Many NASCAR fans perceive the sport as being nearly 40 cars playing follow-the-leader around ovals and road or street courses. Those same fans cheer or boo — depending on the case — but don’t really get into or understand the nuances of the technical aspect of the sport. And there truly is a science involved.
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On the other hand, there is another group of fans who can’t get enough of learning what makes the sport tick from a technical point of view. They’re the kind of fans that driver and RFK Racing co-owner Brad Keselowski — one of the sport’s best ‘thinking man’s drivers’ — loves to explain what racing is really like.
On this week’s edition of RFK Racing’s “Backstretch Banter,” Keselowski spoke at length about how he prepares for the different nuances of Cup racing, particularly when just the slightest change can literally throw his entire game plan out of whack.
“Motorsports, not just limited to NASCAR, is different from other forms of sports in the sense that you have a significant amount of science behind it, and the science is variable,” Keselowski said. “So every week is like its own science experiment, and combine that with the ‘chaos theory’, can dramatically affect the outcome.”
Keselowski referenced last year’s spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway — the same venue NASCAR visits this weekend — as the perfect example of his “science is variable” theory.
“When we ran Bristol last year, there was a small difference in the tire on the car, and that small difference made the tires to where they could only run about 40-50 laps before they wore out and came apart,” the 2012 NASCAR Cup champion said.
“That completely changed all the dynamics of the race because the tires fell off, and instead of the pace being a 16-second lap, we were running 18-second laps.”
Two seconds may not seem like a lot in everyday life, but in NASCAR, two seconds can practically be a lifetime.
“All the science on the car, how we’re going to get around the track and even how I trained, was based on running 16-second lap times, when now we’re running 18-second lap times,” Keselowski said.
“Now the car is no longer in its optimization window, and you have to drive it differently – like there goes all my film study, all my simulator work, gone, it’s completely gone.
“This one small iteration on the tire just completely changed the entire game. I can’t think of any other sport, other than maybe a football game where it snows, where that’s the case, right?”
“Generally, traditional sports are in this really tight window of climate control and very limited variables, incredibly limited variables, and motorsports is not. I think that makes it so unique and makes the studying and the prep so much more difficult.”
It’s the Variables — and Adapting to Them — That Can Spell the Difference Between Success and Not
But when things like tire falloff and lap speeds wind up being dramatically different than what a driver, crew chief and team prepare for going into the race — even if they have a strong history of success at the same venue over the years — it’s not surprising if the outcome winds up being significantly worse than they hoped and planned for.
“The frustrating part of that is when you have a week where I really studied and prepared and have a good feel for what it takes, and then one of those small variables changes the entire thing,” Keselowski said.
“And I’m like I just wasted a week of my life, like I just wasted a week of studying and preparing, not one piece of it mattered. What am I doing?”
So, the next time you think NASCAR racing is primarily just about driving around in circles, and needing little skill or thinking other than to go fast, guys like Keselowski will show you that it’s more than just mashing the throttle, but rather it’s all about thinking, adapting, improvising and overcoming.
