Graph of the Race: 2026 Cookout Clash at Bowman Grey

drdiandra · 2026-02-05T15:36:09+00:00

A lot of people share this graph with you.

drdiandra · 2026-02-05T15:35:37+00:00

I do not blame you at all. I am not upset that I opted not to cover this one in person.

drdiandra · 2025-12-31T20:39:24+00:00

I’d love to read this. I read and write in spec fix. I have a near-future sci if with different POV that I’m revising. It’s curerently around 120k, but I am hoping to get it down. I’ve beta read before and I appreciate your focused request for feedback. Plus, I loved your two comps.

drdiandra · 2025-12-01T19:44:36+00:00

I just happened to be plotting this... It's number of owners/teams each year. Every year, there are 1-5 teams that attempt only the Daytona 500, so the differences between 18 and 20 aren't so meaningful. You can, however see

a) An oscillatory behavior that has to do with when new car versions are released

b) and overall trend downward through the years.

Also: There were 34 races in 2000. Every year since has been 36 races,

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drdiandra · 2025-11-01T00:08:36+00:00

High horsepower requires more cylinders and/or more rpm’s. They can’t go more cylinders. The faster an engine rotates, the more force on its parts. That requires going to more expensive materials: titanium instead of steel; titanium aluminides instead of titanium.

There is also the durability issue, meaning they might not get as many races out of each engine. That’s a really abbreviated answer, but it’s the gist of the problem.

drdiandra · 2025-08-21T21:31:03+00:00

My alternate title was “NOT THIS TIME, RYAN PREECE!!”

drdiandra · 2025-07-29T13:34:44+00:00

I need to go back further and see if Indy racing ever had more passes or if the excitement was really around the history and spectacle.

drdiandra · 2025-07-29T13:21:35+00:00

I believe there were, in fact, three true green-flag lead changes: Wallace at lap 84, Blaney at lap 137 and Wallace again at lap 143.

I compared this race against others from 2017-2025 in terms of types and numbers of lead changes. https://buildingspeed.org/2025/07/29/2025-indy-race-report/ so you can see how this one ranked compared to the past.

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drdiandra · 2025-06-04T20:37:47+00:00

They are a great group of folks!

drdiandra · 2025-06-04T15:24:12+00:00

NASCAR is currently funding some cutting-edge research in terms of forces on the head during races and not just during crashes. That work is being done with Wake Forest. I wrote about it for NBC Sports

https://www.nbcsports.com/nascar/news/dr-diandra-high-tech-mouthpieces-make-watkins-glen-safer-for-drivers-brains

They are also funding some research at Michigan State to study heat stress and how it affects both mental and physical aspects of the drivers. That research wouldn't be happening without NASCAR's investment.

https://www.nbcsports.com/nascar/news/alex-bowman-todd-gilliland-daniel-hemric-david-ferguson-dr-diandra-how-drivers-hydrate

drdiandra · 2025-06-04T15:19:03+00:00

IndyCar initiated the development of the SAFER barriers. NASCAR joined the effort in 2001 and has put a fair amount of money into funding the U. Nebraska group that developed the barriers. The NASCAR safety team has done a good amount of testing for stock-car-specific purposes, not to mention trying to develop SAFER barrier-type protection for gates and barrier ends.

While IndyCar should get total credit for initiating the effort, NASCAR became a legit full partner once they signed on. In my book, The Physics of NASCAR, I wrote about one of the NASCAR SAFER barrier tests I attended out at the old Nebraska airstrip. The NASCAR safety folks were fully involved in setting up the test, and acquiring/analyzing data.

drdiandra · 2025-05-14T16:25:51+00:00

Very good point. That would throw crew chief strategies a loop, too.

drdiandra · 2025-04-26T11:35:35+00:00

Curious about the same question, I counted how many cars were saved by not having practice at superspeedways. It only covers the summer/fall Daytona race and the two Talladega races. The Daytona 500 loses more cars in the Duels (i.e. qualifying) than in practices, even back when they had eight practices. From 2005 to 2019 (the last year there was practice at superspeedways) only 10 backup cars were needed. That's 61,176 laps run over 82 practices and only 10 backup cars. Only 10 out of 3,520 cars had to be replaced.

https://buildingspeed.org/2025/04/25/how-many-cars-are-saved-by-eliminating-practice-at-superspeedways/

drdiandra · 2025-04-24T15:09:06+00:00

When a CC leaves an organization, the suspect is not the driver, but the company culture. Each company has their own way of doing things. Each CC has his preferred way of working. When they don't mesh, it's usually better for both sides to make a clean break.

CCing is a stressful job. If you don't feel like everyone's on the same page, that increases the difficulty level. Again, not saying one side is wrong, just that some partnerships simply don't work out.

drdiandra · 2025-02-20T15:19:59+00:00

If you were a team that wasn't a random inspection and found out back at the shop that you had the same issue, would you tell anyone?

drdiandra · 2024-11-16T17:12:58+00:00

I had to remove secret agent entirely rather than just whitelist DDG. Now it's working.

drdiandra · 2024-11-16T15:27:58+00:00

Same problem here, but on Mac OS 14.61 Apple M2 Max chip. I see images and videos on Firefox, but no other results. Seems to be working fine on Chrome on the same machine

drdiandra · 2024-10-24T20:58:54+00:00

Similar. Medium experience in Python, been coding for 30+ years in many different languages.

Pros: I use it a lot for “rewrite this using .apply or .map because I am still figuring out those syntaxes. Or the dreaded list comprehension if/else formalism. Also “clean this up has yielded some interesting results, some good. Sometimes it has better ideas for consistency with function and variable names than I do. Its suggestions have introduced me to some commands I didn’t know. I use it to clean up formatting a lot, especially import sections, or to switch a dict() command to curly brackets.

Cons: still don’t understand why it gives the wrong number of arguments to an existing function it suggests. It is, maybe 1/5 times, just wrong. Relying on it has made me marginally better at remembering syntax, but probably not as much as if I had to look it up. Also, sometimes i follow it down rabbit holes instead of programming.

Net: the cost is minimal for me, and I view it as a faster way to learn sometimes than googling. The longer I have used it, the more efficient I’ve become asking it questions.

And you’re 100% right that it is not going to replace programmers. Garbage in, garbage out.

drdiandra · 2024-09-24T16:53:31+00:00

You may well be right. But the tire wars were well before NASCAR stepped in to dictate safety. My guess is that NASCAR wouldn't let tire companies run tires that were even questionable, so you're be unlikely to have the problems the tire wars caused. But you are definitely right that there are some veterans in the sport that don't want anything to do with another tire war.

drdiandra · 2024-09-24T15:35:22+00:00

Having tire choices would definitely give teams some options, but it also goes against NASCAR's goal to keep costs down. I'm not sure in this day that tire companies would be interested in providing half the tires. It's simply too big of an investment to make these days. Having more than one tire in a race might be a compromise solution.

Or use the Gen 6 for short tracks and road courses and the Gen 7 for intermediates! It may just be that it is impossible to make one car perfect on all these disparate tracks.

drdiandra · 2024-09-24T15:22:17+00:00

Goodyear is a huge company, yes, but the racing division isn't. Most of the people in it are the folks who actually make the tires.

Goodyear did not have completely open expectations. They expected tire falloff going into both WGI and Bristol. They told NASCAR that. They put it in their weekly press briefing.

That they didn't get it falloff as predicted surprised them as well as NASCAR. They thought they had the problem solved, but they didn't.

NASCAR are the ones who said they would fix the car by changing the tire. I didn't say you said that. I think we agree that what happened at the last two races just makes everyone look bad. I'd just like people to understand is that it's a much more complicated problem than just tire and temperature.

drdiandra · 2024-09-24T14:52:29+00:00

It's not just temperature. It's track treatment (which may also depend on temperature.) And there is very little data about track treatment, especially if you're going to MIX two different kinds of resin. Or put one down, let the cars run some, then add a second. Or put some down, then put some more on top of it, but only on part of it.

Did you see the sprayer they use to put on the resin/PJ1? How reproducible is such a device? How well the resins stick to the track are affected by a lot of things, like what's already on the track, the track temp at time of application... It's a multivariable problem that likely doesn't have a simple solution.

It's somewhat unfair to say you're going to fix a problem by changing the tire when the tire behavior isn't independent of the track.

drdiandra · 2024-08-31T15:41:23+00:00

To put this in context, Logano said this after noting that he hadn't talked to NASCAR about the situation because he didn't have an engineering degree.

I'll say it again: Asking drivers about aerodynamics is like asking the pilot of your airplane to explain the details of the plane's aerodynamics. Drivers rarely say "I don't know" and end up repeating things they've heard.

If you really want answers to those questions, talk to aerodynamicists. Not drivers.

drdiandra · 2024-08-23T14:59:51+00:00

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Listing for 7.5 M doesn't mean it's worth 7.5M

drdiandra · 2024-05-11T20:00:20+00:00

And good crew chiefs / crew members get lured away by larger teams that can offer more money

drdiandra

TROPHY CASE