NASCAR: Costs are Upwardly Mobile
There have been a number of articles in the last few weeks discussing the high costs of competing at the NEXTEL Cup level.
This past week Jack Roush expressed his concern GM’s introduction of its first engine expressly designed for NASCAR competition holds the potential to start an arms race of sorts and force the purses open at Ford, Toyota and Dodge.
It’s also no secret the phase in of the CORN has resulted in higher costs due to extra engineers and fab shop personnel required to build and maintain two totally different cars.
The days of the shade tree mechanic are long gone, today if you want to run fast you have to spend fast.
Now take a gander at the image above, it’s the latest big ticket item. Haas Racing announced several months ago their intentions to build a wind tunnel. They’ve succeeded in building the Frankenstein’s Monster of wind tunnels. (h/t Jalopnik)
Haas in conjunction with Jacobs Engineering has created the first rolling road testing facility in the United States known as WindShear Inc. The one-millimeter thick continuous steel belt will roll at over 180mph, and features sensors under the bed that can take readings at each wheel. At top speed the wind tunnel fan will circulate 2.85 million cubic feet of air per minute! The facility will be available for rental to motorsports teams and manufacturers when it opens later this year. And yes, that’s a genuine actual-size race car up on the rollers.
Wrap your skull around that for a second.
Steel belts whipping around at 180mph (with 3400lbs of car on it), and wind whizzing over the whole contraption at the same 180mph!
I’ll give the first volunteer to stand in front of it 5 bucks. (to be passed on to your heirs in case the unforeseen occurs)
I don’t have the faintest idea what this “thing” costs but I do know F1 Honda recently built and opened a wind (only) tunnel in Europe at an estimate cost of
Wow.
You know, this just proves the theory (yet again) that when NASCAR blocks an avenue of spending, teams find other areas to use not. Not to build this behemoth contraption, but in terms of teams being able to use it when it’s opened.
There’s little doubt in that reality Luke.
Evernham and his recent move to using robotics to build, at least for the present, small parts is another example and a direct result of the introduction of the Cot.
Ray admitted the machinery would eventually allow a cut in the number of his his fab shop employees but they would only be moved to other areas of the operation like the R & D dept.
In a roundabout way this is also an example why the pie-in-the-sky sellers like Petty and others pushing the franchising tripe are far, far out to lunch.
A “Roush franchise” will always have more to resources win with than a “R. Gordon franchise,” or a “BAM racing franchise.”
I think that assembly will be installed below the floor of the new wind tunnel, which is probably still under construction.
Is that NA$Car’$ version of H.A.A.R.P.?
Scary.