2012 Daytona 500: February 26, 1PM EST on Fox

[Hollycat]

I don't remember complaining, as I recall, I was quite exhuberant

[Sephex]

Uh huh. Suuuuuuure!

[edczxcvbnm]

I dislike the hell out of NASCAR. I like F1 and other racing where they are more complex with varying degrees of turns and people can build and tweak their cars in different ways to gain advantages. NASCAR takes all of that out and reduces it to trying to attain perfection on the course. The more perfect you take the same 2 turns on the oval the better you are. It is an exercise in precise repetition and that is how I view it.

While viewing it that way, to be that perfect still requires a crazy amount of skill to do it. But NASCAR eliminates everything I like about racing from the engineering, weather, off track recklessness and the different types of turns (it boils down to perfection in turning to an extent but with more than two type of turns per course and the speed up/slow down required I think it adds a ton more). I like the street courses and the uniqueness that comes with them.

[Mirage]

To be fair though, there are quite a few restrictions on how F1 cars can be built as well. There's still a bit more variety in F1 cars, however, because they usually need to perform well in a bigger variety of situations.

[Sephex]

I dislike the hell out of NASCAR. I like F1 and other racing where they are more complex with varying degrees of turns and people can build and tweak their cars in different ways to gain advantages. NASCAR takes all of that out and reduces it to trying to attain perfection on the course. The more perfect you take the same 2 turns on the oval the better you are. It is an exercise in precise repetition and that is how I view it.

While viewing it that way, to be that perfect still requires a crazy amount of skill to do it. But NASCAR eliminates everything I like about racing from the engineering, weather, off track recklessness and the different types of turns (it boils down to perfection in turning to an extent but with more than two type of turns per course and the speed up/slow down required I think it adds a ton more). I like the street courses and the uniqueness that comes with them.

For the record I also agree with my good buddy here. I do find F1 racing and the like much more exciting. I am just never watching TV when it is on!

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I like many forms of racing, but I also find it hard to become enthusiastic about a motor sport that just recently started allowing fuel injection.

[fire_of_avalon]

Carburetors are more fun.

if you think it's all about left turns then you obviously don't know what you're talking about. The whole point of this type a racing is to take a stock car, implement your engineering within a very strict set of parameters and race with careful planning, a good fuel plan, a lot of strategy and the ability to of pit teams to respond quickly and forcefully to unexpected mishaps. Stock. Car.

If you want to be an ass about it then all forms of racing, greyhounds, horses, people, etc. Are all about left turns and that's it.

[fire_of_avalon]

Carburetors are more fun.

if you think it's all about left turns then you obviously don't know what you're talking about. The whole point of this type a racing is to take a stock car, implement your engineering within a very strict set of parameters and race with careful planning, a good fuel plan, a lot of strategy and the ability to of pit teams to respond quickly and forcefully to unexpected mishaps. Stock. Car.

If you want to be an ass about it then all forms of racing, greyhounds, horses, people, etc. Are all about left turns and that's it.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Carburetors are more fun.

Their gradual acceptance of this "new" technology would indicate even they no longer agree with you.

[SuperMillionaire]

I dislike the hell out of NASCAR. I like F1 and other racing where they are more complex with varying degrees of turns and people can build and tweak their cars in different ways to gain advantages. NASCAR takes all of that out and reduces it to trying to attain perfection on the course. The more perfect you take the same 2 turns on the oval the better you are. It is an exercise in precise repetition and that is how I view it.

While viewing it that way, to be that perfect still requires a crazy amount of skill to do it. But NASCAR eliminates everything I like about racing from the engineering, weather, off track recklessness and the different types of turns (it boils down to perfection in turning to an extent but with more than two type of turns per course and the speed up/slow down required I think it adds a ton more). I like the street courses and the uniqueness that comes with them.

There are two road courses on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Circuit: Infineon Raceway in California, and Watkins Glen International Speedway in upstate New York. These two courses have both left and right turns (the latter of which has predominately right turns). The rest, however, are oval courses with left turns.

While I think that oval tracks are simpler to navigate, the different twists and turns of road courses certainly makes those courses more interesting, too. Daytona International Speedway is basically a "track within a track," if you will, because it has two layout configurations; while the Daytona 500 and other NASCAR events use the standard tri-oval design, other events such as the Rolex 24 use the road course design.

Carburetors are more fun.

if you think it's all about left turns then you obviously don't know what you're talking about. The whole point of this type a racing is to take a stock car, implement your engineering within a very strict set of parameters and race with careful planning, a good fuel plan, a lot of strategy and the ability to of pit teams to respond quickly and forcefully to unexpected mishaps. Stock. Car.

If you want to be an ass about it then all forms of racing, greyhounds, horses, people, etc. Are all about left turns and that's it.

You accidentally posted that message twice...

Anyway, there are many factors that determine the outcome of races in NASCAR, including pit road strategies.

And they actually had fuel injection for a very brief time back in the late 1950s, before switching back to carburetors.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

And they actually had fuel injection for a very brief time back in the late 1950s, before switching back to carburetors.

You could very well be correct. I'm not certain. With the time frame of the 1950's I can make two basic assumptions though.

Nascar in the 50's was a more true to form "stock car" auto sport. The brands being run hadn't seen nearly the level of streamline homologation of the cars that we see today. That means that if there were cars with fuel injection it was manufacturer specific.

That time frame also means that it was mechanical fuel injection, and there's a reason you don't see mechanical fuel injection today. It was finicky and unreliable.

The fuel injection offered on ALL modern cars (since sometime in the 1990's) is electronic fuel injection or "EFI". It's a much more complex and advanced system than either a carburetor or mechanical fuel injection. The various sensors, injectors, and other devices used with EFI allow for a much more tailored amount of fuel delivered across the cylinders of a motor, as oppose to the "spray and pray" method of traditional carburetors.

Bascially, comparing mechanical fuel injection to EFI is like comparing a mechanical wind up watch to a modern digital watch with several built in functions.

[SuperMillionaire]

NASCAR was first established in 1948, and ran trials along the Daytona Beach "sand and land" course that was on the beach for about ten years before the first Daytona 500 back in 1959.

At that time, yes, the fuel injection system that they used was mechanical, since electronic fuel injection didn't exist at the time. They decided to switch to carburetors circa late 1950s-early 1960s, and stuck with carburetors all the way until now, when they finally switched to electronic fuel injection, whereas the majority of regular street cars switched to electronic fuel injection about 30 years ago; the last street cars to use carburetors were made circa 1990, and since then, no other street cars have used carburetors anymore.