Much of the luck in racing happens when all parts work together and stay together for an entire race. Parts are a little like humans in that no matter how much care and preparation that has occurred, sometimes parts fail. Every part has a name and number, but many have slang terms too. Humans have a way of making familiarity humorous or graphic and slang is that product. 

Whether it’s a mechanical object or human behavior every work environment has its own special definitions. In motorsports it’s sometimes said a driver is driving the wheels off a race car when that driver seems frequently too close to the edge, even when drivers are always near the edge. It’s said more often that you got to keep fenders on the car until the checker flag falls, even when battered cars sometimes win races. 

The list of skills and functions to produce a competitive racing team is indeed very long. Always it takes a team to accomplish anything in motorsports and the elements are always complex.

This second segment of a series is devoted to race car part definitions and crew member comments in hopes of bringing more information to fans with varied experience. 

Crew chiefs have to know much about parts and people and how get the most from both.

Steve Addington, crew chief, [Kyle Busch No. 18 Toyota]

“Go out, do your job, work hard as a race team.” Addington said. “You cannot control what the 16, the 17, 39, whoever it may be. You cannot control what they do. You can control what happens to you. You go to the racetrack every week prepared the best you can. Be prepared, try to give him a racecar he can run up front with and get a solid finish.”

Alan Gustafson, crew chief [Mark Martin, NO. 5 Chevrolet]

"It's a constant evolution as anything is in this sport,” Gustafson. “You're always evolving. You're always refining. Mark Mauldin, our pit crew coach, and I met quite a bit and really tried to hash out a good plan to make the pit crew practices and development and refinement more of a science. We wanted a system that worked well. If a person changed, or if someone was unfortunate enough to get injured, we had a good system in place. Mauldin worked really hard to get these guys prepared. He took a lot of experience in other sports, such as football, and the way they compete for spots to be a starter, and day in, day out competition to be better. He applied all of that to our pit crew practice. We pushed them really hard, and they've all responded. They're all team players and have worked really hard. I'm not going to say that we have the fastest pit crew on pit road, but I do think we have the most fundamentally sound and most consistent.”

Mark Mauldin, pit crew coach, [Mark Martin, NO. 5 Chevrolet]
"Football from a competitive standpoint is similar to racing but that's about where it stops,” Mauldin said. “The mentality is different. We get five chances. We get five plays a game, where a football player may get 40 offensive, 50 offensive plays a game. We're closer probably to a baseball scenario with the hitter getting four chances and on a good night, maybe five. And we want to capitalize on these. And there's a lot of intensity in these pit stops because we know we don't get a lot of opportunity to show what we can do, so we try to put the most into every one. And there again it's not the fastest, it's the most efficient. That's what we look at is efficiency."

Realizing some of the terms selected here may seem rudimentary to some fans, it’s also known that not all fans understand the terms used often in NASCAR races. The purpose of this series is to help some fans learn new terms. 

Glossary of Racing Terms (NASCAR Sprint Cup Series 2009 Media Guide)

Blister: An overheating of the tread compound resulting in bubbles on the tire surface.

Blown motor: Major engine failure, for instance when a connecting rod goes through the engine block. Usually produces a lot of smoke and steam. 

Bore: Pistons travel up and down within each cylinder, or bore, in the engine block. 

B-post: Post extending from the roofline to the base of window behind the driver’s head.

Brake caliper: The part of the braking system that, when applied by the driver, clamps the brake disc/rotor to slow or stop the car.

Cam shaft: A rotating shaft within the engine that opens and closes the intake and exhaust valves in the engine.

Compound: A formula or “recipe” of rubber composing a particular tire. Different tracks require different tire compounds. “Left-side” tires are considerably softer than right side tires, and it’s against the rules to run left sides on the right. There are four basic components: rubber polymers, carbon blacks, oils and curatives.

Compression ratio: Amount that the air-fuel mixture is compressed as the piston reaches the top of the bore. The higher the compression, the more horsepower produced.

Cowl: A removable metal scoop at the base of the windshield and rear of the hood that directs air into the air box.

C-post: The post extending from the roofline of a race car to the base of the rear window to the top of the deck.

Crank case: The area of the engine block that houses the crank shaft.

Cubic-inch displacement: The size of the engine measured in cubic inches.

Photo credit: Dwight Drum @ Racetake.com