Ed Hinton, NASCAR 14y

F1's Dennis puts the E-word in play

AutoRacing, NASCAR

The wizard of Woking is afoot in America, peddling forbidden fruit.

NASCAR's upcoming implementation of fuel injection -- by next year or the next -- has given Ron Dennis, executive chairman of McLaren, a foot in the door.

Perhaps no other company is more synonymous with ultrasophisticated racing electronics than McLaren, built into a Formula One titan by Dennis in his hometown southwest of London, so that Woking, England, is arguably the biggest little racing town in the world -- other than maybe Mooresville, N.C.

For all of NASCAR's existence, electronic systems have been banned because officials feared they couldn't police the high-tech cheating.

Now that the pressure for fuel injection -- both from manufacturers and the green movement that is sweeping all industries -- has become overwhelming, the E-word at last comes into play.

For openers, "one of the things that we can absolutely guarantee is tamper-free systems and the ability to very carefully monitor anything that even remotely looks like it's been interfered with," Dennis said this past weekend on a fact-finding and sales trip to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Brickyard 400.

Beyond fuel injection, Dennis can easily supply the Cup teams with "anything you want," he said. That might include, but wouldn't be limited to, onboard tire monitoring and management, instantaneous electronic adjustment of suspension, brakes and fuel-air mixtures in races that come down to fuel mileage and telemetry for all those systems.

"It can be anything NASCAR wants it to be," Dennis said of the add-ons to the basic injection system that his McLaren Electronics division is pushing.

"It's endless the things you can do," acknowledged Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition. "Right now it's about a fuel delivery system and doing it properly. …

"When you ask these questions about electronics, it answers every other question you're going to ask -- what if, what if, what if? It's all possible. But there's a cost associated with that, and we have to take that under consideration."

"I met with him," NASCAR chairman Brian France said when I asked him about Dennis. "We're on a steady march to more technology in the cars, which is historically unlike us in some respects. [But all of this is] provided that it doesn't burden the teams with additional costs that don't translate to our fan base, and obviously that we can enforce whatever new technologies. The final thing is that it makes the racing better."

For some 30 years now, NASCAR "stock" car racing has been far behind "stock" showroom cars on the streets. Fuel injection long ago replaced carburetors in the overwhelming majority of production vehicles, and electronic braking systems have long been the norm.

Throughout the years, manufacturers have grown increasingly restive about a Cup engine formula that is 36 years old -- 351-cubic-inch pushrod engines, with tolerance to 358, and four-barrel carburetors.

Doubling the pressure on NASCAR now is the tidal wave of pressure for green technology that is sweeping the world. Fuel injection is far more efficient, with far lower emissions, than carburetion.

"No question about it, fuel injection is something we're going to evolve here in the short run," France said.

"You said tire pressures and so on," he said, referring to part of my question. "If there's ways to use technology that are enforceable and sensible financially, of course we're going to do that.

"It's our slow, steady march. Fits into the green economy. Fits into where the manufacturers are obviously going. So any number of things, you're going to be able to look at. But they'll just have to fit the criteria that I've laid out."

No Cup owner is better qualified to evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of electronics than Chip Ganassi, who has vast experience with sophisticated systems with his Indy car and Rolex Series sports car teams.

"Some of the series have gone overboard in that stuff," Ganassi said of the smorgasbord of possibilities. "But I wouldn't mind seeing one or two things on the cars."

Are the owners as a group interested in taking steps beyond fuel injection?

"I think so -- if it's all in the interest of safety, yeah," Ganassi said. He also has been the most vocal proponent of green technology and more efficient performance in IndyCar racing. So would he apply those to NASCAR, too?

"Yeah," he said. "But let's start with safety."

Ganassi wouldn't say which items he'd like to see on the Cup cars, but his safety focus indicated that tire management might be one.

Hendrick Motorsports, a team that spends so much on development, is surprisingly conservative on the issue of electronics.

As for any step-by-step move into tire management and beyond, "I don't think that's the intention, and I don't know that we want to go there," said Doug Duchardt, Hendrick's vice president for development and a former head of General Motors Racing. "On the telemetry, for the value we would receive, the cost would be more than we want to face."

All parties agree that restrictor plates would no longer be necessary, because the injection systems can be adjusted to reduce horsepower at Daytona and Talladega.

But Pemberton takes that as a case in point about costs, in response to Dennis' claim that "We have a very cost-effective technology."

"A restrictor plate is a $15 piece of aluminum," Pemberton said. "So if it makes you feel good about $25,000 worth of software to replace $15 worth of aluminum, does it make sense?"

That might be oversimplification, considering the many millions of dollars spent by the teams throughout the years to develop plate-specific engines as differentiated from unrestricted engines.

Fuel injection likely will allow NASCAR more flexibility with alternative fuels because "it's easier to adjust," Pemberton said.

As for cheat-proof electronics, "I have a hard time saying everything is 100 percent," Pemberton said. He would concede "99.9 percent."

There apparently are at least eight other electronics companies vying for the NASCAR contract in addition to McLaren -- the front-runner of which may be Bosch, longtime spark plug supplier to NASCAR series and current supplier of electronic systems to the Rolex Series, which is now a division of NASCAR.

But for sheer reliability, "We've supplied every Formula One team for three years, and not one team has had an electrical fault in either practice or racing for three years," Dennis said. "We've done the same in IRL. Not one team has suffered electronic problems in practice or racing."

Pemberton says all the companies claim their systems are cheat-proof. "All of them say the same thing to reassure us. They say there's ways to find out postevent, or something to prevent it, so that it can't happen. That's just part of our talks when we talk to everybody."

And when you think about it, a guaranteed, absolutely cheat-proof system of any kind in NASCAR just might be the most radical revolution of all.

Ed Hinton is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at edward.t.hinton@espn.com.

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