John Force Racing (JFR) is one of the most successful Funny Car teams in the history of the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series. Understanding that multiple team cars on the track results in successfully shared technology, JFR this year is competing with three drivers - John Force, Robert Hight and Mike Neff. There would have been four, but daughter Ashley Force Hood is taking the year away from competition to give birth to her first child. Neff, the crew chief who helped Gary Scelzi to...
The matter of ensuring that valve-stem lubrication is sufficient has two main benefits. First, any friction between stem and guide creates energy that is necessarily subtracted from crankshaft output power and converted to heat. Minimising this is clearly a desirable aim. Second, if the lubrication is sufficient, we minimise the rate of wear of the valve guide and valve. There are a number of surface treatments that aim to reduce friction and make the stem less susceptible to wear, and...
The use of tungsten in motor racing is widespread, especially on the chassis side of the business, where its high density makes the material prized for use as chassis ballast. Commonly cars are designed and made underweight compared to the regulations in force, and are then ballasted to meet the minimum mass. Such is the effectiveness of achieving the correct weight distribution that cars are often designed to be well underweight, and a surprisingly large proportion of their mass is...
As we move ever further along the road of increasing the efficiency of race engines and drivetrains, we will see energy recovery play a more important part. Turbo-compounding, where energy is recovered from the exhaust flow, remains strictly for commercial vehicles for the time being. However, regenerative braking is very much a current technology, both for roadcars and in racing. With Williams, Flybrid and Zytek active in sportscar racing, and the Formula One engine manufacturers running...
Still considered by many to be some of the best materials around, white bearings are still commonly used in many vintage racers. This is not, as you might suppose, as a result of just the friction qualities of the material alone, but more as a consequence of its 'embeddability' (the ability to absorb dirt into its surface) and its nature to yield under excessive local pressures - as a result of, say, shaft misalignment - which prevents seizing. In a properly designed bearing, the oil...