Getting warmed up
By Jason Mitchell, Stock Car Racing Magazine
November 14, 2001
2:39 PM EST (1939 GMT)
Early on race days, after the cars pass through their final inspection and roll out to form the starting grid, you'll see a team member waiting on pit road ready to hook up a special generator.
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Pit-road generators, like this one hooked up to the Mobil 1 Ford, help get a race car’s engine at peak operating temperature before the start of a race.
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The generators are plugged into the car to get the vital engine and other operating temperatures up to a warm level before the green flag drops. The generators are rather small - encased in a rolling cart - but they're worth their weight in gold.
If not for the pit-road generators, races would have to be started with several extra pace laps so the cars' engine and vital fluids would have time to reach the correct heat levels. So in other words, the generators can literally do the work of the pace car before the drivers even strap into their mounts.
Cale Bass, who tunes the engines of two-time NASCAR Winston Cup Series champion Terry Labonte at Hendrick Motorsports, explains the use and importance of the generators.
"Basically we use the generators to plug into the oil tank because there are probes on the inside and blankets outside which are used to heat the oil," Bass says. "When you see us revving the cars up in the garage area on Sunday morning, basically what we're doing is warming the oil up and making sure everything's ready before we go through inspection.
"So when the car is ready to move onto pit road, the generators are waiting on us so we can keep that oil warm until we start the race. The oil tank is located just behind the driver's seat, but the transmission and rear end each have separate units. That way when the race is started, everything is very close to its regular operating temperature."
The use of the pit-road generators isn't limited to pit road just before the start of a race. Even on the days of qualifying and practice, you will often hear the roar of the generators in the morning hours before the cars get on the track for the first time.
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The generators attach to plug-ins on the bumper of some cars, while some plug-ins are located underneath the bumper out of sight.
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"Before we're about 30 minutes away from cranking the car up each day, we'll plug in the generator to get everything up to temperature," Bass says. "We plug our generator into an outlet on the toolbox. Depending on what kind of blanket and probes you have on the oil tank, it usually takes the car anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to get up to a safe operating temperature."
What's the perfect temperature operating range?
"The temperature of the oil varies on whether we're qualifying or practicing," Bass says. "The temperatures of the oil for qualifying are a lot higher than a race mode, and a lot of that depends on which track we're at. The lighter weight oils are used most often in qualifying, but then we'll go with heavier oil on race day.
"When we're qualifying, you'd like to have a 250-300 degree temperature range to start off with. On race morning before the car rolls off pit lane, we usually set the temperature to about 200-240 degrees because that's what we want the car to be running on the track at speed when the green flag drops."
While simple in use, Bass says there would be a lot more heat and stress on the engines if it not for the pit-road generators.
"You'd definitely see more engine failures because it's so important to get the engine at the proper operating temperature," he says.
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