I didn't see this coming.

NASCAR pondering move to fuel injection - ESPN

 

I see this offering up NASCAR the same fate as the former ASA series.

The sealed LS1 package that ASA ran seemed like a great idea at first. The teams were supposed to be issued ECMs which they were not allowed to tamper with but, to no ones surprise, the bigger teams always ended up with tuned ECMs and in some instances got away with it for quite a while. There were many reasons this series went under, but the lack of true competition was definitely a contributing factor.

I believe that fuel injection is a far superior technology to carburetion, but it's going to be a alot harder to keep everyone on the same playing field IMO. It's realitivly easy to tear a carburetor down and check all the components as opposed to checking lines of code in an ECM to make sure NOTHING has been changed. With the money that the top teams pour into R&D and engineering it wouldn't be a stretch to say they would find a way to cheat the system even more so than they do now.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.

 

i will never understadn nascar rules. it seems to me that there should be a set of guidelines on what the cars must be. maybe withing a couple liters or cc's of each other in size, some kind of weight standard, and obviously saftey regulations, but the rest should be up to the team. it wouldn't take long for everone to be running similar setups and it would be a good competition. i mean why shouldn't they be aloud to tamper with the ecm?

 

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I would agree with you...I would love to see nascar adopt a rulebook similar to many road racing series in which a lot of asects of the car are left up to the manufacturers/teams themselves. I was just saying with the way their rulebook reads now and all the cars being clones of eachother, fuel injection just opens up another "grey area."

 

Formula 1 runs FI cars, has for quite a while. They have ways of checking and monitoring ECU set-ups.There was a big scuffle a few years back about acceptable levels of traction control. Ferrari actually launch control, turns out it was a rules loop hole. NASCAR has only to get with them as to how its done.

However on the note of NASCAR...it stopped being "stock car" racing when they were running cars that had no relation to the ones in the showroom. I mean come on...the NASCAR Taurus was a front drive v8 2 door styled body, while the real car was a front drive v6 4 door. NASCAR stopped being stock car racing somewher in the 70s or 80s.

That and driving in circles for hours just sucks.

 

Say what you will about NASCAR but it's the only pure driver racing going on among any major race series'. Cup cars have no ABS, no TC, no AS, no launch, no drive by wire (which will probably come with FI) and a standard H-pattern 4-speed. I don't care if cup cars are close to stock or not, I like that driver skill is the marquee.

This sentence is just plain ridiculous.

 

nascar is very unique racing, i love the standard and its ALL based on the driver, his team/manager, and at this kinda close races, pit crew speeds mean alot, and im sure its still a intense exprience everytime you get in that car, so with that being said whats wrong with nascar?

now watching it sucks.... but drag racing isnt always to fun to watch and just stand there...

 

Completely agree. NASCAR is spec racing. Driver skill shines along with a good setup.

The reason these cars use older technology is because it is cheaper to build a car. You start letting these guys use whatever engine size they want, drivetrain, etc. and it will drive the costs of entering the series through the roof. Then it wont be spec racing any more, which will turn it into another F1 where the team with the highest R&D spending will win every race easily.

 

Real stock car racing is Touring Car racing.

 

It's about time they ditch the stone age technology and start racing with something relevant to car actually on the road today.... not that I'm gonna start watching nascar now though.