The newest concern of the NASCAR world seems to revolve around one of the very things that attracts many people to the race track in the first place. The sounds.
(Photo: Daylon Barr)
Forty NASCAR machines at 725 (ish) horsepower, screaming down straights and barking in the corners are just one of the many assaults on your senses you experience at a NASCAR event.
Now some are saying the noise is too much. In an effort to make pit stop fueling safer, NASCAR moved the exhaust pipe to the right side of the car, away from the gas inlet. This causes the sound to now bounce off the hollow metal safer barrier which creates a resonance chamber.
I know a bit about sound and acoustics from my father who was a music producer. Here's a trick he showed me once:
Take a solo cup and cut it in half down the sides, leaving half the bottom as well. now place that over your cell phone speaker while on Pandora, Spotify, YouTube... Just play some music. It's almost like buying an aftermarket speaker. it resonates the sound.
The hollow SAFER walls do the same thing on a massive scale. All that horsepower and resulting sound screaming next to what equates to a huge tuning fork would annoy anyone.
Solution? Well there are a few NASCAR could try without even touching the cars.
I'll choose this one example to expand upon here:
Many of us who grew up with the boom of the tuner car market after the first "Fast and Furious" film released remember a product called "Dyna Mat". This great product deadens sound in cars with large bass sound systems. Your car is a resonance chamber as well, and a large bass system makes it rattle and vibrate. The Dyna Mat will stop all of that, and give true sound only. (No I wasn't paid for that product mention, but call me Dyna Mat! )
Lining the hollow chambers of SAFER barrier is a possible way to kill sound without killing performance or the natural sound of the cars.
Now is it cost effective for NASCAR? I admit to having zero clue about that. That's for them to find out. However, it is one idea that could work.
One voice most fans widely respect, Mark Martin, was heard by this blogger, and I must say. Somtimes we as fans need to remember that these racers are human beings too. They have a superhuman ability, but they are not superhuman.
As Martin said on Twitter, "Since the 90s I supported mufflers ASA did it and gained HP don't make them quiet just take the edge off All us old timers can't hear anymore."
This is a problem. A problem we can't really ignore. I for one want my Hall of Famers to actually be able to hear what is said at their induction speech. So compromise is a must. I as a fan just don't want to see the same kind of alterations Formula One made, from screaming V-10's to barely tolerable buzzes of 4 Cyl. turbo's....
In short, you don't have to kill the sound of NASCAR, just refine it with modern technology. It's what you've done everywhere else in the sport already... This should be no different.
