although we had an invite to check out last year's season finale at Homestead in Miami, somehow that didn't feel like the right way to take a proper look at the sport today. I'm not usually one to turn down a day at the track, but it felt like the resulting article could have ended up as a piece of cultural tourism. It would be easy to trade in stereotypes about NASCAR fans—just like every other racing fan, but different and more numerous—and offhand remarks about the visceral impact of 40-odd stock cars blasting past in a pack at speeds often well north of 160mph (257km/h).

I'd rather leave that to the lifestyle publications; people come to Ars to read about technology, after all. So luckily, a better opportunity presented itself. Instead of a warm weekend away in late November, how about a trip to Charlotte in the off-season for a proper look behind the scenes? Calls were made, meetings were lined up, and so it was I found myself driving the 400 miles from Washington, DC, down to North Carolina, a surprisingly easy road trip thanks to a Cadillac CT6 equipped with Super Cruise. After a day spent talking to people throughout the sport—including NASCAR's technology development team, its R&D Center, and some chaps at Ford—I'm now reassessing my ideas about which motorsport series is the techiest of them all.

The NASCAR R&D center — NASCAR's R&D Center in Concord, North Carolina. Credit: NASCAR

It's about more than just race car technology

If you were to teleport from wherever it is you are now into the 8th floor of NASCAR's offices, it might be hard to know you were actually in downtown Charlotte as opposed to Silicon Valley. I'm not sure what I expected to find, but the tasteful decor immediately reminded me of some hip startup. That impression amplified when I stepped into the office of Nick Franza, NASCAR's senior manager of technology development. Franza's job is to think about how new tech can help the sport work more efficiently and engage with fans more effectively, whether that's through better IT infrastructure, augmented reality, or even something like making sure the cellphone networks don't wilt when 100,000 people turn up at a track to watch a race.

"Our objective in Tech Dev is to look at it holistically across all the different silos [within the organization] and then just make sure that the business systems of technology are available, and then we can make recommendations based upon them," Franza explained to me. Like many big businesses out there, NASCAR is a Microsoft shop. The sport has a close relationship with Redmond, as evidenced by its presence in Forza Motorsport, but the relationship runs a lot deeper than working with Turn 10.

A couple of years ago, Franza's group spearheaded NASCAR's move into the cloud with Office 365, and it participates in Microsoft's early adopter programs, currently helping iron the bugs out of Teams (a Slack competitor). Franza was particularly effusive about the Teams' Surface Hubs. "We were always fighting the video conference bug. How do you do video conferencing that's easy, and just works?" he said. "Skype was pretty good, but having these, you just walk in, hit the button, and off you go. The sound is great. The cameras are great. You can share content easily. You can whiteboard on it. I think that really is how the enterprise should do video conferencing moving forward."

Using technology to better enforce the rules

Of course, all of those details could apply to any enterprise. For a more NASCAR-specific example of how partnering with Microsoft helped, Franza referred to the new system for inspecting cars before and after each race. Like any racing league, the technical specifications of the cars are tightly controlled, be that the physical dimensions of the car, its suspension alignment, or whatever. As recently as three years ago, that was all paper-based. "It was literally a huge piece of paper with check boxes. You'd go through each inspection, you'd get a check or not, then that goes in the car, goes to the next inspection station," Franza said. "That data wasn't being captured in any way that you could analyze, or kind of make broad statements, or know in real time what's happening."

Now, the system is all done on Surface tablets. After canvassing the race officials—whose job it is to actually conduct those inspections—for input, the IT giant in Redmond helped NASCAR develop an officiating app to streamline the process. Since all the inspection data is immediately available, that makes it much easier for the officials to stay on top of the teams. (And that's obviously a good thing. I'm not saying all racing teams push the boundaries of the rules, but if there's a uniting feature throughout the various disciplines of motorsport, it's that everyone is looking for technical loopholes.)

"Now if we see repeated issues during inspection, we can send a bulletin out to the teams—'Hey, crew chiefs, we know that you're trying to cheat here, because we're seeing this in real time,'" Franza said. "'Knock it off. I can see you.'"

The changes made this year to the process of inspecting the cars is extremely cool. As mentioned, the size and shape of each car is tightly controlled. Actually measuring each car to make sure it was within spec used to involve a number of large aluminum templates that were physically placed on the cars. Additionally, each wheel had to be connected to a laser inspection system that measured the wheelbase, corner weights, and camber settings. As you might imagine, that process was fairly time consuming—about 10 minutes of lugging big bits of metal around each of the 40-odd cars racing on a given weekend to gather all that data. Now, the entire process takes less than half that time thanks to a new inspection system developed with a British firm, Hawk-Eye Innovations.

At the track, fans could be forgiven for missing the new inspection bay, which looks like an unremarkable black tent. But hidden away on the inside are eight projectors that cover the car with a pattern of dots and lines and 17 cameras to record those projections. That creates a 3D point cloud for comparison to CAD files provided by each manufacturer. As long as all the critical dimensions for metal surfaces are within 150 thousandths of an inch (3.81mm) and within 200 thousandths (5.08mm) for glass surfaces, everything is OK.

Later in my visit, I got a chance to see the optical scanning station in action at NASCAR's Tech Center. I watched as several teams were also getting up to speed with this new way of doing things. Josh Hamilton, senior manager for innovations communications at NASCAR, explained that even though optical scanning is a fair bit faster than the old method—maybe three to four minutes a car—the real benefit was in the way that data was so readily accessible to officials.

Seeing it in practice, it's a really elegant solution to the problem of tech inspection, although one that will probably remain unique to NASCAR. The physical homogeneity of its cars and lack of complex aerodynamic appendages like wings, dive planes, and barge boards lend themselves to scrutineering via this method. A mixed grid of sports cars or a paddock full of open-wheel cars probably wouldn’t mesh with it as well.

NASCAR stock cars at the Ford Performance tech center — Credit: Ford Performance

"The Optical Scanning Station has improved how we measure bodies at the race track, giving NASCAR the ability to better officiate the sport," said John Probst, NASCAR's managing director of Competition and Innovation. "The new technology allows NASCAR a paradigm shift from measuring several points of the body through templates to a full body scan. This advancement allows us to better officiate the shapes of bodies before they hit the track, further maintaining a level playing field."

In addition to its pre-race help, Hawk-Eye has also been responsible in recent years for the system that NASCAR uses to help officiate the pit lane during each race. It developed a camera-based system first used in tennis (then in a number of other ball sports) to track the position of the ball in relation to the court or pitch to aid umpires and referees. At NASCAR races, a similar array of cameras keeps tabs on the pit lane to ensure teams comply with rules that only allow five crew members to cross over the pit wall to change tires and refuel their cars.

"It's allowed us to pull an actual official out of harm's way; he's not standing on pit road anymore, or in these pit boxes," explained Robert Burg, NASCAR's director of software development. "We're trying to enforce rules more evenly, but it's quite a thing to see on the track. So, we're using video analytics and a lot more data-driven decision-making there."

"What's really cool with that is that it's not a replay system, so it's actually real-time officiating," added Franza. "Thinking back to a race at Bristol a couple of years ago, the guys on pit road were wearing all black. It's a night race, they've got black sneakers on, and the pit wall is painted black. So, they come in for a pit stop, and the system would say, 'He's over the wall too early.' We would pull the video up, zoom in, and see he was over the wall, but he wasn't touching."

The cars aren't as primitive as you think

Perhaps the least fair stereotype held by fans of other motorsport disciplines is that NASCAR's cars are primitive. There's a kernel of truth there. Until 2008, the sport did use leaded gasoline. It only replaced carburetors with fuel injection in 2012. And even today, car-to-pit telemetry is banned during a race. (In fact, the cars do run telemetry at the races, it's just that the data goes directly to the officials, not the teams.) Of course, you won't find insanely complex hybrid powertrains like those used by Formula 1 cars or Le Mans prototypes, either.

But NASCAR's current Gen-6 cars, as they're known, are no less optimized for the job they have to do than the carbon fiber creatures of those other series. Certainly, they are a world away from the road cars of Ford, Chevrolet, and Toyota that lend their names and some styling cues. Calling them "stock cars" seems very much a misnomer, however.

The Gen-6 car has its roots in 2008's Car of Tomorrow. Every team, regardless of the manufacturer it's affiliated with, uses an identical steel tube frame chassis. This is clad in a mix of carbon fiber (for the hood and front and rear fascias) and stamped steel body panels, and the cars (minus fuel and driver) weigh 3,200lbs (1,451kg). Safety is a high priority; aerodynamic flaps might reduce the cars' propensity to get airborne, but if you're going to race cars of this shape close together at the speeds they do, there will be accidents, and they will be violently energetic. In addition to the hefty roll cage and crash structures, the cars also feature impact-absorbing foam structures along each side, and the drivers sit toward the middle of the car, cocooned in carbon fiber seats that wrap around them.

Up front ahead of the roll cage is a 5.9L pushrod V8 that can be traced back to small block V8s from the 1950s. They use iron blocks and aluminum heads with two valves per cylinder, and now these vehicles feature fuel ignition systems and standard ECUs, supplied by McLaren Applied Technologies. (Yes, that McLaren.) In the past, the better-funded teams would bring a fresh engine to each race, but for this year that has changed.

At most tracks that the series visits, the engines now provide about 750hp (560kW) at 9,000rpm, although when they race at Daytona, Talladega, and Charlotte for the all-star race, that's choked back significantly through the use of restrictor plates that sap as much as 250hp (186kW). The use of restrictor plates is not universally popular, but when the alternative is several thousand pounds of car getting airborne at well over 200mph (320km/h) you can see the logic. No amount of catch fencing would prevent a car from tearing through the grandstands were that to happen.

The cars use four-speed manual transmissions—no paddle shifters here—and locking differentials. That's perfect for the oval races that make up the majority of the season, but it becomes a bit of a handful on the few occasions when NASCAR races at a road course.

Of course it's all about aero

As with most other top-level racing series, aerodynamic efficiency is a high priority. "[It] is very important for performance in NASCAR, and it's one of the main reasons I chose to work in the series," said Tommy Joseph, Aerodynamics Supervisor at Ford Performance. "Downforce, sideforce, and drag are all critical."

Before moving to Ford last year, Joseph worked in F1, with stints at Red Bull, Williams, Sauber, and Honda. We had a fascinating conversation, although one where I was frequently out of my depth—Joseph knew I had a PhD from Imperial College and may have assumed that meant I'd be familiar with the Navier-Stokes equations, but I went into cardiovascular pharmacology because it didn't involve that much physics.

Something I hadn't appreciated until then was just how great the aero loads are on a stock car lapping an oval. "NASCAR cornering speeds are higher than F1 on average—while an F1 car on an F1 circuit corners at speeds of 37mph (60km/h) to 150mph (250km/h), a Fusion stock car on a NASCAR circuit corners in the 170mph+ (280km/h+) range," Joseph noted. "The higher speeds are mainly due to the larger corner radius and the banking. Higher car speed means higher airspeed, and all the aerodynamic forces will increase with speed squared, resulting in quite large aero forces acting on the car."

To illustrate the difference, Joseph referred to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, home of the Spanish Grand Prix and a track where F1 cars race in a high downforce setting. "Imagine making a track by taking two Barcelona Turn 3s, sticking them together with some short straights, make it faster by adding banking, then surround it by walls, and you now have a typical NASCAR 1.5 mile oval," he explained. "F1 aerodynamicists were routinely challenged by corners such as Barcelona Turn 3, and NASCAR ovals present a similar challenge to NASCAR aerodynamicists."

Joseph noted F1 has a spectrum: very downforce-hungry tracks such as Monaco or Singapore on one end and very drag-sensitive tracks such as Monza on the other. "NASCAR by comparison is more extreme in both directions; on one side there are tracks where the car is almost always in a cornering/grip-limited state, and so these tracks are even more downforce-hungry than Monaco with an F1 car," he said. "On the other extreme, there are the superspeedway tracks where the throttle is at 100 percent for the entire lap. This presents a wide range of design challenges for NASCAR aerodynamicists."

A pack of 40-odd stock cars will rapidly churn up the air around the entire race track, and no F1 aerodynamicist has to contend with the fact that their car will often be in a pack like that for long durations. This situation complicates things as the air between each car is squeezed and sucked away by side drafts. There's also the fact that, unlike every other aero-dependent series I can think of, stock cars don't use flat trays to hide all the car's various bits and pieces from the airflow underneath a car. Joseph showed me one of the scale wind tunnel models that he and his team use; the underside with all its exposed components (the fuel tank, coolers, exhaust, and so on) must be a nightmare to deal with in computational fluid dynamics simulations.

As in F1, it becomes a constant battle between aerodynamicists like Joseph, trying to eek out gains wherever possible, and the officials who want to peg things back. For 2018, NASCAR reduced the level of downforce by around 12 percent to roughly 1,650lbs (750kg). Now, every car must use the same design of front splitter and radiator oil cooler, and NASCAR controls the rear springs and dampers, handing out sets to each team at every race weekend. Changes to the ride height rules at superspeedways have also been implemented to eliminate transient instabilities that could occur on corner entry, increasing the speed at which a car could become airborne by about 30mph (48km/h).

At the end of the day, it's all about the fans

After my time behind the scenes, if I had to single out one thing that NASCAR does head-and-shoulders better than any other race series, it would have to be the sport's commitment to its fans. Every racing series has to balance the competing demands of being a sport, being a platform for engineering and technology development, and providing good entertainment, and the emphasis at NASCAR is heavily weighted toward the last of those.

A lot of that now happens online, something the sport embraced relatively early. The key seems to have been a decision back in 2012 to stop relying on external partners to handle things and instead bring it in-house, according to Tim Clark, vice president of digital media at NASCAR. "We took control of the backend and started managing the platform in 2013," he said. "Last year, we took sales rights back from Turner and so now we are managing the platform end to end and managing the sales and partnerships of that as well."

Linear broadcasters like Fox and NBC still handle the TV stuff, but Clark's team, which occupies much of the eighth floor at NASCAR HQ, is in charge of Web content, second screen apps, and social media engagement. And, boy, do Clark and co. take that seriously.

"Through the website and the app you can watch in-car cameras, you can listen to in-car communications, driver to crew chief to spotter," Clark said. "From a fan immersion experience, I would put us against any other sport of the amount of access that we give to fans during live events. I think the optimization for mobile devices has been something that we've focused on. We broadcast anywhere from three to six in-car camera views every race. If you consider the size and scale of a NASCAR race, trying to consume that entire broadcast on a mobile device is a bit of a task. More and more people are consuming broadcast content on a mobile device, but for us I think the in-car camera views are perfect for mobile devices. It's a good condensed option for that device and that experience."

Cars racing at the 2018 Pennzoil 400 NASCAR race — Credit: Marc Sanchez/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Connected cars

The technical challenge involved in getting that content out of the cars and to the fans is not to be sniffed at—remember we're talking about pulling video feeds from cars racing in anger at high speeds. "Connectivity to these cars is very difficult at 200 miles an hour. So, unlike LeBron James, who is on a basketball court and can wear a FitBit, we can track them and give you that data in real time while our cars are in the middle of a corn field on a mile-and-a-half track," added Franza.

To make this possible, Franza notes that NASCAR has made some high-profile collaborations with companies like NASA or the biggest US telcos. "They go, 'Yeah, we can do this no problem. We do tanks in Afghanistan,'" Franza said. "They come in, and they fall over, because tanks aren't doing 200 miles an hour, and they're not that close together, and you don't have all this interference. You don't have 120,000 people in the stands. You don't have all these cell phones. So, if your technology works at our track with all of that, plus the heat, the vibration, the violence of our sport, it's going to work anywhere."

Failure is not really an option, given how vociferous fans can be if the delivery of that content chokes under pressure—something F1 has discovered this year. "People are not shy on social media when things go down. You know, one of the nuances of this world or this business is there are so many different form factors as you know. Someone is having trouble with live video on a Safari browser on a mobile device. That may be very specific to that exact platform," Clark told me. "I think that's always a challenge, but as we've evolved the fan-facing platform, we've also evolved the backend. This floor is humming on weekends with live event and incident managers, and QA and feed managers, and developers and that sort of thing."

When problems do occur today, Clark's team is now more able to handle them. "There's an open communication between us and the track during all of these live events, so we're able to identify and triage and QA and fix some of these things on the fly," he said. "One of the small but certainly impactful things that we've been able to evolve over the last five years is in 2013-2015; we would not release new code during live events. We just weren't comfortable in that environment. Now we do that a couple of times a year if there's an issue that we're able to identify, as opposed to saying, 'Well, we'll wait it out for the next three hours and then fix it post-event.'"

The NASCAR Fan and Media Engagement Center — Credit: NASCAR

The way NASCAR engages with its fans during a race was particularly illuminating. They're more active on social media than ever—race day engagement across social platforms has been up 38 percent compared to 2017, and NASCAR tailors exclusive content for each of the platforms it uses (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat). Much of that happens in the Fan and Media Engagement Center, which occupies a corner of the eighth floor at Charlotte. Imagine something like NORAD or NASA's Flight Control Room, but instead of radar feeds the wall of screens shows a mix of the race broadcast, social media streams, and data analytics. During each race, the staff crewing the center keeps close tabs on those social media firehoses, replying to questions, retweeting cool things people have posted from the tracks, and calming down the haters. It's a clever way to personalize a sport of this scale, and it's a setup I think other series would do well to adopt.

As the Cadillac and I supercruised our way back up to DC that night, I couldn't help myself in making comparisons between NASCAR and F1. Both have massive audiences and huge budgets; they are easily the two biggest series in racing. And yet, the perceptions of the two sports are so radically different. Much of that is probably due to the cars they race, but from everything I've now seen behind the scenes in both, it's clear perceptions don't necessarily match reality. In fact, F1 really could learn a lot from NASCAR when it comes to embracing the 21st century.

Listing image: NASCAR

Jonathan M. Gitlin Automotive Editor

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

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