Evernham Motorpsorts: Too Much Technology Isn’t A Good Thing

Submitted from NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog

Ray Evernham is blaming his organization’s bad performance on using information that was not correct and basing critical decisions on that information.

“According to Evernham, the team made changes to its simulation software and the aerodynamics of its Dodge racecars after a preseason Nextel Cup test session at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The team built all of its Chargers based on that information, which no one realized was fundamentally flawed until last week. The cars that were being developed in the Evernham engineering lab proved to be nothing like the cars on the racetrack, and the performance level plummeted as a result.” - source: David Caraviello, NASCAR.COM

As a result of this new discovery at Evernham Motorsport the man in charge of the engineering department, technical director Eric Warren (who has been with Evernham since 2002) has been placed on leave and Ray Evernham himself along with Vice President of Competition Sammy Johns will take over Warren’s duties. In addition to these personnel changes at Evernham Motorpsorts, they will be using the 2006 Charger noses on their cars for the remainder of the season instead of the current 2007 noses which all the poor information is based on.

This is a pretty significant happening. It shows you just how reliant these teams are becoming on technology. It also shows you how, if not used properly, how technology can hurt your performance.

I just can’t believe that they couldn’t have caught this earlier in the season. You would think they have some sort of ‘checks and balances’ system established to prevent things such as this from happening. Also, if Evernham Motorsports is the ‘flag ship’ of Chrysler in NASCAR Cup then why couldn’t they have discovered the problem, especially with all of the support they are supposed to be given them?

Does this also effect other Dodge teams like Petty Enterprises since they supposedly share info with each other?

Personally, I think this whole thing is a bigger ‘pie-in-your-face’ for Ray Evernham than the Erin Crocker affair last year.

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