The Science of Speed

Chicken Soup for the Soul: NASCAR

BY: Dwight Drum

While waiting for my first ride in a two-seater Richard Petty Driving Experience (RPDE) stock car with NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Denny Hamlin during media day at Disney World several years ago, I chatted with employees as others completed their two-lap tour at 140 mph. I was curious what most first-time ride-along participants had to say about their experience.

I was definitely on the right track, and this one wasn't asphalt. The RPDE employees all agreed the most common statement right out of the cockpit was, "I had no idea it was like that!"

One media colleague in queue for her ride commented that the cars didn't look like they were going very fast. The one-mile track at Disney limits high speeds, but hitting 130-plus was common for skilled drivers.

Before my turn came up the media colleague who thought the cars weren't going that fast got out of the car after her ride and said, "Wow!"

As I'm a photographer and reporter, I had to get out permission from the driver to take my camera with me during a ride. Hamlin had no problem with that.

After putting on a helmet and a HANS device and having seat belt straps secured around me, I quickly realized I couldn't turn my head all the way to the left, aim the camera, and snap an image of the driver at the same time. So I simply turned the camera that way, snapped a bunch of images and then checked it for the right focus.

It hadn't occurred to me that while taking the ride I would be holding onto my camera and not any solid part of the car, like a section of the tubular frame. The camera couldn't brace me for the speedy ride in and out of the corners, or the high speeds just inches from the wall on straightaways.

I remember getting out of my first ride pumping my fist. My 2006 comments: "What a thrill! You see it, hear it, feel it in every virtual way, but until you are in a race car with a pro at the wheel you can't know it."

I mentioned the impact of a ride-along to other drivers many times after that and got some curious responses. Jason Leffler noted that during ride-alongs he wasn't in the passenger seat closest to the wall, where the effect is the scariest. Jimmie Johnson doesn't like being in any fast-moving vehicle he can't control, and won't ride with jet fighter pilots. The g-forces in supersonic aircraft are renowned.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, the g-force experienced by an object is its acceleration relative to free-fall. The term g-force is technically incorrect as it is a measure of acceleration, not force. However, it is treated as a force because the mechanical stresses it produces are always felt as a force even if they produce no physical acceleration.

Whenever the vehicle changes either direction or speed, the occupants feel lateral (side to side) or longitudinal (forward and backwards) forces produced by the mechanical push of their seats.
That's the official definition. Here's what it means in real life.

Inverted g-forces like those felt in the loops of roller coasters are the last thing one wants to feel in a stock car, as that would require flipping over on the track. Top Fuel dragsters produce 5.3 g on a straight path. Open-wheel race cars in F1 produce about 5 g during heavy braking. Normal stock cars' g-forces lie somewhere in between 1g and 4 g, depending upon the size and banking of the track and the speeds attained in a hot but successful lap. Crashes increase g-forces exponentially.

When Dale Jarrett described a ride-along incident among the many he has performed for fans, reality superseded science.

"I was doing one at Rockingham years ago and actually blew an engine going into Turn 3 there," Jarrett said. "I got into some oil and we were spinning. The guy thought I was doing that on purpose. Whenever that happens we have no control, either. If you blow a tire it doesn't matter how good you are."

Oh. So that's the reason why they have you sign several pages of waivers before you get into the seat.

Jarrett commented on fans riding along.

"It's easy to tell the ones that are really enjoying it," he said. "There are some with their eyes literally wide open. They are not sure what's going to happen. Those are the ones that are fun. You want them to appreciate what's happening. I've had ones that you could have hit the wall and they wouldn't have cared. They were looking for something exciting to happen. Others are sitting there and realizing this is a ride of a lifetime for them."

Since my first ride with Denny Hamlin I've experienced stock cars with Greg Biffle and RDPE employee drivers. In 2009, I morphed into sort of a speed junkie with a ride in an IndyCar two-seater with Davey Hamilton at the Disney track, plus a ride on the streets of St. Petersburg, and pace car rides with Brett Bodine at Darlington Raceway and NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson on the famed Daytona International Speedway.

I took my camera on a few warm-up laps in the open-wheel cars, but at speed they wouldn't allow a camera that might easily take flight in the wind created by those aerodynamic darts on wheels.

"Gentleman Jimmie" was anything but gentle in a new Camaro at Daytona when he left the tri-oval for sliding turns in and out of the Grand-Am road course paths. This time I was in the back seat, holding onto my camera and being pushed side to side by g-forces when Johnson pulled out of the turns to go 160 mph on Daytona's high banks.

When asked later about the many ride-alongs he has done and how he tells whether fans are thrilled or scared or both, Johnson went graphic.

"You can usually tell when you shake someone's hand after the experience. If their palms are sweaty, you did a good job and you did scare them. The other day in that Camaro there were a lot of reasons to have sweaty palms. That's a fast, fast car and I think we all had a lot of fun."

When I mentioned it was great fun that surely scared me, the gentleman smiled. "Good. Mission accomplished."

Obviously none of my rides were in race conditions, so the total real effects of racing are still not part of my resume. I've covered motorsports for nearly a decade, and knew speed and noise in many close but intangible ways before I actually got in a car and felt what driving on the edge was like. It's only in the past few years that I have been privileged to feel that speed.

I expected fast, but as for knowing it, I truly had no idea.

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