Shift to fuel injection a quantum leap for NASCAR

Shift to fuel injection a quantum leap for NASCAR

 

(October 17, 2011)

 CONCORD, N.C.—After Sprint Cup cars transition to electronic fuel injection next season, fans in the grandstands won’t be able to discern a difference in way the cars perform—or in the way they sound.

 Nevertheless, the move from traditional carbureted engines to fuel injection is one of the most important technical changes in the history of the sport.

 First, all the auto manufacturers are behind it, even though fuel injection will add to the cost of building each engine for the series. Offsetting the cost, however, is the benefit of bringing the cars on the racetrack closer to those that are sold in the showroom. In switching to fuel injection, NASCAR is embracing a technology that is common to every street car on the market.

 Sprint Cup drivers continued the process of testing and refining EFI on Monday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. NASCAR plans to roll out the new system for competition in time for the Feb. 26 Daytona 500.

 In place of a carburetor, EFI engines feature a throttle body that controls air flow. Where a carburetor mixes air and fuel, an EFI system injects fuel to each cylinder as needed, resulting in a more efficient fuel flow.

 The fuel injection system is run by an electronic control unit (ECU) that adds a level of sophistication previously unavailable to NASCAR teams. After practice or competition, NASCAR and teams can download data from the ECU that has the potential to provide after-the-fact lap-by-lap telemetry for analysis.

 As has been NASCAR’s custom in the past, teams will have no access to real-time telemetry, nor will they be able to change the tuning of the engines during competition.

 Driver Jeff Burton said he felt little difference in the performance of the fuel injection car and the carbureted car he drove in Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Charlotte.

 “It’s a minuscule change,” Burton said. “To leave the racetrack Saturday night and then come over here on Monday is really interesting, because you rarely get to do that when you’re testing major changes,” Burton said. “I drove into Turn 1 just like I did on Saturday night, throttled up just like I did on Saturday night, and nothing really felt all that different.

 “And I think that’s a good thing.”

 The first EFI test on a restrictor-plate track is scheduled for Thursday at Talladega. Burton is well aware that NASCAR and the teams have much to learn and many procedural decisions to make before Daytona.

 “When you have a major component change—and this is a big deal—when you do something like this, there’s a lot of things that will change between now and then,” Burton said. “The hard thing about it is, ‘What’s too much?’

 “This does open the box a bit to make (things) more complicated. What (NASCAR’s) struggle is going to be is, ‘Can a lower-funded team operate equally with a top-funded team as it relates to EFI?’ With a carburetor today, it’s a lot easier to do that, and that’s going to be the balance they’re going to have to strike.”

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service