T
TonyB
Guest
#12's secret? smaller carb? With all the talk about Ryan Newman’s race strangling fuel runs of late it’s no wonder that many of his peers are frustrated to the point where they’re hurling accusations. But the story behind Newman & Company’s fuel secret crawled out of the bag and into the lap of TFR [Team Ford Racing]. The secret to the formula — bigger is not always better in Winston Cup. The NASCAR specifications for a carburetor allow a carburetor will flow up to 830 cubic feet per minute maximum. Newman’s men have found if they run a carb that flows 750 cfm that they give up only two horsepower to what the bigger carb delivers. That smaller carb, without 2 hp, brings the team about 0.5 miles per gallon extra in fuel consumption. Taking that 0.5 mpg and working it with the 22-gallon NASCAR-specified fuel cell, you see that Newman has an 11-mile cushion compared to his competitors. Meaning that Newman could run an extra seven laps at a 1.5-mile track, such as is found at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Unfortunately for the Alltel team the secret is starting to filter out to some of the other teams, however, the power lost to the smaller carb is not quite at the level that the Penske motor men are capable of recapturing, but darn close. Give those who have started to experiment with the smaller carb a few weeks and any deficit should soon disappear.(Ford Racing)(10-13-2003)
