At the competitive edge in every professional sport, the margins of victory are tiny differences in energy efficiency, skill and physical configuration. Over time, these strivings give rise to elaborate rules governing competitors’ behavior, their contests, and the unending attempts by the clever and the well financed to create a winning edge by stretching the rules.

To deal with this in stock-car racing, NASCAR® opened a research and development facility in Concord, North Carolina in January 2003. In addition to staff and facilities for materials testing and aerodynamics, it is equipped with advanced dimensional measurement technology to assist in the approval and verification of vehicles and parts as submitted by the manufacturers.

In effect, the new R&D facility seeks nothing less than to keep safety and parity in NASCAR. Founded in 1948, NASCAR sanctioned its first stock-car race on Feb. 15, 1948 on the beach/road course in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The dimensional measurement system is a ROMER portable coordinate measuring machine (CMM) and GridLOK™ from ROMER CimCore in Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA. The GridLOK is installed on a 10-by-20-foot steel fabrication plate with locator holes in a 2.6-foot (800 mm) grid. A standard car lift straddles the GridLOK plate.

  “All will be checked with the ROMER arm.” 

The operator, Design Engineer Daniel Kurtz, sees the use of the ROMER arm and PowerINSPECT as increasingly critical to speeding up the approval of new or restyled car bodies, exterior trim and bumper fascia.

At the same time, Kurtz sees the portable CMM technology to minimize opportunities for disputes over measurements and for achieving greater accuracy in dimensional checks. “We need the higher accuracy as the allowable tolerances are getting smaller,” he explained, “because the teams are increasingly using very precise digital technologies of their own as they seek a winning edge. At NASCAR, we work on a daily basis with some of America’s most competitively driven people.”

Adds Gary Nelson, NASCAR’s managing director of R&D, “the ROMER arm helps us make sure that all the Fords, Chevys, Dodges and Pontiacs really have the same configuration as the baseline configuration submitted by the auto manufacturers and approved for competition by NASCAR.”

The Concord facility is currently in the process of putting the ROMER to work developing protocols for checking things like engine blocks, heads and manifolds. A locked room at Concord contains a complete set of the approved engine and drivetrain components as submitted by the manufacturers. Each bears its maker’s logo and part number. “All will be checked with the ROMER arm.” Kurtz said. “The jigs and templates are manufactured by an outside source but the ROMER provides the ability to quickly make new patterns and measurements during the season should the need arise.”

For more than a decade, every racecar has been dimensionally checked before, and some after qualifying runs and races with templates. Over the years this number has grown to 31 aluminum templates. This ensures that the car aerodynamically matches the cars submitted for competition by the manufacturers. The winning car is rechecked after each race.

The biggest challenges with templates are translating dimensions taken from the automakers’ “submission” vehicles (and CAD models) into the silhouettes of the templates—plus duplicating them, getting them into the hands of the teams and sponsors, and checking them periodically.

“We put the ROMER GridLOK floor plate under a lift so the arm only has to be located, referenced, and zeroed-in once,” Kurtz pointed out. “Then it can be used for a wide variety of measurements outside and inside the body. With the GridLOK plate, the 9-foot arm’s work envelope allows us to dimension most points on the body and relate them to just about any other point on the body or in the chassis.

“With car up on the lift,” he continued, “the arm can dimension most points underneath, too. No additional fixtures are needed and we don’t have to play digital leapfrog to reach things.”