Vroom with a view: what's it like to sit in a Winston Cup weekend office on wheels? Hop in

Sporting News, The, June 2, 2003 by Paul Grant

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18 Fresh-air vent. With cars designed to be so aerodynamically efficient, not much fresh air leaks into the cockpit. To keep you from breathing stale air, especially in traffic, a special vent redirects outside air into a carbon monoxide catalyst, then into a cooling box before it enters your helmet.

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19 Window net. This is clasped into place before you take to the track. It is designed to keep your left arm and/or head from flailing out of the window during a crash. Some drivers use netting beside their scat for the same reason. You can't drive without a net.

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Joe's front row

We sneaked a peak inside Joe Nemechek's car to see what's on his dash. Team manager Ed Guzzo, who says all Hendrick Motorsports Winston Cup cars use the same configuration, helped put functions to toggles.

The top row of buttons is made up of fuses (from left): engine, driver's fan, brake fan, rear-end gear fan, gauges and auxiliary circuit. These buttons pop when there's a short circuit, and the driver must push them in to reset the circuit.

In the second row, there is one main toggle for the backup switch--which NASCAR requires to connect to the ignition box, the ignition coil and the second connection to the distributor. Teams make sure there is a backup switch for everything electrical on the car. The second main toggle on this row is for the fans that cool the tires.

The primary lower toggles are to activate or shut off the battery, the backup battery, the engine fan, the brake fan and the rear-end gear fan.

TSN Insider Lee Spencer contributed to this story. E-mail managing editor Paul Grant at pgrant@sportingnews.com.