NBC Sports' Steve Letarte breaks down the aerodynamics and expected outcomes of testing a NASCAR Cup Series car inside a rolling-road wind tunnel.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 In racing worldwide and especially in NASCAR,
00:05 we hear a lot about aerodynamics and wind tunnel testing.
00:08 Well, welcome to a wind tunnel.
00:09 Windshear in Concord, North Carolina.
00:12 What makes Windshear special?
00:14 Every wind tunnel's different.
00:15 This is a rolling road wind tunnel.
00:17 So a wind tunnel is just like it sounds,
00:20 a tunnel of air, a tunnel of wind.
00:22 Here at Windshear, the air really moves in a circle.
00:25 Low speed in other areas, but here in the test section,
00:28 where the race car is, the air gets squeezed
00:30 into a Venturian, sped up to nearly 175 miles an hour.
00:35 When I talk about rolling road, what does that mean?
00:37 This silver platform right here, this is actually a belt,
00:40 a very thin steel belt that will move
00:43 much like the racetrack moves
00:44 as the car goes down a straightaway.
00:46 So while this car won't move, the tires will spin
00:49 and the ground below it will move.
00:51 That makes it as accurate as possible.
00:54 What's measured in a wind tunnel?
00:55 Well, all of the aerodynamic properties,
00:57 downforce, drag, side force,
01:00 everything that makes cars drive good,
01:02 drive bad, makes drivers happy, makes drivers disappointed.
01:05 How is it measured?
01:06 Well, it's complicated,
01:07 but the simple way to look at it is this.
01:09 You see this instrumentation right here?
01:11 This is measured to the front wheel,
01:12 so it can measure the loading on the car itself.
01:15 Other areas you don't see is underneath this belt
01:18 is a scale, kind of just like your bathroom scale,
01:21 just way fancier.
01:22 The more load on the car means more downforce.
01:25 The less load on the car means less downforce.
01:27 All of that information, the downforce, the numbers,
01:31 it's fed into here, the control room.
01:32 Inside the control room,
01:34 there's an operator of the wind tunnel
01:35 actually running the wind tunnel.
01:37 Engineers are crunching the numbers.
01:39 They're seeing if what they thought was going to happen
01:41 really happened.
01:42 Are they making gains?
01:43 Are they adding downforce?
01:44 Are they losing drag?
01:46 It can be just making sure the models are the same
01:48 when they bring a Ford, a Chevy, and a Toyota.
01:50 Wind tunnels have become a very important tool
01:53 in auto sports.