2012 NASCAR in HDTV

WCCB OTA in Charlotte NC, looks good and the audio from Little Big Town was great.

Not here, my wife did notice Hollywood sporting a goatee this year.

FOX 4 KDFW in Dallas via FiOS.

I don't know who wears the worst looking rug... Michael Waltrip or Jimmy Spencer.

AND...

Is this the Danica Patrick show I'm watching?

Anyway, happy that we're racing again, but picture quality here is not good. EVERYTHING'S swimming... grass, asphalt, cars, numbers on the cars...

Michael dyed his hair (it is real) and Danica is there for ratings reason I believe..? Nascar is loosing viewers and trying anything to make it work. They can not run the cars faster than 200mph or insurance is a problem at daytona and drafting is boring...

Michael: Okay but his hair just looks funky.
I agree that NASCAR is probably loosing viewers, and they are absolutely NOT helping their cause with their high ticket prices. I'm a former season ticket holder at TMS, and I can tell just by all the empty seats I saw at the tracks last year, and which chased me away about 8 years ago is even more obvious now.

Go Daddy commercials are AWESOME!!!

I will say the super-slowmo cameras that are right up on the action are impressive, but the graininess I'm seeing is a big turn-off.

What was with all the sparks all the way through the race? It looked like the Forth of July even when the weren't crashing. Don't remember that many sparks last season.

Really enjoyed the qualifying yesterday, and seeing Dale Jr. finish 3rd made the show even better.

i'll be posting Points and Standings results next sunday after the 500.

It would be sad to think that NASCAR was allowing TV (FOX in particular) to resort to such fake tricks to boost viewership. Would they resort to intentional wrecks too? You can thank Brian France for the current direction NASCAR is taking.

WTTG Fox 5 on FIOS in DC area. Have to agree Bud Shootout BIG downgrade in quality on the HD feed from Daytona. Artifacts, mosquito noise, poor resolution. What's the issue FOX?!?!

I think it's a shame that Fox and ESPN will hire current car owners to be analysts on their NASCAR coverage. One of Michael Waltrip's cars failed post-qualifying inspection. Waltrip now works for Fox. With some time to fill before going off the air, Fox had Waltrip back in the studio. Not one question was posed to him about one of his cars failing inspection. That's unacceptable coverage. Why doesn't Fox go ahead and hire Jerry Jones to be a studio analyst for their NFL coverage? It would be the same thing.

It's possible (and I'm not 100% sure on this) that Michael was back in the studio because Chris Myers, who is one of the shows anchors (or whatever you call him) was away due to the death of his son, who died in an auto accident.

No, it is not. Chris already had a replacement in the studio.

No it had nothing to do with that. Fox hired Michael in the off season and I believe he's taking Hammond's place in the pre race show. Hammond is still on but not in the mobile studio.

The DW-Mikey show will get old so fast. Michael also does the truck races so if you watch a lot of racing like I do, it's overkill.

So am I to understand that the engines are now fuel injected? I thought that wasn't going to start until the 2013 season.

I'm guessing it's because they're running a couple of mph's faster than last season, so they're generating a bit more g's and aero-downforce in the corners and they haven't gotten their suspense setups perfectly dialed in yet.

Since they're trying to get the cars as low as possible, it's not surprising to see a few of them bottom out. And with it being a night race, you can see a lot of sparks that you'd never notice in a day race.

Yeah, but they made some off-hand comment [which I can't recall now] which made me think that the fuel injection might only be used on the super speedways this season.

I'm wondering if this will allow them to get closer to running the tank completely empty since they also have a more complex fuel pickup system now too?

And will they have interesting problems like having the high-pressure fuel pumps get too hot and seize up when the fuel gets low and no longer cools off the pumps?

And how hard will these cars be to restart if you run them out of gas?

They are running fuel injection at all tracks.

What happens if the system fails?

McLaren, which won the NASCAR contract over eight other bidders, has never had a failure in its Formula One, IndyCar and rally racing electronic control units. But if the system fails, well, it would doom that driver and team, who would have to come into the garage and swap out the unit and program the new one in about five minutes.


What happens when a team runs out of fuel?

There is some worry about the system shutting off when it runs out of fuel or loses fuel pickup. Teams could still spray fuel into the engine like they have in the past to get the engine fired on pit road before the fuel system gets engaged.



Read more: http://aol.sportingnews.com/nascar/s...#ixzz1mx1Qah5z

It will be a pain to get the car started again.

Crew chiefs are going to be more likely not to cut it as close anymore. I wonder if the shutting the engine off under yellow and coasting will change too. Interesting to see.

There's also now the interesting case that they now have another big electricity hog in the car with the electric fuel pumps. So if the have an electrical system failure, they'll have a lot less battery time than they used to have or they'll have to go to much bigger batteries.

I'm also wondering what they are doing to shutoff the fuel flow if the engine stops. This was a big deal a couple of years ago when they forced all the teams to use a cable-driven fuel pump so that if the engine stopped, the fuel pump would be guaranteed to stop too. I sure hope they aren't relying on just an inertial shutoff like most street cars since that won't work in bunch of case like blown engines and ignition failures.

Nope, it's the opposite - it's a blessing. Carb based units use a fuel pump that pulls fuel from the tank under low pressure (vacuum). When it runs out it has to suck the fuel from the tank up into the engine. Think of sucking a thick milkshake - not fun.

Fuel Injection (FI) has a pump mounted in the tank or right at the fuel tank. It pushes the fuel to the engine under high pressure, as FI units inject fuel under high pressure.

Fuel runs out... fill the tank... hit the ignition switch, which powers up the fuel pump, injectors and ignition... wait 2-4 seconds for the pump to do it's job... and then hit the starter switch... VVRRRROOOOOOMMMMMMMM.

But yes. Brian France is killing Nascar - soon to be the WWE of racing!

They commented on that during one of the practices.
There are three safety protocols built-in...
If they lose oil or fuel pressure the fuel cuts off, or if there is too much brake pressure, like the driver standing on the brakes hard, the fuel shuts off.

France is killing NASCAR because of fuel injection? I don't see the logic here, this was WAY overdue. Now if you want to talk about the aborted CoT, you have a valid beef. But they rightly reversed course on that, and next year the cars will look even more 'stock'.

In my post, I wasn't making a connection between fuel injection and Brian France. And I don't think that was goober22's intention either.