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(OT) NASCAR Question

NASCAR is running this weekend at Infinion Raceway, which is a road course. They (the announcers) are talking about "heavy Camber" on the left front. I get heavy camber for an oval course because all turns are the same way, left. But it seems to me that on a road course, they would want the camber to be balanced on both left and right sides.

The "problem" they're having is that the camber is so heavy that the corner of the tread is all they have on the ground, so under braking the left front tire locks up, which seems problematic to me.

There were a couple of cars that locked the left front, and the talk on the TV was that this was due to heavy camber.

How come they set heavy camber on one side at this particular race track? Or, am I missing something and they set heavy camber on both sides, but the example of brake lock just happened to be on the left-hand turns?

Reply to
Jeff Strickland
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"Heavy camber" is used on both sides for road courses. Among other factors, the amount of negative camber used depends on how tight the turns are. For a race that is run counterclockwise on an oval track, the right side may be set with more negative camber so that when the car is turning left and the vehicle weight is shifted to the right side, the tire contacts the pavement more squarely.

Conversely, the negative camber on the left side is designed so that the left side tire straightens out on right hand turns, increasing the tire's contact with the pavement. When turning left, the amount of negative camber on the left side increases even more, and if there is too much negative camber, there is even less tire contact with the pavement, which causes problems if the brakes are applied while the vehicle weight is shifted to the right side of the car.

Reply to
Ray O

I know what and why.

The part that threw me was that under braking, the left front tires were smoking because they locked up, the reason for the lock up was said to be caused by the heavy camber. There was never a lock up of the right side tire, so I was wondering why there would only be heavy camber on the left.

Maybe the part I was missing in the discussion was that the tires were smoking on the same turn all of the time, so they only talked about the camber on one side, when they really were discussing how camber is set on both sides, but the conditions that would make the tires lock on the other side don't exist on the track. For example, if the cars were going up hill and turning left at the top, but never went uphill and turned right, then the weight wold be thrown such that the left front tire would be light and have the brakes applied agressively, making that tire lock up on most of the cars. If the right side also had heavy camber, but the hard-right turns were at the bottom of a hill instead of the top, then the weight distribution would be such that the right side tires didn't lock up under braking.

Reply to
Jeff Strickland

I think you got the gist of the discussion ;-)

Reply to
Ray O

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