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posted by martyb on Sunday March 22 2020, @07:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the need-something-to-broadcast-to-get-advertising-$$$ dept.

[Ed. note: More and more people are staying home as a result of quarantines and social distancing. Car customization was the high-tech platform for many years. Then came computers where nerds had a different target for things to tweak and optimize. Car racing has perhaps even more followers today than ever before. Given the technical background and underpinnings, and realizing people may be looking for something to do this weekend, I thought to give this story a try. Are there any Soylentils who have any racing experience? --martyb]

Shortly after the US entry into World War 2, President Roosevelt requested that professional baseball continue to be played during the war because of its importance to maintain the morale of the nation. NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed similar sentiment after the almost complete shutdown of professional sports due to the coronavirus outbreak. Formula 1 and NASCAR are already taking steps to resume, though with virtual races instead of cars physically on track.

Last weekend, iRacing and Podium organized the Replacements 100, which was streamed on multiple platforms including YouTube. The drivers included William Byron, whose success in iRacing helped him find the opportunity to drive real race cars, retired fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr., and current cup series drivers Bubba Wallace and Alex Bowman. The race was 100 laps at Atlanta Motor Speedway, which was set to host all three of NASCAR's national series last weekend before being postponed.

This weekend, NASCAR's national series were scheduled to race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but these races have also been postponed. Instead, NASCAR has started the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, a series of virtual races using iRacing that will include current drivers from all three of the national series. This weekend, the race will be at Homestead and will be televised by FOX Sports 1. The race will include 35 drivers including current Cup Series champion Kyle Busch and many other drivers from NASCAR's top series. The race commentators will be Mike Joy, Jeff Gordon, and Larry McReynolds, all of whom are commentators for Fox's regular NASCAR Cup Series broadcasts.

Formula 1 will also be live streaming a virtual Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend with two drivers representing each of F1's ten teams. This race will be run using the F1 2019 game and the level of difficulty for each driver will be adjusted based on their skill in virtual racing in order to produce a competitive race. This is in lieu of the postponed Bahrain Grand Prix, originally scheduled for this weekend. Although many of the regular F1 drivers will not be competing in this race, Nicholas Latifi will drive for Williams and Nico Hulkenberg will be returning to F1.

None of these races are points races in their respective series. And professional esports races are not new at all. However, it is novel that they are being used as stand-in events in the absence of being able to have teams physically present at the tracks. However, the use of commentators from the regular broadcasts, the number of drivers from NASCAR's top series, and the expectation that each of F1's teams will select two drivers will certainly draw the interest of fans who might not otherwise want to watch esports. In particular, Dale Jr. has a large following among NASCAR fans and his participation will likely increase fan interest in these virtual races.

As a fan, if NASCAR races continue to be postponed for an extended period of time, I'd like to see North Wilkesboro Speedway return in virtual races. The North Carolina short track last hosted a Cup Series race in 1996 and is now in deteriorating condition, much to the chagrin of many of NASCAR's older fans. It was one of NASCAR's oldest tracks and a part of the schedule for many decades, with the unique feature of the track being on a small incline. With the backing of Dale Jr., the track was cleaned and scanned for its addition to iRacing. Hopefully this historic track will return to NASCAR's schedule, even if only virtually.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @10:01PM (#974244)

    The constraints on engineering cut costs with the goal of allowing smaller teams with less resources to be more competitive. NASCAR and F1 both have a few large well-funded teams and a number of smaller teams. Even the larger teams have finite budgets, so if they have to spend more to achieve the same result, they might have less of an advantage than without any restrictions at all. F1 is starting to implement spending caps to impose more restrictions on the advantage for larger teams, especially Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull.

    Another solution is technical alliances. Go Fas Racing has a technical alliance with Stewart-Haas Racing. Leavine Family Racing has a similar alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing. Furniture Row Racing also had an alliance with Gibbs before that team went under. That certainly helps the competitive balance and gives smaller teams a better chance, sometimes with the agreement that the smaller team lets a junior driver for the larger team use one of their cars. That's why Christopher Bell drive for Gibbs in the Xfinity series but is now with Leavine Family Racing this year.

    F1 rules allow for similar arrangements between teams. The new teams around a decade ago like Caterham and Marussia weren't financially viable and folded, partly because they tried to develop their cars mostly in-house. They spent large sums of money but never managed to be particularly competitive, which would have allowed them to secure better sponsorship deals. Haas F1 has an extensive technical alliance with Ferrari, which allows Haas to reduce development costs. Haas was pretty competitive during the first couple of years in F1 for that reason. The agreement with Ferrari also resulted in Haas giving a spot to one of Ferrari's young drivers, Esteban Gutierrez. Haas has been more financially viable and the alliance stayed within the letter of F1 rules, but other teams and drivers objected loudly anyway.

    You're considerably more familiar with the engineering operations in NASCAR than I am. I know that for the Daytona and Talladega races, the three manufactuers (Ford, Chevy, and Toyota) request their drivers work together in larger groups than each of the teams. Would it be feasible to institute larger technical alliances, like between all of the Ford teams, all of the Chevy teams, and all of the Toyota teams, and then allow each of the manufacturers a bit more flexibility to be creative in the development of their cars? It would shift some of the development costs away from the teams while somewhat increasing competitive balance. And if Ford, Toyota, and Chevy take different approaches to developing their cars, it might also address the complaint about gen 5 and 6 cars that they look almost the same. Don't place significant limitations on Ford, Chevy, and Toyota on their development expenses, but place greater limits on what individual teams are able to do. Would this model be viable in NASCAR?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @11:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @11:17PM (#974254)

    > The constraints on engineering cut costs with the goal of allowing smaller teams with less resources to be more competitive.

    Yes and no. Sometimes this works, but coil binding is an example from a few years back where it didn't. NASCAR mandated a fairly high ride height for tech inspection, but the teams slowly worked out how to get the cars lower, for better aero (drag and/or downforce). The easy way to do this is with soft springs and rubber bump stops to keep the car from crashing metal to metal (or car-to-track). Most other kinds of racing allow rubber bump stops. However, NASCAR didn't allow rubber, and also required constant rate springs (constant spacing between coils). I believe NASCAR saw this as an area for development that would be difficult for smaller teams--it does require some knowledge of rubber properties (which are not stable like steel springs) and a fair bit of testing to get the car settled correctly on the stiff rubber "springs".

    The top teams still knew they wanted soft springs that would let the downforce (aero and banking) pull the car down close to the track. They also knew that when the coil springs bound (all the coils touch) this near-instant change to a *much* higher spring rate really upsets the car. So they invented springs that had constant coil spacing and were bent, like a banana (top and bottom ends of the coil not parallel). As the coils closed they touched on one side first, then there was a short distance of very steeply rising spring rate before the final coil binding. To make this work required springs made out of very fancy steel, like valve spring material, and the springs didn't last very long. The whole exercise (across the top teams) must have wasted millions of bucks.

    Eventually NASCAR found out that the springs were so expensive, so they changed the rules and allowed bump stops. Since it's a dumb way to make a variable rate spring I don't think anyone sells these "banana" springs anymore.

    > Would it be feasible to institute larger technical alliances,

    I can't speak for the different manufacturers, but one basic problem with this is that the low bucks teams only have a few engineers. If they were given all the tools and data used by the big teams with 25-50 engineers (or maybe more, I haven't kept up) they would be drinking from a firehose. I think it's more common for the manufacturers to work closely with a couple of big teams and then pass along the most important stuff to the smaller teams.