By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

As you probably know, the racecars that compete in NASCAR’s top series are subject to ongoing, nearly constant inspections from the moment they roll off the trailer at any given track. When I was in Dover last weekend, one of the things I was especially curious about was the post-race teardown, where inspectors nab the winning car and a handful of randoms and then break them down into nothing but a heap of components, going through the car with a fine-toothed comb to rule out cheating. So as soon as the race was won and the Victory Lane celebrations were over, I high-tailed it over to the garage area to watch Greg Biffle’s No. 16 Ford, still sticky with Gatorade and confetti, get transformed from a race-winning Sprint Cup car to a rolling shell and a rubble of car parts. Read more…

In the garage I caught up with the No. 16, as well as Ryan Newman’s No. 12 Penske Dodge which was a little further along in the teardown process. The first thing they do with the cars is roll them through the same stations as the pre-race inspection, re-measuring things like ride height and total vehicle weight. Then they’re pushed off scale and the real fun begins.

It’s worth pointing out that anyone from fans to rival teams’ engineers can stand by and watch the tear-down—as long as you have a garage pass, you’re good. NASCAR is big on keeping the process as transparent as possible, to diffuse suspicions of conspiracy, favoritism, and other forms of skullduggery. The atmosphere was for the most part pretty chill—though some inspectors eventually got nervous about my lurking around—and Jack Roush himself was there hanging out with his teams, clearly over the moon at their fantastic finish. The only thing you can’t do as an observer, apparently, is snap photographs while the cars are all apart. So you’re going to have to make do with the couple of pics I took of the tarred-and-feathered-looking winner car before they started really breaking it down.

As soon as they rolled the No. 16 off the scales and into its stall, the team put the hood up, siphoned the oil, and started unbolting things. Off came the air cleaner, carb, intake, and headers. The radiator was drained (these cars run straight water) and pulled. The shocks were unbolted at the towers and the car was raised for the suspension to come apart. This dissassembly is done by the teams, not the inspectors, and I noticed quite a bit of collaboration from other Roush-Fenway guys—there were crew members in uniforms for both Carl Edwards’ 99 and Matt Kenseth’s 17 helping out. They try to keep a NASCAR inspector on every side of the vehicle at all times during the disassembly, but the surveillance isn’t absolute—I’m not saying it’d be easy to get anything by these guys, but you could see how teams inclined to cheat might think they could get away with something, especially an easily pocketable part like perhaps the magnetic throttle spacers used by the Gibbs Toyota teams in the Nationwide Series.

The inspectors’ job largely consists of weighing and measuring. Fuel is tested for additives, bore diameters are carefully checked, and internal components are weighed to make sure no one’s trying to get away with lightweight aerospace metals. Overall, the amount of attention devoted to different systems on the car will vary by track. For example, at the restrictor-plate superspeedways Daytona and Talladega, the cars will get hellaciously scrutinized for whether any additional hp-boosting air is getting into the intake, whereas cars at downforce tracks will have their bodywork gone over in greater detail. Here at Dover, a fast, high-banked intermediate track, I’d guess that the extra attention would be devoted to the suspension setup—however, vehicle dynamics is one of the things that gets tested in the labs back in Charlotte, and most of what I watched after the engine got pulled was just that: the engine.

I have to say, it was pretty damn cool watching those Sprint Cup drivetrains getting craned out of the cars—I saw them pull both Ryan Newman’s Mopar motor and Greg Biffle’s Ford. For those who don’t follow NASCAR, the standard Sprint Cup engine is a 358 cubic-inch carbureted pushrod V8, tuned to get about 860 hp. It runs through a purpose-built race transmission, a 4-speed with what looks like a tiny clutch. Once the trans is broken off the motor, and the motor is on the stand, it starts getting taken apart—valve covers off, rocker arms unbolted, head bolts pulled, etc. The heads are removed and taken over to a huge test bench to be put through a series of inspection stations, similar to the way the cars themselves were. One guy minutely studies the head gasket, another applies a spring compressor and pulls the valve, and all the valvetrain components go away for weighing and measuring. Same thing for the cam. The stripped head is turned over, studied with a flashlight, and then lined up to a metal template that indicates the correct spacing of all the holes: for valves, ports, passages, spark-plug holes, everything. Then the heads go to the next station, where the combustion chambers are sealed and filled with neon-yellow fluid to measure their volume in cc’s. It’s real white lab-coat, mad-scientist type stuff—you should’ve seen this giant glass beaker they put the fluid in.

Anyway, it was at around this time that one of the inspectors started getting seriously spooked by my hanging around, especially after I started asking some questions about the cylinder head templates (no, they’re not the exact same for each manufacturer—interesting!). So I decided it was time to make myself scarce. But I left with a new appreciation for how involved a process the NASCAR inspections really are. They say it’s two hours from Victory Lane to completion of the teardown, but it was well after dark by the time I left. It felt like the whole fascinating process took much longer.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Dover International Speedway is a hot, high-banked concrete oval that chews up racecars, spits them out, and asks for more—and after watching that happen all weekend, I sure did have one burly item that I could cross off my before-I-die list. Now, here at CarDomain, we’ve got the largest collection of Dover race photos on the internet. Over in our Events section, there’s a ton of pics from all three of this week’s exciting series, but don’t think you have to put up with much of my Casio’s mediocre track photography—the lion’s share of the shots are from behind the scenes, the restricted areas like the garage and the pits, where the real craziness happens. Enjoy!

NASCAR driver Carl Edwards told me about Back 40 Racing when I chatted with him at Dover this weekend—basically, it’s an informal field-racing series in which competitors run cars they’ve pulled out of the junkyard. Carl was more involved in Back 40 before full-time racing duties took over—it bears the same name as his record label—but apparently, he still goes out racing with them once in awhile. And yeah, running junker cars through back fields against the current Sprint Cup Series points leader sounds like my idea of a total blast! Check out video of a typical Back 40 lap, below.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Today was huge for the Roush-Fenway Fords, with Greg Biffle scoring the win at Dover following a harrowing battle with Roush teammates Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards. Those two finished second and third, respectively, but not before spending the final 25 laps trading paint and nearly giving team owner Jack Roush a heart attack. As Greg Biffle reflected after the race on what it must’ve been like for his boss to witness his Fords’ kamikaze three-wide antics, "I would have crapped my pants watching those three cars run into each other." But all the beatin’ and bangin’ paid off, of course, with a 1-2-3 finish for the Roush Fords, a sweep that some speculated might’ve even been 1-2-3-4 if Jamie McMurray hadn’t been caught up in a wreck after leading the race early on. The win seemed to come as a bit astonishing to Biffle, who said his car had been off and on all day and who had been second-guessing his suspension setup until well into the race. Biffle hadn’t scored a win all season prior to his back-to-back victories in these first two races of the Chase for the Cup. Congratulations!

See a few of my pics from today’s finish.

See more pics from today’s Camping World 400 at NASCAR.com.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Hey, remember that awesome Charger pace car I told you about on my first day at Dover? Yep, some lucky bastard got to drive it home. The Charger ended up being the speedway’s giveaway car during today’s pre-race festivities, and Buck and Bass from Rowdy.com got to do the honors and hand over the keys. The six finalists who gathered at the start-finish line had been entered automatically in the drawing when they renewed their season passes. There were six keys in the hat, but (isn’t it always the way?) only one unlocked the Charger’s door—and set off its alarm. Sweet prize!

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Kyle Busch, tailed by ESPN pit reporter Jamie Little, leaves his No. 18 Toyota following a catastrophic engine failure that sent his car to the garage. If you were watching, you’ll know that the car started billowing smoke out the exhaust at around lap 140, before it settled down to puffing smoke in bursts in time with the RPM. It hung on that way for several laps, but finally expired and was pushed into the garage. There, the team drained the oil and started tearing the motor down. That splatter of oil on the underside of the hood doesn’t look like a good sign, and there was more down the right-hand fender—but at the time, the crew was talking burned or bent valves and thinking maybe they could get the car back out on the track to avoid a DNF. Even if they do, however, the buzz is that this incident is going to be catastrophic for the former points-leader’s championship standings: Kyle will be lucky if he can hang onto the bottom rung of the Chase ladder. But Busch isn’t the only Chase Toyota having drivetrain problems today—Denny Hamlin had to go into the garage to swap out his rear end and axles after having burned them up, and is back out on the track, 37 laps down. See some shots of the No. 18 in the garage.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

The race had barely run three laps when Kurt Busch got into it with David Gilliland’s No. 38 and mashed up his car’s rear clip. It looked like it was going to be bad for Kurt as he ended up a lap down after the stop, but Patrick Carpentier spun just a few laps later, clipping Carl Edwards and barely missing Jimmie Johnson. Kurt Busch scored the "lucky dog" from the ensuing caution, meaning he was advanced back up to the lead lap. I was in the No. 02’s pit box when Kurt brought it in for on-the-fly repairs. Here’s the view!

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Out on the track, the cars were lined up and wearing their little heat-repelling space blankets. Following driver introductions, the drivers hung out by their cars for a bit before climbing in. Some were chatting with fans—Hot Pass-holders weren’t kicked off the track until right before they fired up the engines. See more pics from the starting grid below the jump.

Cars lined up for the start:

Ryan Newman et al:

Dale Earnhardt Jr. at driver introductions:

Junior talking to crew chief Tony Eury Jr. right before the start. Foreground: Kyle Busch.

Matt Kenseth puttin gon his race booties:

Denny Hamlin contemplates his No. 11 Toyota. He said that in practice, the chassis was "confused."

Jamie McMurray, who is, at the time of writing, totally brining it at Dover in that red-hot Roush Ford.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

The drivers only have a limited amount of time to get out on the track and to run practice laps during any given session, and with so many 850-horsepower racecars coming in hot for quick adjustments, then shooting out again, the garage area feels like hell in a very small place. In such close quarters, it’s kind of a miracle that crew members don’t get hurt more than they do, but they’re clearly experts in staying out of the way, just as they are in the pits. Another curiosity was that a handful of fans were milling around with garage passes—whether they got them through connections, contest giveaways, or some other means I’m not sure—and they had to be carefully herded behind a line on the pavement to keep them from getting nailed by incoming or outgoing cars. Meanwhile, cars in practice were shooting by on the track directly behind us, and the air was full of that rich, strangely roasted-chestnut smell of burning race gas. Click below the jump to watch and listen as the whole garage full of cars empties out at the beginning of practice!

In the final practice, the fastest car was Carl Edwards’ Ford, followed by Greg Biffle’s Ford and Jimmie Johnson’s Chevrolet.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Today, Kyle Busch became the winner of the awkwardly-named Camping World RV Sales 200 (who comes up with these things?), not to be confused with Sunday’s Sprint race, the Camping World RV 400. Today’s race was a harrowing, crashy one that saw early achievers get laid low, and during the last couple of restarts, Kyle left the pack in his dust every time. I watched the No. 18 team celebrate in Victory Lane, and, and while it’s true that they splash nasty, sticky Gatorade over everyone, it won’t get you (or your camera) unless you’re down in the first few rows. Advice if you’re ever there: go high, unless you brought a change of clothing! See more pics below the jump, as well as a video clip of the No. 18 Toyota rolling into the circle.