Blake's Takes: NASCAR's Fuel Injection? Well, It's a Start

To me, the most exciting announcement to come out of Speed Weeks was in a bulletin released by NASCAR the Thursday before qualifying.

Or was it? We'll get to that later.

The news was that NASCAR, in a major break from the stock cars of 1948, finally decided to adopt fuel injection for its racing engines, replacing the venerable (and largely obsolete) carburetors, the primary device for mixing air and fuel on internal combustion engines since the dawn of time.

Problem is, all cars manufactured for street use in the United States (and just about everywhere else) began widespread of fuel injection in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The last factory-for-sale car to use a carburetor was a single model of the Subaru in 1991.

NASCAR's insistence on carburetor use was therefore mystifying, and evidence of the widening chasm between NASCAR and "stock" cars. Every other major form of motorsport uses some type of computerized mix-and-inject.

In fact, only one company makes the kind of carburetors used in NASCAR racing. The carbs therefore are pricey and require extensive machining in the team shops to make them work in specific applications.

NASCAR engine men and owners, and Detroit designers and execs, had worried NASCAR for 20 or 30 years to make such a change. NASCAR's explanation, directly from then garage chief Gary Nelson, was that anything electronic could be cheated ? NASCAR's tacit way of saying its people weren't smart enough to handle it.

The hard parts of a fuel injection system are, really, simpler than a carburetor. It consists of a fuel rail from the pump, with branches to an injector at each cylinder.

(On the other side, no one really knows how a carburetor works. Maybe I'm serious, maybe I'm not. It's a collection of tiny holes, floats, plates, cams, levers and rods, blessed by an archbishop and consecrated to its purpose.)

Let's step back a minute for a primer. What burns in the engine's combustion chambers is a mixture of air and fuel. Gasoline needs oxygen in order to burn. So in order to create an explosion in the cylinders, it's necessary to mix fuel and air.

(One very smart engine man once described an engine to me as an "air pump", and that's really all you need to know.)

From 1900 to 1980, the best available way to mix air and fuel was through a carburetor, which brought the air and fuel together in what amounted to a mixing valve, combining the two at a ratio of about 15:1.

The real black magic of a carburetor was in the ways it managed four or five separate circuits ? an idle circuit, a high-load circuit, a cold circuit, and so on. In a fuel-injection system, all these functions are simplified and controlled by the engine control unit (ECU), the so-called "computer" in the modern engine.

The throttle is a plate which opens and closes depending on how far you press the gas pedal. In a carburetor, the throttle is downwind from where the fuel is mixed, and thus admits the mixture to the intake manifold.

In fuel injection, the throttle (gas pedal) controls the amount of air admitted to the system; the mixing is done later, just as the air enters the cylinder at each cylinder's intake valve. The ECU, via sensors, measures air volume and velocity, then signals the injector at each cylinder to admit the precise amount of fuel needed for the correct burn ratio.

The intake manifold, therefore, conducts only air ? not the final mixture.

The problem with a carbureted system is that once the mixture is throttled into the manifold, it's pretty much on its own. It is conducted by the manifold runners, one per cylinder, to the intake side of the combustion chambers. Some cylinders get more, some get less ? hence all the thought and expense in manifold design.

With fuel injection, the mixing, controlled by the ECU, is all done at the intake valve, ensuring that each cylinder gets an identical charge at each firing of its spark plug.

You got all that? OK then, let's move on.

Gary Nelson's fear, reflecting NASCAR's, was that teams would find ways to code the ECUs in ways that would evade NASCAR's detection; in other words, they'd cheat. But read carefully the wording of NASCAR's bulletin, and you'll see that what was announced was not fuel injection, but a way to control its use.

"The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) announced today a historic technology partnership with Freescale Semiconductor and McLaren Electronic Systems to develop and integrate fuel injection systems into the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, targeted for the 2012 season" the release revealed.

U.K.-based McLaren, of course, has been developing, building and presenting engines, systems and parts for top-tech racing engines for 50 years. McLaren will provide the hard parts for the NASCAR's proposed injection system.

Texas-based Freescale, an offshoot of Motorola in 2003, is the largest maker of ECU-type systems in the world; it also supplies systems for the likes of anti-lock brakes, air bags, and so on.

These two companies, in partnership with NASCAR and its teams, will develop and supply all fuel-injection components for the race teams.

Supposedly, the fail-safes are built in. The ECUs will work only with NASCAR-specific code in sealed units. Without the code, the engine will not start.

Hence, Gary Nelson's great fear will be handed off to people who really know how these things work.

So there. That's it in a small gray box. But is this the great leap forward many had hoped for?

Actually, it's about half a leap forward ? just enough to allow NASCAR room to wiggle if, for whatever reasons, the program doesn't work out.

Recall that Detroit, like NASCAR, had to be dragged screaming into the injection age, largely due to government restrictions on economy, emissions, and unleaded fuel. Fuel injection greatly increases fuel economy and carefully controls emissions to make them palatable to catalytic converters.

Detroit, however, had inventory and retooling matters to consider ? part of what normally cost the Big Three an average of three years from concept to showroom.

As a timid first step, Detroit's makers injected the fuel on the plenum side of the manifold ? sort of a glorified, computer-controlled carburetor.

This is what is called "port" injection. The injection system used on showroom cars, with the fuel injected at the intake valve, is called "direct" injection.

And what NASCAR has decided to do ? at least for now ? is port injection.

"This is not direct injection that we know today on production cars, but more of a port-injection style in the intake manifold runner, just down from the plenum chimney," said Doug Yates, chief of RoushYates Engines. "NASCAR has elected to start [there] on the first version of the fuel injection."

That leaves at least a door open. I asked Doug whether the software would be varied for different tracks, or whether NASCAR/McLaren/Freescale would hand out and pick up the ECUs for each race, much as NASCAR now does with restrictor plates. Again, he left a door open.

"We have a meeting in about three weeks to go through those questions, and we'll have more answers in the near future," Yates said. "As soon as we have more definition, we'll let you know."

Many had hoped that NASCAR, with injection, could do away with the much-despised restrictor plates. No, not so fast. Although McLaren and Freescale have more-than-adequate know-how to dump the plates for good, NASCAR apparently wants to keep some last-minute control in choking the engines.

"The plates are the easiest and most economical way because you govern the air flow," Robin Pemberton, NASCAR vp/competition, told reporter Ed Hinton.

Footnote here: NASCAR is very aware that some people actually like plate racing on the big tracks, with a pack of 40 cars sputtering by every 50 seconds.

The way it looks now, the plates, when needed, will be placed somewhere downstream of the air intake.

So there it is, some hybrid mutant of a fuel-injection system, provided by companies which could provide so much more, and turned partly to mush by the sanctioning body.

Here we had ? and likely still have ? an opportunity to bring NASCAR into technological harmony with actual stock cars ? much moreso than some common-template "Mustang" or "Camaro" will do ? a chance for racing truly to help improve the breed. But not yet.

So instead, I'll give NASCAR a B-minus for this one, maybe a B, depending on how quickly the cartel allows it to evolve.

It's a good start, fellows. You've got everything you need. Now go for it.

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