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Automakers use racing as engineering training ground
As the gas shortages of the '70s drift into history, automakers increase their visible involvement at racetracks around the globe.
What once was a covert activity has become organized, well-funded and lavishly marketed.
The reasons are many. General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimleChrysler Corp. share a desire to convert success on the track to success at the dea lership. Perhaps more vital, however, is the desire to expose engineers to the fast-paced, unforgiving racing world and use technology developed for motorsports in passenger vehicles and vice-versa.
Even in these days of giving suppliers more responsibility for components, manufacturers are keeping engine development close to the vest. The engine is the heart of any automobile on the road. In many cases, engines actually define their cars. And no vehicles are more defined by their powerplants than racing cars.
At first glance, race engines seem to have much in common with their more pedestrian cousins: Cranks and cams and four strokes of the piston between. But a closer look tells a deeper story.
Race engines cost exponentially more to design, perform echelons above and can go from CAD drawing to the dyno in a fraction of the time it takes passenger-car engines, all the while holding unbelievably tighter tolerances and spinning thousands of rpm faster.
Ford's Windsor engine plant will spit out close to a million Triton engines this year. At the same time, the company's motorsports division will distribute a handful by comparison: a dozen or so to each of its race teams and a smattering to the home race hobbyist.
And just because you won't find Dale Earnhardt's Chevrolet 358 NASCAR engine under the hood of any Monte Carlo in your neighborhood,...