EFI Will Be a Game Changer in NASCAR; At Least In The Early Weeks

As all fans know, NASCAR has converted the Sprint Cup Series cars to an electronic fuel injection (EFI) system for the 2012 season.  The concerns are many, the subjects are varied.  (I'm am going out on a limb and assuming you all know this.  Right?  Bueller?  Bueller?)  And this EFI change, for now, is only in the Cup Series.

The big questions fans seem to have that I'm hearing are what will this do to the fuel mileage races?  The word on the street is that chancing fuel mileage will have a more severe penalty for any team that runs out of gas, seeing as how you won't be able to spray a starter fluid down a carburetor throat any more.

But with EFI, for the short term, I've heard tell that the fuel mileage in the cars will go up.  That is until the crew chiefs figure out how to get more HP out of this system that is more fuel efficient.

Some fans are worried about what happens to teams when or if the EFI system breaks on cars.  But from what I've been told, these systems are used in other racing circuits (Formula One and IndyCar), and if I heard right, they don't break. 

(I'll believe that when I see it.  To be honest, and not dissing the system, everything breaks at one time or another!)

But what's interesting about the inclusion of the EFI system, which some single-car teams have said has cost them upwards to $3 million to switch over to, is that the electronics involved and all the new information.

To help everyone across the board, NASCAR will be taking the EFI telemetry and sharing it with all teams after each event.  This is an effort to help all involved get up to speed faster.  (And I hope that won't be a constant!)


And because of the ingenuity that NASCAR has encountered in the past with their crew chiefs (hi Chad!!!), they've set up what series director John Darby says are enough firewalls and security measures, to make NASCAR comfortable with the premise that tampering has been minimized.

And of course, whoever is the quickest to adapt to and take advantage of all that EFI has to offer, will be the teams that shine the brightest.  At first.  That is, until everyone else catches on to what they're doing.

It should be interesting to see how things go in the first few weeks of the 2012 Sprint Cup Season, though from the tests I've seen, things don't look different for the fan.  With that said, heads up on the upcoming NASCAR Sprint Cup races:

The Budweiser Shootout: 2-18-12
The Gatorade Duels: 2-23-12
The Daytona 500: 2-26-12

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NB&P