Welcome one and all back to the engineering blog....For those of you who don't know, I used to do one on the Uprising when I used to work as an engineer at RGM. I don't work there anymore, but the masses have spoken, so I am bringing it back.

Thought I'd start with a little diddy about tires since they were such an issue this week. The obvious question would be "How did they miss it so bad?" Unfortunately I have no idea. They obviously tire tested there, so it baffles me. I have been to one tire test in my career and they go a little something like this. It is usually a 2 day test with 3-4 different cars from different manufacturers. They are usually conducted at a circuit where there is a points race (as opposed to Milwaukee and Kentucky), so it is a valuable opportunity to put data acquisition on the car and learn some stuff at a track you will race at. That being said, Goodyear runs the test. You start the first day and make a couple of runs to make sure the car is ok and handles half way decent. You do this on a baseline set of tires. Then you put a new set of baseline tires on and make a long run. Then you come in and put another set on and make a long run. You do this until they run out of different compounds and constructions to test. Goodyear writes down driver comments and asses temperatures, and tire wear. After the test, I assume they use this data to pick the best tire that will last a fuel run and the driver will like.

A fuel run at Indy is probably 30-32 laps, so they were not even close. It would have been fun just to let them race instead of all the cautions. Some interesting strategies may have played out and perhaps a less obvious result would have been in order.

Off to get some beauty sleep now....Big offroad RC race tomorrow night.