NASCAR on Netflix: Behind the scenes of Cup Series inspection

Preview: On this episode of 'NASCAR: Full Speed' - now streaming on Netflix - take a look at the nuts and bolts of Cup Series inspection.

Transcript

00:00 What made NASCAR beautiful in the 60s and 70s and 80s was ingenuity.

00:08 Yes, there was a rule book, but the famous crew chiefs were able to work in the gray

00:14 areas and I bow this piece of sheet metal out a little bit or I create this device that

00:19 gives me that aerodynamic advantage and I'm more daring NASCAR to catch me.

00:24 That's not quite the case anymore because the race cars they're running right now are

00:28 designed to be very similar.

00:32 Some parts of the car are metal, some are carbon fiber.

00:35 They all expand and contract at different temperatures.

00:37 So I have to keep the car as cool as I can keep it.

00:39 When you watch inspection, it's like the funniest thing in the world, the umbrellas.

00:42 Have you seen the umbrella dance where they walk around holding the umbrellas?

00:46 So that's just to keep the sun off the car because the car grows.

00:50 Our job with the cars is to get everything to the legal limit and the legal tolerance.

00:55 The fastest car possible that NASCAR is okay with on the rules side, that's the goal.

01:00 Equal cars, let the drivers be the show.

01:03 The cars have to be the same.

01:05 It's NASCAR's way of ensuring that you're watching a level playing field of a race.

01:11 There are tens of thousands of nuts and bolts, parts and pieces, moving parts that goes into

01:17 making this machine perform flawlessly.

01:19 You're talking about thousands of an inch everywhere.

01:21 So it's easy to get a little nervous about some of it.

01:26 Speed limit says 35, so you're only going to go 35.

01:28 So now you go 40, so that's speeding.

01:30 But you don't expect to be pulled over.

01:32 The difference between 29.0 seconds and 29.1 seconds might be the thickness of a credit

01:40 card.

01:41 Okay, there we go.