NASCAR moving to fuel injected engines? Whoa hold up, lets not be too hasty, fuel injection was only adopted by other racing series’ mere decades ago. It’s becoming a reality, NASCAR is moving out of the dark ages and this weekend’s Kentucky Speedway race will be the first test of fuel injection systems for the Sprint Cup cars. The shift to EFI will be completed for the 2012 season with all Sprint Cup cars using the technology.

Why has it taken this long? Well there has been plenty of opposition against fuel injection, since carburetors are fairly simple mechanical devices that don’t allow for easy manipulation of the rules. Fuel injection systems are much more complex and are easier to adjust both mechanically and electronically. The bottom line is that NASCAR has been avoiding fuel injection mainly to stop teams from cheating, or bending the rules to gain a slight advantage.

The fuel injection system components for NASCAR will be built by two suppliers, Freescale Semiconductor and McLaren Electronic Systems, and are built to identical specifications. (more…)