Author’s Note: As we all know, NASCAR drivers garner more attention than anyone else on their team. However, there are so many people on the teams that all play an important role in the success of the team and the sport we love. I am going to feature a variety of people who have careers in NASCAR, but aren’t normally in the spotlight.
Chris Long is an Aerodynamics Engineer at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates. He is mostly works in the shop, but travels to the wind tunnel and aero track tests with the No. 1 and No. 42 NASCAR Sprint Cup teams.
Here are some of Long’s quick facts:
Family: Mom (Alana), Dad (Glenn), Brother (Tom)
Hobbies: Sports (volleyball, football, tennis, skiing), Go karting, Going to concerts & community events, Cooking out
Favorite sport to watch: Football
Favorite type of music: Live music (concerts)
Most memorable moment of your racing career: Spotting for my brother [Tom Long] during his podium finish at the 2011 Rolex 24 hour race at Daytona after leading the most laps of any driver
Most memorable life moment: Winning the election for high school senior class president. My buddy ran independently for vice president; we were both quite new to the student government group and quite theunderdogs. We were both shocked when we found out either of us had won, let alone that we’d be running it together. Speaking of which, my 10 year reunion is coming up next year!
Long has grown up around the racetrack, as his dad road raced in the SCCA. He and his brother were always around cars and related projects in their garage. It was there where Long found that his strength was in working on the cars, instead of driving them like his dad and brother did. His dad and brother also own Long Road Racing, located in Raleigh, N.C., and compete in the Grand-Am road racing series. Long’s dad is the team manager of four cars, while his brother drives one of the cars. Occasionally, Long will join them on his vacations to help with car prep, setup advice, and spotting duties.
With his road racing background and interest in open wheel racing, Long did not have a huge interest in NASCAR, but he came to Charlotte to attend the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. At UNC Charlotte, he received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. In a twist of fate, Long landed in NASCAR instead of road racing or open wheel.
“NASCAR picked me,” Long said. “I was called for an internship interview by Chip Ganassi Racing the summer before I graduated college. I was excited; I was going to work on their Daytona Prototype or their IRL open wheel cars in Indianapolis! Nope, it was for here in Charlotte. It was a change of pace going from sleek carbon fiber machines to brute steel beasts, but the more I got into it, the more I liked the challenges.”
He credits his road racing background with helping him broaden his knowledge and experience base, which pays off in his NASCAR career. Long now spends his days at the wind tunnel, straight line testing, and performing CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analyses on the results. If that sounds intense or hard to understand, it is. Then try convincing your crew chief your calculations are correct!
No matter what the perception is of engineers, the best engineers have to be salespeople as well. Long explains, “If we found a gain in the wind tunnel, but faster teams don’t use it, then it’s quite difficult (near impossible) to convince drivers and crew chiefs that it’s better.”
Aero engineers are not just killing time playing with the wind when they test - they are trying to control its every movement around the car. Long describes the effort that goes into making a test plan detailed to the minute before setting foot in the wind tunnel, and how it can be very taxing when the test does not go as planned:
When a test piece does something different than what you’d expect…you get off track on your test plan working on areas you didn’t originally plan for. However, if you came well prepared, it’s exciting to be able to recover and switch directions without losing the flow of the test.
However, the best aero engineers thoroughly enjoy their time in the wind tunnel, and Long describes his favorite part of the job:
There’s a good mix between theoretical number crunching and hands-on practical experience. I find it fun to go to different test facilities I read about in magazines. It’s also fun when I tell people I work in the wind tunnel and they think we stand in the tunnel with the smoke wand looking at smoke traces. Although that’s fun playing with the smoke, it’s rarely ever used; you usually wait for the data to come through on the computer.
After his initial love for road racing turned to a newfound interest in NASCAR, Long says he enjoys the NASCAR community and the Charlotte area and sees a future for himself within the industry. His ultimate goal would be to lead a team in their research and development branch.
Long also shares his advice for others interested in a related area of NASCAR.
“Starting with a good education is step one,” he said. “Having the ability to listen, understand, and adapt to what you learn will carry you ahead of the crowd.”
Finally, he answers a few additional questions:
TD: What makes race teams and crew chiefs easy or difficult to work with from your perspective?
CL: Race teams – The race teams are pretty big in size, typically up to 75 people per car. So working with 150 people, it’s a diverse group of personalities. The biggest difficulty is communicating the latest spec to all corners of the company.
Crew Chiefs – They are so busy with so much to do, sometimes they don’t have the time to listen to all the last details of a project that you’ve been busy working on. It’s not that they aren’t interested in the time and effort you put in, they just need a quick summary on what action they need to do to their car to finish better in a race.
TD: If you could change anything about NASCAR, what would it be?
CL: I’d put mufflers on the cars. The noise is dangerously loud in the garage and for fans in the stands.
TD: Do you have any funny stories from your racing experience?
CL: 2nd places for my personal racing… I think I’m cursed. I think my last 4 or 5 races I’ve run left me with a 2nd place trophy (SCCA 13hr at VIR (x3) and the 24 Hours of LeMons (x2)). I’ve often thought, “what if you knew you were going to finish the race in 2nd; is it good that you beat almost everyone in the race, or frustrating that 2nd is the first loser?”
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