Full Throttle

“Garçon, what is the soup de jure?”

“Well sir, the special this week as pictured on the menu at left, is the specialty of NASCAR Nation, at least temporarily, is Crab-Walk Soup de Jure.”

The master chef’s of NASCAR Nation, more often called the categories elite engineers, are fast coming to grips with the new car of today - and the news is not all good to hear some tell the tale.

A fresh spate of loose wheels during recent events has led not only to competitors losing out on potentially race winning track position but to the rule-makers possibly clamping down on the newest evolution of creative interpretation of rules that govern the cars configuration.

The newest generation of NASCAR’s racecar was devised to reduce costs by mandating slab-sided asymmetrical bodies to assist aerodynamics and reduce mega-bucks teams from producing specific aero packages for different types of tracks.

At least one team has started a trend.

The engineers have devised a way for the rear axle housing to have toe-in on the left side and toe-out in the right. This makes the nose of the car point to the left entering corners and shows up with the car visibly crabbing on the straights.

The crab-walk, which was first noticed at Darlington, is putting strain and additional side load on rear end housings, bearings, shafts and from outward appearances, a contributing factor as to why some teams having been experiencing loose wheels.

The phenomena became even more pronounced this past week at Lowes when the Penske Dodge of Sam Hornish Jr. apparently had, and reported, to exhibit an estimated 1 ^1/4 inches of toe angle on each side.

This led to the rather farcical sight of a collection of 800 horsepower racecars unable to be driven up the ramps for pre-race technical inspection.

The next problem facing NASCAR is what to do about it, or rather clarifying whether there is a rule that even covers the situation, if you listen to Series director John Darby you come away with more twisted thoughts than a Penske read axle housing.

Early on Darby had this to say: “They [complain] when we’ve got too many rules and then they want us to create more,” Darby said of teams in general. “The process is so simple. There are limits on how far they can go.”

Simple for him but not for those of us not privileged enough, or paid Tribute to, NASCAR to get our grubby little hands on The Mythical NASCAR Rulebook.

At the very least NASCAR needs to step-up and explain where the problem exists, assuming there is one.

Unless you’re one of the many whose foil hat is pulled too tight it’s reasonably safe to assume NASCAR inspectors have seen the problem, identified it as not being a rules infraction it and let it pass.

It’s much safer to conclude absence further evidence, Professor Diandra Leslie-Pelecky is spot on when she says many other factors can create NASCAR’s Crab-Walk Soup du Jure:

There are rules about how much you can move the trackbar, so there are obviously other things being done to induce yaw in the car. One possibility: The wheelbase (the distance between the front and rear wheels) can be 110″ plus or minus 1/2″. If you make the wheelbase 109.5″ on the left side and 110.5″ on the right side, you’ve gained an inch of asymmetry. There are a number of other places where you can make little changes and, when all the little changes are considered, they add up to a significant effect.

Never under estimate the ingenuity of what used to be backyard mechanics and now are sheepskin holding engineers with as much, or more smarts than the highfalutin’ brethren that ply their trade in the F1 Circus and they do it with what is essentially a brick.

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