Techniques trickle-down

Tire development through track testing has been the biggest hurdle for teams with the new CoT. As a result, most teams have gone digital, using computer simulation instead. » More Photos

Formula 1 techniques are not just limited to car development. The very methods of working have also been studied by some teams. “Our teams work well with us,” said Darian Grubb. “Any time we go testing, the car comes directly back to the seven-post rig and the guys are good about not touching the car at all. They load it, bring it back and unload it and we do the track profiling. A few years ago we couldn't do that as we didn't have a rig in house so a lot of times we wouldn't have the exact car that logged the data. Now, any time a test car hits the racetrack it comes directly to us, so we get the best drive file we can.”

“We do a good job of managing engineering resources,” said one crew chief. “Our design department, for example,

is very small compared to a Formula 1 team. I went to Europe last winter to look at the way they work and the differences are amazing. The design group we have works on projects that encompass all four teams and even with our nationwide series team the workload is spread and we have the freedom to do what we want to do. In F1 everyone works in a little niche.”

Much of this method may be due to the smaller budgets. Even the largest Cup teams only operate on around a quarter of the budget of a midfield Grand Prix team. But as the budgets increase, so does the technology, and you’ll hear more and more European accents in Mooresville these days...

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