Center of gravity is basically the point where you could balance the car on the top of a flag pole (theoretically). The physics of NASCAR dictates that turns on the racetrack must be banked in order to increase the friction (part of the centripetal force) to hold the car.Īnother component of physics of NASCAR that serves to keep the vehicle with all four wheels on the track during the race is center of gravity. To put it in simple terms, if the car takes a turn too fast, the wheels leave the ground and an accident occurs.
The centripetal force needed to keep the car on the track cannot exceed the square of the speed of the car. The tires of the vehicle provide the friction which is part of the centripetal force. Centrifugal force on the other hand is actually a fictitious force and what we feel as we are thrown outward from a moving vehicle is the reaction force.Ĭentripetal force in the physics of NASCAR is crucial to keeping a car on the track. However without getting too technical, you can think of centripetal force as a real force acting perpendicular to the motion of the moving body. So there are forces that resist the movement of a NASCAR vehicle such as wind drag and another known as centripetal force.Ĭentripetal force should not be confused with centrifugal force. In outer space for example, in the absence of gravity, an object will go on forever. Newton's Law of Motion states that a body will remain in motion unless it is acted upon by some external force.
But there are other forces involved too such as Newton's Law of Motion and centripetal force. The obvious element in the physics of NASCAR is the aerodynamic design required by these cars in order to achieve top speeds of near 200 mph with the minimum drag coefficient. Even though NASCAR started as a backwoods illegal race to run moonshine, it has today evolved into a sport that is not only entertaining but depends on physics too.