Photos by Kenny Moore and Charlie Leffler
Above: NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon said the move to fuel injection has been long overdue. Below: NASCAR Vice President of Competition, Robin Pemberton, indicated that regulating the electronics will be the greatest challenge NASCAR faces in the change-over.

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Regulating systems will be the greatest challenge

By the 2011 race season, NASCAR could finally step into the automotive 21st century and make the switch from carburetors to electronic fuel injection.

While production vehicles made the switch to EFI in the mid-80s, NASCAR has continued to use carburetors in their cars long after they had become extinct elsewhere.

However, economic and environmental issues have mandated a change and EFI is the first of many that are currently under discussion by NASCAR.

For some, such as NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon, the change is long overdue.  “I’ve been asking for fuel injection for 10 years, so that would be huge,” he said while in Richmond for the Chevy Rock & Roll 400. “I think that would be a fantastic move. I think that’s something that we’ve needed for a very long time. There’s not a production car out there with a carburetor and there hasn’t been for a long time. I think it would be better for everybody.”

NASCAR’s popularity has always been grounded in a close connection to the fans and according to Pat Suhy, the NASCAR Group Manager for General Motors Racing, carburetors are no longer technology that fans can relate to. “I think it’s a positive step from our perspective because it does get the engines and the technology in the cars a little bit closer to what we sell on the street,” he said.

NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton indicated that NASCAR officials plan to meet with engine builders, engineers and electronic experts to determine how best to implement the change.

One advantage of EFI is it will increase the efficiency of the NASCAR engines. Carburetors provide a generalized disbursement of gasoline among all eight cylinders. The fuel input must be balanced between the cylinder that is running the richest and the one that is running the leanest. “With fuel injection, what you can do is actually trim the fuel so that your richest isn’t as rich and your leanest isn’t as lean,” Suhy said. However, the change will require race crews to develop an entirely new set of skills based on electronic technology.

And while some fans have voiced concern that EFI will possibly change the sport itself through engine-size or smaller gas tanks neither Suhy nor Pemberton said they believe that will be so.

“I don’t think it will change it much,” Pemberton said. “Honestly, these engines that are out there today, they make a lot of horsepower and they continue to gain horsepower year-in and year-out. So the fuel injection, it may or may not add horsepower. It may be on one side or the other.”

And while the fuel economy could increase, Suhy said a switch to ethanol based fuel, which is also in the discussion, would negate the issue because the energy content of ethanol is less and therefore requires larger amounts of fuel.

But even without ethanol, Pemberton pointed out that NASCAR racing itself will also cancel out any difference in fuel economy. “We spend so much time at wide open throttle that more than likely it will come with the fuel issues off- throttle.” 

However, teams going off-throttle could step into an entirely new set of problems. “Probably the biggest difference is they can shut the fuel off, but there may be durability reasons you don’t want to do that,” Suhy said. “These engines; they’ve developed all their hardware, their valve trains, valves and seats with fuel flowing in pretty continuously. So now when you turn the fuel off you may induce a durability issue that you didn’t intend.”

From a mechanical standpoint, durability appears to be the greatest question mark at this point. None of the racing leagues that have served as case studies utilize EFI to drives as many miles in a weekend as NASCAR. “Is the wiring harness going to live?” Suhy said. “Is it going to hang a lot more wires on the engine now? Are we going to have robust wiring harnesses that can live through a race weekend?”

Yet, from a manufacturing standpoint, both GM and Toyota have said they could make the change as soon as next year.

However, the greatest obstacle for NASCAR to overcome is how to regulate EFI usage. For a sport noted in its attempts to push the boundaries of the rule book, NASCAR wants to make sure it can properly monitor the systems before they go into use.

“The hardest thing will be how we regulate the garage area to make sure we come up with a decent rules package and a way to monitor the electronics,” Pemberton said. “That will be the thing that will take us a while.”

“There’s a lot more at stake in the Cup Series and teams and manufacturers that have much deeper pockets and much more experience with those systems,” Suhy said. “That certainly makes it more attractive to figure out how to beat the system so to speak.”

Among other points of interest NASCAR will need to find a way to make sure teams are not using the electronics for purposes outside of fuel injection such as relaying technical information to the crew chiefs while the race is underway or as a means of traction control.

Another decision yet to be made is whether NASCAR will make a wholesale jump into fuel injection with every race series; Sprint Cup, Nationwide, Craftsman Truck, etc. or whether a gradual implementation will work best.

“That’s the thing that we’ll have to decide with the meetings,” Pemberton said. “There will be some expense but when we sit down we’ll discus with all of our partners, the team members, the organizations, what seems the best way to roll this thing out.”