Real challenge

When half a second separates an entire field of drivers, small performance gains make the difference between winning and losing.

While the 27 engineers at Joe Gibbs Racing had lots of innovative design concepts to boost competitiveness, their ideas were not making it onto the cars fast enough for the next race.

Prototypes had to be machined on the company’s CNC mills, but the 15 mills were busy day and night machining production parts for JGR’s 70 cars. It was tough to get machine time for prototyping, and a five-week backlog left new designs stuck in the concept phase longer than desired.

At JGR, new design concepts must balance weight reduction, power increase, and control- and-handling improvement, all while adhering to NASCAR’s stringent standards. This yields extremely complex part designs. ‘When milling these prototypes, we could have as many as seven machine setups. This was an inefficient use of our machines and manpower,’ said JGR technical director Mark Bringle.