![\"Brian](\"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Wilsonpic-1-1024x576.jpg\")
![\"Wilson](\"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Wilsonpic-2-1024x576.jpg\")
In the last 15 years, Wilson and other Wolfpack alumni like him have become a force in NASCAR, the home of American professional stock-car racing. Engineers like Bobby Hutchens \u201982, who was NASCAR\u2019s first full-time engineer with a college education, have helped change the sport with the fundamental understanding of mechanical engineering they received in NC State\u2019s engineering classrooms and in the garage of Wolfpack Motorsports, a student-run organization at the university that allows participants the chance to apply their skills to designing, building and racing cars. The introduction of engineers into the sport came about in the late 1990s after NASCAR heavily restricted what mechanics could physically do to cars. The only advantage left came from how technology, such as wind-tunnel testing, could influence a car\u2019s performance. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about what you could do with a hammer anymore,\u201d says Dr. Jerry Punch \u201975, who has covered NASCAR for radio and television since 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilson seldom touches the cars. Instead, he helps design those $150,000 race cars so that they cut through air and stick to the track, roaring at speeds of 190 miles per hour . . .<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Since then, some engineers have passed on careers with automotive companies, NASA and even the CIA to join racing teams that finance, design, build and race the cars. While racing teams\u2019 garages once had only a couple of engineers, some now have 50 to 60 engineers who can make between $70,000 and $200,000 annually. The engineers study and manipulate a car\u2019s aerodynamics. They work at the track on race day advising the crew chief, almost indistinguishable from the pit crew in their shirts adorned with sponsor logos. They live in the future, staying three races ahead with their designs, and have to stay on top of NASCAR\u2019s rules changes. They have made the design process a proactive one where every part, from shock to tire, is tested to see how it affects a car\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NASCAR\u2019s first engineers soon found they weren\u2019t just competing against other race teams. They fought an old-guard group of racing insiders resistant to change and wary of \u201ccollege boys\u201d coming into a sport where knowledge had predominantly come from mechanics and drivers\u2019 instincts. (Punch remembers racing legend Dale Earnhardt throwing a laptop out of a car in the mid-1990s and telling his team if they wanted to know something about the car to just ask him.) NASCAR Sprint Cup veteran Jeff Burton says the transition was rocky for engineers. \u201cOne of the things I\u2019ve always raced on is seat-of-the-pants engineering. You take what you know and you see what your competitors are doing,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was a fear that these engineers weren\u2019t racers. \u2018All they know is numbers.\u2019 There was a bit of resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSimulation is a tool that we didn\u2019t have 10 years ago. That\u2019s a huge part of the success you\u2019re able to have. It has engineering fingerprints all over it.\u201d
\u2014 Jeff Burton<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nEric Warren \u201991, \u201993 MSE, \u201997 PHD, director of competition at Richard Childress Racing, remembers that resistance when he came into racing as an engineer in the late \u201990s, recounting how he was tested by an older teammate who asked him to take a tire off a car at Indianapolis Motor Speedway his first day on the job despite having no automotive experience. But he stuck with it because he saw the possibility of what science could do on Sundays and recognized that the key to an engineer\u2019s success in racing was to look past what the car was doing and study why it was doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Burton says engineers\u2019 influence has run deep throughout NASCAR, making the use of computers an everyday part of racing. One example is simulation, or \u201csim\u201d to engineers, a mathematical model using scans of all of a car\u2019s parts and dimensions. Add to that a gumbo of other data, including the physics involved at a particular racetrack, and the engineers can see how the car will react to different variables. They also take into account factors such as when the driver hits the brakes or gives the car gas. \u201cSimulation is a tool that we didn\u2019t have 10 years ago,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s a huge part of the success you\u2019re able to have. It has engineering fingerprints all over it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sim allows Kyle McArver \u201906, a race simulation engineer at Roush Fenway Racing, to see what happens to the car when a certain type of spring compresses under different track conditions or when a tire has different amounts of force bearing down on it when it goes into and comes out of a turn. And it helps race engineers with one of their primary tasks \u2014 coming up with the car\u2019s setup for a particular race. \u201cIt\u2019s picking your four springs,\u201d says McArver, who adds he owes his skills to the College of Engineering\u2019s Wolfpack Motorsport program. \u201cYour four shocks. Picking your front sway bars. Suspension geometry. Some tire settings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sim takes into account the variables of NASCAR\u2019s different tracks: super-speedways, intermediate speedways and short tracks. Even similar tracks can make different demands on a car\u2019s setup. Take the Bristol Motor Speedway and Martinsville Speedway, both short tracks. Bristol\u2019s high banking creates more load on the car\u2019s four corners, creating more grip. That means the car sticks to the track, allowing drivers to get through a corner without touching their brakes. At Martinsville, there\u2019s no banking, so drivers must brake in a straight line. As they turn, then, the car gets loose, meaning the rear of the car skids, and the drivers are prone to braking hard and locking up their brakes. So on the week of the Martinsville race, engineers focus on braking stability so that a car won\u2019t skid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n