BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Charlotte, N.C. — Downforce, lift and drag — all common terms when talking about car bodies. The first two are self-explanatory, addressing the amount of force, in pounds (or kilos) that is either pushing down on or lifting up on a car. Drag, a numerical representation of how much energy it takes to push a car through the wind, is somewhat different.

We’ve all heard these terms for years and years, but now in this world of aerodynamic dependency in NASCAR, there’s a new aero term starting to make its way into the garage vocabulary — side force. The measure of a car’s side profile relative to the wind as it works a corner, is an area the aero engineers are starting to explore with vigor. This has car owners asking, “What’s next?”

However, side force is not entirely new. TFR spoke with one aero engineer in 1998 who was beginning to investigate the differences in how a nose hung on a car body affected the handling for the driver. He worked with some success, but was merely scraping the surface compared to what’s beginning to take hold in 2003.

“That big ugly word that keeps rearing its head in the garage that nobody's ever heard of until this year is side force,” says car co-owner, Eddie Wood. “Side force. Last year it was spindles, eleven-degree, five-degree, eight-degree spindles. Now it's where's your nose?

Indeed, as a cursory look through the Winston Cup garage during The Winston inspection lines showed that some cars had noses hung with such vicious twists that without wheels on the cars, they resembled bananas due to their crescent moon shape from front to back.

“There are cars running good with noses that other cars are running poorly with,” added Wood, pointing out that there’s more to it than just slapping a nose on cockeyed. “We've got 'em everywhere on our Motorcraft Fords. We're huntin' and trying to find it.”

"What [engineering] does is it makes you understand more,” Wood adds regarding the importance of the engineering staffs that are now a must-have in NASCAR racing. “Why a car you built as a copy of a car your driver really liked, why it didn't run well or why the driver didn't like the new one. Maybe the side force was different or maybe the width numbers were different.

“With the best you can do building a car they’re still different from the one you’re trying to copy. The more I think we understand what makes the cars different and what matters, that's the key — what matters — the less positive I am we’ve got it all figured out. Does side force matter? Yes, it does but go prove it. Does wheel load matter? Yes, is does. Go prove it. That's the hard part. That's where engineers can help you. They look at it from a completely different area instead of looking at it through your eyes."

“He's totally from another direction,” says Wood about Ford’s aero engineer, Bernie Marcus. “That's why a guy like Bernie is so valuable. Everything we do, there's a reason behind it. We're not just out there moving stuff to be moving stuff. There's a reason for it.

“So far, we haven't found that sweet spot. We've been really good on short tracks, places where aero is not really a factor. We were good at Bristol, good at Richmond, good at Martinsville, good at Rockingham but at the mile-and-a-half and two-mile tracks we've struggled.

“So we haven't found the sweet spot for us,” Wood concludes. “In our little world, we haven't found that.”

PAYBACK
Some cars, no matter what is done to them, just don’t hit the mark of a quality race car. This can be a frustrating issue to deal with, but something that comes with the territory. These demon cars, or ones that don’t respond to any sort of modification or repair, can find their way out of rotation in short order with a race team.

The Wood Brothers have one such car now and car owner Eddie Wood has come up with a novel approach to getting the rolling beast out of his hair – for good!

“I've got a car up there right now that I absolutely hate,” said Wood. “In fact, I’ve given it to NASCAR to crash. Go ask [NASCAR’s] Steve Peterson about it if you want to. I gave it to him to go crash. My only request was that they give me the justice and let me watch it smash the wall.

“Just wipe it out in a crash and help with our safety program,” Wood says with a grin. “That would make me feel like this particular car has given something back.”

FREE RANGE SPENDING
According to Charlotte area sources, the Toyota factory folks are busy booking time at the Lockheed wind tunnel for 2004. How much time? According to TFR's sources every bit of it that they can get — so much so that if the non-Toyota teams aren't careful they could get shut out of the Marietta, Ga. based facility.

"That's the way they work," said one team official, who dealt with Toyota in Championship Auto Racing Teams. "They're not afraid to spend their money."