NASCAR and the "Car of Tomorrow"

On Sunday, February 18, 2007, the fourty ninth Daytona 500 took place, revealing slightly altered cars. Aerodynamics is important to stock car, jungle, and desert racing because it makes you faster, right? Probably not because the faster you go, the more air friction works against you. In racing, there are three D's: drag, downforce, and drafting. There are two types of drag: friction drag and pressure drag. Friction drag is due to the wind breaking over the cars surface. Pressure friction, however, is from the low pressure wake coming from the back of the car and sucks it backwards. Teams make tiny adjustments to make air flow smoothly, therefore reducing friction and pressure. NASCAR drivers say they need more downforce. Downforce is the " negative lift" that makes you go faster on hairpin turns. The physics for this is pretty much the same for an airplane wing, except backwards. Drafting, the third and final "D", the most common situation for drafting is when the lead car blocks much of the incoming wind, reducing the friction drag for a trailing car. This year, NASCAR will allow the " Car of tomorrow" in certain races, but which, are not known... yet. The design is primarily meant to improve the saftey, but it also alters the way air flows over the car. For more information on this, go to http://www.livescience.com/technology/070215_nascar_aero.html