NASCAR considers eliminating carburetors and moving to fuel-injection systems
NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton says NASCAR is considering a shift to fuel-injection systems. // Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Scene
BRISTOL, Tenn. – NASCAR is looking at eliminating carburetors and using fuel-injection systems in the future, but there is no timetable for implementation of that, NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton said Saturday.
Pemberton also said that he expected any change in the system would not come during a season, but would be implemented at the start of a year. He indicated that 2010 likely would be too aggressive of a time line.
“We’re not far enough into it right now [to predict when it will be used],” Pemberton said prior to the Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. “I can’t ever imagine it happening in the middle of a season. … We’re way early in the process. There is not a time line. There is not a determination of what series it may start in. We have not defined a type of system or how it would be controlled.”
Hendrick Motorsports and Roush-Yates Engines have worked on some fuel-injection systems.
NASCAR has been reluctant to use fuel injection because it would need to develop a system to police the electronic components so they are not used for traction control or to relay data to the crew chiefs.
“It’s something that will help us moving forward to be more able to adjust to fuels if we needed to change octanes or change anything else,” Pemberton said.
The manufacturers have been agreeable to the potential change.
“We’re for it,” General Motors racing manager Pat Suhy said. “It will help make the cars and the technology on the cars closer to what we sell on production. It will be a broader audience that can relate to it. Internally, it will help us, with our leadership, make the connection to the production stuff.”
NASCAR still needs to work on the details of what system it would approve and whether it would distribute the units each weekend.
“It’s something that could be implemented, along with a few other things, that can potentially reduce some costs, increase the potential audience and it’s something you could very easily paint with a green brush,” Toyota Racing Development President Lee White said. “Everyone right now is spending an absolute fortune on something that has zero application in real life in the carburetion systems that we use.”
