Rob Fahrni

I’d love to see a website — perhaps NASCAR itself — dedicated to the engineering of engines, frames, driver cockpit, and safety, among other things.

They could have a YouTube channel and blog for it.

Here’s a case for you. A nice deep dive on power trains, which teams have full manufacturer support and who doesn’t get a darned bit of help. I’m super interested in that.

The Hendricks Engine Building team (don’t know the exact name) just celebrated their 500th win! Profile them!

Another thing I’d love to see torn down is the process of creating the Next Gen car. Did y’all know every NASCAR race car has the same frame and shares many of the same parts? That’s incredible to me! It means they’ve leveled the field somewhat, see my question about manufacturer support. Yes, some teams have more resources than others but NASCAR fields the most competitive races of any major racing series. Well, them and IndyCar. I like that they make it more about the driver.

How about some driver profiles? Thirty minutes on each driver and looks into the daily life of the crews supporting the teams. Hey, they have drivers who haul all the race equipment and cars to the tracks. Talk about an important behind the scenes job! Profile all the people!

Anywho, just some random off season thoughts.

I just finished watching the Italian Grand Prix and the racing is extremely boring for first place.

Verstappen in a post race interview he said “We had to work for this one today.” No, you didn’t. The Red Bull cars are just too darned fast.

It was nice to see Carlos Sainz take P3 but no car on the grid can compete with the Red Bulls.

So, once again, Verstappen wins by 10 seconds going away. He even coasted on some laps, I mean why not?

In the end F1 wins for its fantastic production. There’s nothing better than a commercial free race, even if it’s boring from a racing perspective.

I wish NASCAR could fix their terrible race production. It’s more commercials than racing, which is extremely frustrating.

NASCAR wins for racing value, F1 for production value.

As I’ve mentioned here and other places I’ve gotten into NASCAR this year. It started with F1 then I started watching IndyCar which lead to NASCAR.

I like NASCAR for a couple reasons. It’s more an everyday Joan’s sport. You know, for us common folks. It’s not hoity-toity like F1 and I think the racing is just plain better. The modern NASCAR cars all share the same design as defined and built by NASCAR. The power trains are the only real difference from an engineering perspective so it’s all down to setup and, more importantly, the driver. But I digress.

There is something that bothers me about NASCAR. Fans seem to be very, uh, conservative. Meaning it’s all about God, country, and to many the Confederate flag and all the hate that comes with it. Bubba Wallace asked NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag and they did, it was a step in the right direction. All that said they have a long way to go, which brings me to why I started writing this.

Which team is progressive enough to put a Progress Pride Flag on the car as the entire livery? I think it would look amazing and start to break down that next wall in the sport.