Patrick Canupp
There’s a fundamental difference between Patrick
Canupp’s job and what he did for more than a dozen years as a
student and professor.
“In academia you’re constantly trying to show the world what you’ve done,” says Canupp, a DOE CSGF fellow from 1991 through 1995. Now, as chief aerodynamicist for an auto racing team, “You don’t want anyoneto know.”
That’s the competitive nature of NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. When cars speed by at more than 200 miles per hour, even the tiniest advantages are vital.
“If we can see gains that are on the order of, say, half a tenth of a second, those are generally considered good gains and you try to get as many as you can,” says Canupp, a member of the Joe Gibbs Racing team, based in Charlotte, N.C. “You’re kind of searching for needles in a haystack and doing fine-tooth combing.”
Canupp is one of only two NASCAR aerodynamicists with doctoral degrees. He earned his in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in 1997 with a dissertation on modeling neutral gas dynamics in high-density plasmas. He taught at Gardner-Webb University in his native North Carolina before getting into racing.
“This has turned out to be pretty fascinating, but it wasn’t what I saw myself doing at all,” says Canupp, who wasn’t a NASCAR fan before his first racing job. “It maybe even looked a little bit strange to me, after developing my skills in computational fluid dynamics.”
Canupp rarely uses computer modeling now, relying instead on wind tunnel and track testing. His goal is keep his team’s cars on the track. Drivers must back off the gas as they go through the turns, and “The key is who can get back on the throttle and who can be at 100 percent speed leaving the corner” without skidding, Canupp says. “The guy who can get to the throttle quickest will have the fastest car and the greatest chance to win.”
Canupp and the engineers and builders on the Gibbs team tune the aerodynamics to create downforce, pushing the car onto the track. It sounds simple, but it’s difficult to do consistently. Cars may be identical in every way engineers can find and still perform differently, Canupp says. “When you start digging into why that is, it’s kind of mind-boggling,” he adds. “There are a lot of complex things that, even though I have a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, I can’t explain.”
NASCAR drivers and teams have the kinds of fame and followers previously reserved only for rock stars. Yet, Canupp says his job is rarely glamorous. He spends most of his time in the shop, crunching test results and tweaking the car’s design within the strict NASCAR limits. In a previous racing job he often rode the company plane to watch races from pit row. Now Canupp watches most of them from the comfort of his home.
“I view that as a feedback session — sometimes in excruciating detail,” he adds.
