1. IZOD IndyCar Series venues place wager on World Series
2. Pagenaud, Newgarden nominated for top rookie prize
3. Drivers represent INDYCAR in charity rally4. HVM plays role in engineering project1. IZOD IndyCar Series venues place wager on World Series: With the San Francisco Giants and the Detroit Tigers battling for the Major League Baseball championship in the World Series, INDYCAR promoters Steve Page and Bud Denker have decided that they want more than civic pride and bragging rights should their respective team win the Fall Classic.Page, the president of the raceway in Sonoma, and Denker, Event Chairman of the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix, have upped the ante with a wager of goods from their respective regions over the outcome of the World Series. Both facilities host an annual IZOD IndyCar Series event, with the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix hosted May 31-June 2, 2013 and the GoPro Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma to be contested Aug. 23-25, 2013.If the Tigers win the World Series, Page has promised a generous assortment of world famous Ghirardelli chocolate, as well as 12 turkeys, just in time for Thanksgiving Day. Both will be delivered to Gleaners Community Food Bank, which fights hunger in southeast Michigan by providing millions of pounds of donated and purchased food to people in need.If the Giants capture the title, Denker has vowed to ship a variety of pizzas from Detroit-based Little Caesars - a Motor City tradition, as well as 12 turkeys, to the raceway in Sonoma. Page will deliver the turkeys to Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco just in time for use at the church's Thanksgiving Day celebration. Glide Memorial Church will serve 5,000 meals on Thanksgiving Day to those in need. It is the largest Thanksgiving Day celebration for those less fortunate in San Francisco.The 12 turkeys are symbolic of this being the 2012 World Series."As much as we'd love the folks in Detroit to enjoy some of our fine Ghirardelli chocolate, we know that Marco Scutaro, Barry Zito and the rest of the Giants will bring the World Series back home to Northern California," Page said. "So I'll thank Bud in advance for his generosity and we'll look forward to making the delivery of turkeys to Glide's wonderful Thanksgiving celebration."As part of the wager, the staff from the losing race event will also wear the baseball cap of the winning World Series team during the Friday on-track activities during race weekend of their event."We believe in our Tigers and we know that they will continue to do the city of Detroit proud as they try to win the team's first World Series since 1984," said Denker. "Despite Wednesday night's result, we're looking forward to a good series and we know that everyone at the Gleaners Community Food Bank will enjoy the turkeys for Thanksgiving and the Ghirardelli chocolate, courtesy of the raceway in Sonoma."2. Pagenaud, Newgarden nominated for top rookie prize: Simon Pagenaud, who won the Sunoco Rookie of the Year, and Josef Newgarden are among the nominees for the Autosport Rookie of the Year Award.Pagenaud finished fifth in the IZOD IndyCar Series on the strength of four podium finishes in his first full season in the IZOD IndyCar Series. He finished a season-best second at Long Beach.Newgarden, who won the 2011 Firestone Indy Lights championship, had a respectable rookie campaign, highlighted by a front-row start at Long Beach and a seventh-place qualifying effort for his first Indianapolis 500.Voting for the award, which will be presented in London during the Autosport Awards in December, is currently open at Autosport.com3. Drivers represent INDYCAR in charity rally: Firestone Indy Lights race winners Stefan Wilson and Logan Gomez are teaming together to participate in Auto Week's American Adventure.The pair, representing Miles Ahead Driving School, are driving a Mini Cooper in the event, which takes teams on a week-long rally which began Oct. 25 near Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, Colo., and concludes Nov. 1 at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas.
Graham Rahal, whose foundation was the beneficiary of the event's pre-race fundraising challenge, is also participating. Rahal's Team Car4Sale is using a Jeep SRT8 in the event, a mix between track racing, scavenger hunt-like game playing, and rally driving.4. HVM plays role in engineering project: Three motorsports engineering students from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte wrapped up the first step of a senior design project this weekend by scanning the #78 Nuclear Clean Air Energy Indy car.
The trio, Brandon McSwain, Jonathan Brissenden and Clinton Fields, working under the supervision of project mentor Dr. Mesbah Uddin, will use the data gathered from the scan to create a 3-D computer model of the car.The race car, which was used during the entire 2012 IZOD IndyCar season, was delivered to the UNC Charlotte campus on Oct. 8. The seniors began work almost immediately with the help of HVM Racing crew member Randy Smay, who was on site to disassemble the car as needed for scanning. Each student logged roughly 100 hours during the two weeks that the car was in the campus' motorsports research lab."In the middle of the summer we were approached by UNC Charlotte and AREVA for ideas on senior student programs," said Tom Brown, technical director for HVM Racing. "Together we provided several ideas, and ways to move forward, on projects that would benefit the students, increase their knowledge and understanding of a particular technical aspect of our business."The project came about through collaborative efforts of HVM Racing, their sponsor AREVA, and the Motorsports division of Mechanical Engineering department at UNC Charlotte. Security was tight around the motorsports lab for the two weeks that the Indy car was on campus for the project. Brown offered several options to Dr. Uddin for consideration before the group decided on the direction the project would take.
"A CFD study on how to improve the aero aspects of the front of the car was our main focus," Brown said. "As engineers we can gain a certain amount of aerodynamic information from wind tunnel testing, but CFD offered us the opportunity to look at multiple case studies. The aim is to improve the downforce, reduce the drag at the same time decreasing pitch sensitivity over multiple ride heights and steering angles. Not an easy task. Having the full size car at their disposal allowed the group to scan the actual car, build the models and prepare for the next stage of putting it all together and preparing for the CFD runs."HVM Racing's sponsor AREVA was instrumental in bringing the project together having worked with UNC Charlotte on other projects in the past."As a motorsports engineering professor at UNC Charlotte," Dr. Uddin said, "I always vie to provide my students with a feel of the life in a real racing world. The experience that the three senior design students had during the last two intense weeks while the HVM Nuclear Clean Air Energy Indy racecar was here at UNC Charlotte's new Motorsports lab, in my opinion, is second to none. The students viewed the opportunity of dismantling an actual racecar and then building its digital model for future analysis as the best one they could ever have as engineering students. This is the first time our program has had the privilege to get involved with (the IZOD IndyCar Series)."
