Innovations in Racing with Dale Earnhardt Jr.

What difference does the driver make? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly break down the science of NASCAR in Neil’s interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr. with the help of physicist Diandra Leslie-Pelecky.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, sports edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we have as our guest Dale Earnhardt Jr. I sat down with him and we talked about everything under the sun. I got Chuck Nice. Chuck, how you doing, man? Hey, what's happening, Neil? All right, all right. Gary, Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey, Neil.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, always good to have you guys. So, what, we have clips from my interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr. But, but, we, Gary, you, you, that wasn't enough for you?

• 0:55Gary O'Reilly?

  No, we went out and found a friend of ours that we had back on the show when it was playing with science many years ago, Dr. Diandra Leslie Pelletti. Undergraduate degrees in physics and philosophy, PhD in condensed matter physics, Neil.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm, mm, loving it, loving it. Love condensed matter.

• 1:13Gary O'Reilly?

  I knew this, this is definitely for you. Researcher in magnetic nanoparticles, focusing on medical diagnosis and treatment, a science communicator, radio, TV broadcaster, an author of the physics of NASCAR. Not only is Dr. Diandra an expert in NASCAR, but she is also working with NBC on their motorsports and has become co-opted into the Formula One family. So, I think we have just the right person. Let's, let's meet our dear friend, Dr. Diandra Leslie Pelletti.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diandra, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be back.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where did they find you? Oh, you're back because when you were last on, I wasn't on that program. So it's my first encounter with you.

• 2:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, and I guess if, if you write a book called The Physics of NASCAR, that makes you pretty findable in our circles. So that's.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  It certainly does. Yes.

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 2:13Chuck Nice?

  I didn't know about the, uh, magnetic particle research for the purposes of medical diagnostics.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm just gonna find out how she makes this transition. How do you go from nanoparticles, which nano is the metric prefix for a billionth? So, and it's just, just been everybody's prefix for small, like nanobots and this sort of thing. But they don't literally mean a billionth of something, but the idea is clear. Nanoparticles, uh, how do you go from there in medicine into NASCAR? What's up with that?

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Well, nanomaterials were actually one of the fields that, uh, the public didn't understand. And when they first hit in, I don't know, the nineties and the two thousands, those of us working in the field had to work very hard to explain to people, um, what we were actually doing and the implications of what we were doing. So I learned a little bit more about how to communicate with the public then. But actually, the reason I got into the race cars was because I was teaching, you know, the intro 101 basic physics. And all of a sudden I realized I can teach all of this using cars. And the kids would be a whole lot more interested than they would be if I'm doing balls rolling down inclined planes.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Frictionless inclined planes and massless pulleys on. Right, right. So, and, and that was in the genesis of your book?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  It was.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Physics of NASCAR.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  It's actually interesting because, um, I always like to ask if there are physicists at the race shops? And one of the guys said, no, I don't think we have any physicists. You guys think everything interesting is negligible.

• 3:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Science put down.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right. Well, let's get into our first clip with Dale. Um, uh, is he abbreviated D E Junior? Is this a, like, in the know, like, if you're buddies with him? Uh, you know, I, I want to be respectful.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Oh, we just call him Junior.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Junior?

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No other junior, just junior.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Well, there is another junior, but he's in his eighties or nineties. So yeah, if you say junior, we all know who you're talking about.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right. So I wanted to know, we have several clips we'll bring in here, but let's start off. I wanted to know what was different about each car, if each car had to, had to submit to regulations in size and, and parameters, then what's the difference? Okay. And then Dale set me straight. Let's check out this first clip.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  That's interesting because so there's a long history of, of NASCAR itself and stock car racing for, as, taking one example of motorsports that I'm familiar with. There's this long history of how the cars have changed and developed, but to your point, um, all of the cars are measured and, and there's a technical inspection and they all have to meet the same measurements, requirements. And so how does a manufacturer differentiate itself from the others if they all have to appear, you know, measure the same body panels?

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And, and how about pistons? I mean, the pistons have to be the-

• 5:26Speaker 04

  All, all of the engines are, uh, there's, there's a bunch of restrictions on how the manufacturers can build their motors and what's allowed to be able to, um, create amount, a certain amount of, they want a target on torque and peak torque and peak horsepower. They don't want you to exceed or get outside of this box. They want all of the manufacturers to live in this same sort of area so that no one has an advantage over the other. And it seems about that that would be conflicting to the true core of racing. Racing is building a fast car and building one better or faster than the next guy. But like I say, I mean, 50 to 75 years of

• 6:09Speaker 04

  history has, you know, created this massive sort of, you know, rule book with all kinds of restrictions and limitations and guidelines that everyone now has to fit into this tiny, tiny little space.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diandra, I'm confused. I mean, I hear him, but what, how do you advance a sport? If every time, everybody's got it, however clever your engineers are, they gotta make it, they have to obey the rules and regulations set out about the design and then the aerodynamics, the tires, do the restrictions focus on one part of the car and not another? And, and whatever part they don't focus on, do you have the freedom to make that part badass? And then win every race? Like, I'm just confused. Set me straight here. These rules would ruin horse racing. Okay, okay.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  It would. So there's sort of two answers to that. One is that the reason for all the standardization is because what NASCAR doesn't want to happen is that the people who have the most money win. Because then you just keep ramping everything up and all of a sudden, no one can afford.

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diandra, this is, this is America. That's right. We like, we like our races just like our elections. Whoever has the most money should win. Whoever dies, dies with the most toys wins.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  And, and we did that for a long time. And what happened was, uh, people started dropping out of the sport. One driver, Martin Truex Jr., won the championship one year and the next year, his owner shut down everything because he just couldn't afford to keep doing the racing. And that's how you kill a series. And so a lot of the standardization was basically to save the series. Now, where the innovation has really come in is that NASCAR designed the car we're racing now, which is called the next gen car. A lot of the innovation is there. And so the teams have a smaller area in which to work. They can change springs, shocks, suspension geometry. You know, for example, when you stop at a stop sign, you go forward, right?

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Well, your entire car does that because the car is attached to, the top of the car is attached to the wheels by springs. And so that's your suspension. Well, that transfers weight. And you know that frictional grip you have depends on the weight pushing down on the tires of the car. So every time the part of your car goes backward, forward, to the side, you are changing the grip on your four tires. That is an incredible amount of freedom that the teams have. Now, Junior doesn't know that because he's not the one who's trying to figure out what springs and what shocks we use for a particular track. So he doesn't see a lot of that. And it's really a matter of how do you match the car setup, the suspension mostly, to a driver's style?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Because you could put Junior in one of those cars, you could put another driver in the same car, and one will be able to go faster than the other. And that doesn't necessarily mean one is better than the other, just that the car suits one driving style better than it does the other.

• 9:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Let me ask you, let me ask you this. Has there ever been pushback from the teams where NASCAR have said, this is what's going to come in as a restriction this season? And they've all turned around and go, nah, not happening. Has there ever been that? Or do they all do as they're told?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  A lot of the impetus for the standardization came from the drivers and the owners. Because imagine if you're a driver driving for a team that doesn't have as much money. Do you want to spend 36 weekends a year running, you know, 21st or 30th? Just because you don't have enough money to make the car faster? Or do you want to have an equal platform? And then you've got a better chance at showing off your skill? Because it's not the car that's winning, it's the driver who's winning.

• 9:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. So when, when you say that, when the restrictions come in, who, who eventually ends up working the harder? The engineers in the pit or the drivers themselves? Because they've got to adapt and survive out there on the track.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  It really depends on the change. So some of the changes really affect the drivers more than the teams. But they're making a lot of changes. NASCAR is especially this year. They're trying out mufflers for the first time. They ran mufflers at the preseason race. They only muffled them down to somewhere around 80, 90 decibels from 110.

• 10:35Gary O'Reilly?

  What is the point?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Well, the point is that they were racing at the LA Coliseum. And people live around there.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotcha.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  And it makes a huge difference, that 20 decibels, to the people who live outside.

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 10:52Gary O'Reilly?

  The NIMBYs, the NIMBYs, who protested outside the Coliseum with placards. But you couldn't hear what chants they were screaming.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go to my next clip, where this notion that you're doing something to win the race, but in fact, innovation, you know, where does anything innovate? Are the cars we drive on the street because some people are saying, let's have innovations for the regular driver, or do they have other origins? So let's go back to my exclusive conversation with Dale Earnhardt Jr. on just that. Check it out.

• 11:30Speaker 04

  While everything is really tight in the rules, there is this sort of little, small area that the manufacturers tend to create advantages in. For example, right now, the Chevrolets would be, they would appear, the Chevrolets have a little bit of an advantage on a track that's a mile and a half in length. And their nose and the other components on the body that they do have some liberty in, allowed them to develop an advantage over the other two manufacturers. And that ebbs and flows back and forth as the manufacturers continue to develop and introduce new pieces. And so-

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a subsequent year, would other manufacturers copy that innovation?

• 12:12Speaker 04

  They might look at it and learn how to do it better. And that's sort of been, that's sort of been the way that this sport's evolved for 75 years is, you know, I'll make a better mousetrap than you. You'll look at my mousetrap and you'll figure out what I might have not seen. And you'll take my idea and improve on that. And it just continues to layer upon a layer, upon a layer of improvement to the same theories and ideas.

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I heard that many, many features of the modern internal combustion engine car-

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, their origin to innovations in NASCAR. And let me just mention a few. You tell me if I'm right, or like fuel injection.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that was that first in NASCAR and car racing more broadly?

• 12:59Speaker 04

  Well, I think motorsports more broadly. NASCAR actually hung on to the carbureted engine a little bit longer than most. I think though that fuel injection and those, you know, those types of improvements on our road automobile, the car me and you buy off the dealership floor. Those improvements in those cars certainly come from motorsports. Seat belts, uh, safety innovation and, um, you know, durability in suspension components. Uh, all of those things originate from what we learn on the racetrack. The wear and tear and the durability and we, you know, we'll put these components to

• 13:41Speaker 04

  the test and we find their weak spots. The manufacturers pay attention to that. They take that back to the car that me and you buy off the showroom floor.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Diandra, there are test pilots. I love it. Is that a fair way to think of them?

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Um, in some ways it is, but you know, NASCAR is much more of a reactive series. Um, if you look at the origins of motorsports, they came about when the cars first got invented and manufacturers were trying to convince people, these are good things. These are better than your horse and buggy, for example. Um, NASCAR has always been more about selling cars. And so there hasn't been as much innovation. However, um, they're very good at popularizing things. And so I think, for example, there is a material called a compacted graphitic iron, which is in between cast iron and ductile iron.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  And you know that engine blocks are made of cast iron usually. Problem is, they tend to crack. Well, this material, which was invented in the 60s, because we finally got metallurgy down to the point where we could actually make it, is a lot lighter. You can make much thinner features. And so, you know, one of the things as manufacturers turn to electric vehicles is they need to reduce the weight of the cars. So some of the materials, some of the tricks that racers have been using to decrease the car weight are things that will directly translate to production cars, especially as we move to electric vehicles.

• 15:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm. Are we at the limit of our innovations, Doctor, with NASCAR? In the sense of, you know, with all the stuff we can see with the aerodynamics, you've talked about the engine blocks. We, you know, we're going to talk about tires in the next segment. And there's, there's things on the floor of the car that are built specifically to, to add to downforce. Are we, are we at the limit or are we just beginning?

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Oh, no, I mean, what, what is limiting us is money.

• 15:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  You know, so.

• 15:41Gary O'Reilly?

  How about that?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Wind tunnel time.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I could have said that, Deontra. I didn't need you to on the show.

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  That, that kinda, that kinda translates across everything.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Everything. Yeah, it does, it does. But time in a wind tunnel is, you know, I'd forget how much it is now, about a thousand dollars an hour, up, up more than that. You know, that, teams used to spend 12 hours in a wind tunnel, take the car back, strip it and start over again. And again, that kind of cost just keeps going up and up and up.

• 16:13Chuck Nice?

  But really, the, um, the need for innovation changes from area to area, right? As, as the needs of the consumer changes. So like you just said, right now, we're looking at the electrification of pretty much our entire economy. So now, uh, the urgency for lighter materials more, that are durable, that can stand up to, you know, the road, that, that becomes very, very important as before, it was a luxury, like to, to have carbon fiber in your car. Now, oh, look how cool that is. So cool. Well, now it's like, yeah, you, you kinda need that.

• 16:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And so a lot of the processing, figuring out how to make carbon fiber in extremely intricate shapes, for example, a lot of that comes out of F1 and out of NASCAR.

• 17:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah, cool. So is there, is there an area that the engineers haven't really got heavily into yet, Doctor, in terms of where you think, you know what, if we go there, we could really make something special happen?

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Um, yes, and it goes back to nanoparticles, um.

• 17:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Ooh.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Lubricants. So one of the things you have to worry about is a cooler engine produces more horsepower. And everything, you know.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, why is that so?

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Um, because you get more air molecules in when the air is cooler because it's denser, right?

• 17:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that. I didn't know that. That is so simple. That is such a simple concept.

• 17:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mic drop right there.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Things in physics.

• 17:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course. So could you put a, could you put a little cooling thing in there to, to shrink it back down? Or that would just be extra weight and, oh my gosh.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  That's the thing. Um, if you were able to make fluids that could transfer heat better away from the car, you would have an advantage. And the best part is, there'd be no way, I mean, F1 made a rule against nanomaterials. How are they gonna find them, honestly?

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe after a little magnifying glass, looking over.

• 18:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 18:24Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty funny.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey Chuck, I found a nanoparticle right here.

• 18:27Gary O'Reilly?

  There's a giant deer stalker in a magnifying glass, god, priceless.

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  However, you just made like, well, then again, we are moving away from combustion engines, but still, uh, I, I can't believe nobody's figured out a way to make a lubricant that actually cools the engine at the same time. So like, it wouldn't just be motor oil, it'd be motor oil and some kind of additive that would bring the temperature down.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:52Chuck Nice?

  That would be amazing.

• 18:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, that's, isn't that to do with all the vents on the cars and the air vents, you know, not just for downforce, but as a, as a natural. Free coolant.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, 200 mile an hour air is gonna cool stuff down, right?

• 19:06Gary O'Reilly?

  True, yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Well, yes and no. So the most important thing you have to keep cool in a race car is the driver. And, uh,

• 19:13Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry, baby. I'm cool.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Also, they're... So there, you know, we've really closed up the cockpits. And so the problem is, it's getting to be 120, 130, 140 degrees Fahrenheit in the car.

• 19:25Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  And so we're now worried about how do we keep the driver's temperature from getting up too high, because when your temperature gets up high, you lose your ability to think correctly. And, you know, you don't want to be doing bad at 200 miles an hour. So the other area of cooling is ways that you can, uh, you know, force cooled fluid through a shirt or, you know, something more sophisticated than dumping a bag of ice down your fire suit at the next pit stop.

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But of course, NASA, there are space suits where there are, there are, there are tubes that move through, that thread the suit to particular areas where you can most benefit from a heat exchange, uh, if you're trying to stay warm or cold, either, right?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's interesting.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  And so drivers do have these shirts, they're called cool shirts, very descriptive name, that are just capillary tubes sewn onto a shirt. But the biggest problem we have right now is the capillary tubes tend to clog. And then you're stuck in the car with warm water going through the suit. So that's an area, if you're gonna start a business, that would be a really good area to go into.

• 20:32Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Yeah, we have, he's a great driver, but we lose every race because he insisted that we put an air conditioner in the car.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He is.

• 20:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Wants to drive with the windows on.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a stereo, and a stereo.

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, we gotta take a quick break, but when we come back, more of my exclusive interview with the one and only NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr., supplemented by the physics expertise of Dr. Diandra Leslie Pelecky, author of The Physics of NASCAR. Where else are we gonna get that expertise? But from her. We'll be right back.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, segment two, StarTalk Sports Edition, featuring my exclusive interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr. And we've got with us Dr. Diandra Leslie Pelecky, who wrote the book on the physics of NASCAR. And guess what that book is called? I'm gonna go with "The Physics of NASCAR." "The Physics of NASCAR," alright. In my next clip with Dale Earnhardt Jr., I heard that they don't inflate their tires with air. Air, like air, the mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. Instead, they remove the oxygen and stick just nitrogen in the tires. And I'm thinking, why?

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my God, check this out.

• 22:14Speaker 04

  That's because of, we want the heat that's created in the tire. I believe the nitrogen will be less affected by that temperature. And so this air is gonna increase, right? And you're gonna, as a tire gets hot, gets warmer, the size of this tire, we want to minimize the change in that tire from the moment it leaves the race, leaves pit road and goes out on the racetrack and performs. And so they found a mixture that would be less volatile, less affected by temperature. The tire, like the inside edge of a right front tire during a run, it's gonna go over 250 degrees, 280, 300 degrees.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  And so the air inside of the tire is affected by that heat. And as the air increases in the tire, the size of the tire changes. That changes the setup and the way the car drives and feels.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my God.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  You want all of those things to be minimized. And so using nitrogen has gained the teams a bit of control, a bit of control and predictability, I think, over just how much the tire's gonna change. You know, we have a target pressure. Working with Goodyear, they give us a lot of tire data, and they'll tell us your target pressure. Pressure for maximum grip and performance in its tires going to be fifty five degree or fifty five pounds. And so if the tire is likely to gain fifteen pounds in, you know,

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the race, in the race.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  While we're racing it, if it's going to gain fifteen pounds and and sort of plateau, then we want to pull off pit road with forty pounds of air in the tire.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so there's most of the teams all understand where they need to be. There's not somebody out there that's smarter than the next guy trying, you know, that knows a little bit more and is doing that job a little better. Goodyear provides all of the teams of tons of tire data on sidewall stiffness and all kinds of pliability in the rubber and everything else to help them understand, you know, air pressures and what they need to run. And there's also a safety factor. Like if you start the air pressure too low, the tire itself will come apart over time.

• 24:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, DeAndre, I have a zillion questions after that clip there. So first of all, are they nitrogen is slightly lighter than oxygen? Is this why they're removing the oxygen and using primarily nitrogen?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  No, actually, it's not. What they want, so we call it a tire build. It's the difference between the tire pressure when you're on pit road and the tire pressure, you know, when you're just running rain flying laps. That build, you want to be predictable. Now imagine if you have just say compressed air, you know, and you put it from a compressor into the tire, that air is going to have a lot of water in it. And you heard him say the temperature is going to get between two fifty, three hundred. Well, that's about the boiling temperature of water, right?

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  So what's going to happen is all of a sudden, you're going to get a change in pressure. And that change in pressure will upset the car enough for a driver to crash. So what they found was that by using nitrogen, which is dry, has no oxygen, has no water in it, rather, that made the builds more predictable.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn. Okay, so, so a couple of things. But under pressure, the water would, would turn to steam at an even higher temperature than 212. So maybe if it's getting up to 250, 260, maybe.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  300 is, is not out of the question.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not out of the question. So, okay. So now I asked him, why don't they preheat the nitrogen before they put it in the tire? Then you don't have to build anything. You come out of the pit, ready, you know, ready for prime time. And he didn't have a good answer for that. Do you have any insight into that?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, the answer is because NASCAR won't let you.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, okay.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  You know, honestly, that one I understand because I do not want people with compressed air cylinders, which by the way are sort of dangerous, heating them up.

• 26:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  I mean, you're just asking for an accident. I did want to say.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What could go wrong? What could go wrong?

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, the pit manatee.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The pit manatee.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  I did want, I did want to mention that a couple crew chiefs every so often decide they're going to get really smart. And instead of using nitrogen, they decide they're going to use argon or xenon, both of which are also ideal gases. And what they learn almost inevitably is that the additional cost is not worth any gain in performance.

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you, if you go to gases down on the noble gases on the right-hand side of the periodic table, they really need to use krypton. That's the one.

• 27:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, then you get super manpower out of that one, I'm pretty sure.

• 27:13Chuck Nice?

  Or at least your car won't have superpower anymore.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, kryptonite. Oh, got it. That's the opposite. Sorry, my bad, my bad.

• 27:22Gary O'Reilly?

  And obviously it'll have to be green.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 27:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Goes without saying. What, what if the tire pressure is too low? Because don't the tire, don't you get to go quicker with lower tire pressure? But the trade off is the integrity of the tire itself?

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a hot, there's a happy pressure spot for a tire. If there's too little air in it, you'll actually see the sidewall start to flex. And if you go to a track, a small, short track, Martinsville, which is a half mile, they will actually start the cars out between nine and 11 PSI. And they will build up to 35, 32 PSI during the course of a run. But if you started at 32, you'd get a build and then they'd be so big that you'd be having less of the tire in contact with the track, which would give you less grip.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. So we did a whole explainer video on the tire pressure. And if you multiply the area of tires in contact with the road, by the tire pressure, you get the weight of the car. And so, yeah, if your tires get over inflated, they have to rise up on a center line there so that all those, all those numbers still come out.

• 28:37Chuck Nice?

  Believe it or not, that's the same for your regular car that you're driving on the, every single person, you know, there's a recommended PSI for the, for, and for the, for the tire themselves. There's a pressure it has to be. And they tell you, if you run it low, you wear your tires out. Uh, and if you run it high.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the edges, yeah.

• 28:57Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, it screws up the tread.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 29:03Gary O'Reilly?

  But then again, see, we always think of straight line speed and grip for a tire. But when you watch NASCAR, and I've watched a couple of races, just so as I can understand a little bit better, there's a lot of need for lateral grip. So if you overinflate a tire, it becomes too high a pressure, then that's where your loss comes in.

• 29:22Chuck Nice?

  Now you got, I mean, that's, this is where I want them to overinflate all the tires. Now you just made this game more exciting.

• 29:29Gary O'Reilly?

  You're welcome. So doctor, do we get that? Do we, do we, do we have a sweet spot for lateral grip? Because if I'm gonna overtake or come underneath a, a car in front of me, I'm gonna need to have that lateral ability without just sliding all the way off.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, lateral grip is actually much more important than the speed down the straightaways, for example. Um, so one of the problems is that if you are underinflated when you turn, you can imagine you're actually shearing the sidewalls of the tire.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yup, yup.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  And if it's way too low, you could actually shear them off the tire. So that would be dangerous. And then if it's too high, you just simply don't have the grip to make the turn and you're gonna hit the wall.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at that. Mm-hmm. Well, so when you watch NASCAR and you think it's just about driving fast, right? And then I'm sitting down with Dale Earnhardt and have him sort of reflect on what's going on inside the driver's head, a good driver's head, and what is he thinking about? Is he just, do I, is it pedal to the metal? Or is there some other sort of thinking about the engineering and physics? I know one thing he's thinking. What? Damn, it's hot. Oh, okay. Let's find out. Let's find out. What else the drivers thinking? Could it be the aerodynamics? Let's find out in my next clip. Here it is.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  In our racing, since we drive on ovals and we are always turning left and we're always going in the same direction, we really need the right side of our car to perform almost like a wing on an airplane. And how do you, if we have a car that's tracking straight down the straightaway, uh, if we can control how much y'all, the y'all movement, or how much the car goes into y'all into the corner, and almost, you know, it almost, as the car pivots into y'all, into the corner, that right side becomes a wing. The air now is pushing on that right side, trying to straighten the car out.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  That means I can go faster. I can mash the gas and go harder. And so we control the y'all movement and we focus on side force or the amount of air pushing on that right side of the car, trying to keep that car from spinning out and losing control. And, uh, you know, that, that's been, that's really been the main focus in NASCAR in oval track racing, probably over the last two decades.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's saying yaw, right? Y-A-W, not y'all?

• 32:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I know. I thought he was talking about the people's watching.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do.

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  Y'all watching the thing. He's about to pitch in the yaw.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pitch it in. So, yeah, he's using, he's using terms from aerodynamic, flight airplanes and aerodynamics. So, so can you comment on that, Diandra?

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the aerodynamics of a race car are really important. And what he's talking about is, you know, you have a car and it's coming straight towards you. And if the car is in zero yaw, the tires are both lined up straight. It's actually better, if you're turning left, it's better for the car to be a little bit like this. So the right side's poking out. That means that you're going to get more air coming along the right side of the car. That's going to give you side force. That's going to help you turn. And so, you know, everyone has pretty much the same mechanical grip, but it's the weight of the car. So anything you can do to increase your aerodynamic grip will give you more speed.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, mhm, mhm.

• 32:59Gary O'Reilly?

  So could I design the right-hand side of the car in a slightly advantageous way?

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 33:06Gary O'Reilly?

  To build that out?

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 33:07Gary O'Reilly?

  To kind of make it naturally be doing that?

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary wants to-

• 33:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Or, or am I now in trouble with the big?

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're an aerodynamic cheater. He's a cheater aerodynamics.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Let's say that you came up with something that actually accomplished that was within the rules. NASCAR would probably make it illegal right after that race.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After you won, you have to win the race first. Before they make sure if he came in dead last, they would say, yeah, use it anytime.

• 33:31Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm getting laughed out of town.

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  Why is this NASCAR shaped like a rambus? What is going on?

• 33:39Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, we've seen the drafting, we've seen ridiculously close drafting. We've seen them in the single file, we've seen them three abreast. But when they're racing and in different stages and different positions, are there, is there a sweet spot? Or are there at times multiple sweet spots which the drivers themselves can exploit?

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean location among other cars, Gary?

• 34:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Say it again.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sweet spot, as a sweet spot, you mean location among other cars?

• 34:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, where all of a sudden the aerodynamics are more beneficial for the car trailing. So is that kind of, I mean, there's all sorts of thoughts that go off in your mind once you start to watch one of these things.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Yes, the question of how the air coming out of another car affects your car is one that has been with NASCAR ever since drafting was discovered in the 60s. It's almost more of a question of making sure you're not in certain places. So when you get right behind someone and you get to one side, in fact, we saw this at Atlanta this week, one driver just actually moved behind the other from right to left and the driver in front spun out. There was no contact, but it changed the air so much that it made him spin out.

• 34:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. He did a draft pit move on him.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 34:54Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 34:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so with the outer wall, how is that affecting, apart from the fact you don't want to be hitting it, how is that affecting the aerodynamics on the cars that race closer to the wall as opposed to those inside of the track?

• 35:09Speaker 02

  So if you're running the outer wall, you're at a slight disadvantage because you're going a longer distance, right?

• 35:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, okay.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  However, if you're running the outer wall, some drivers can take advantage of sort of the cushion of air between the car and the wall and pick up a little speed that way. Now, you have to have some guts to do that because the closer you are to the wall, the less tolerance you have for air, right?

• 35:33Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's interesting there, if, because the more you draft and the more you become efficient, the, maybe you could work it so that it's one fewer pit stops to refuel. That can make a very big difference, can't it?

• 35:49Speaker 02

  It can, and also it's going to depend how many cautions there are in a race. So, you know, you load up a full tank of fuel, how many laps you get is going to depend how many of those laps are green and how many are yellow because obviously you get a few mileage when you're not going as fast.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Okay, damn. Who's thought, do all the, do the fans know all these details that are going on, or they just want a fast race and an occasional crash?

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Some know, some aren't interested. I mean, that's the great thing. Um, I was out at Las Vegas two weeks ago, just going out and talking to fans about some of this stuff. And a lot of them really want to understand, why isn't my driver winning? What's happening? Why did he crash here? So that's the great thing about using motorsports to get people interested in math and science. They want to know.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, excellent.

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  I have one friend who's in the NASCAR and he's, you know, he's obsessed. So like he's with all this stuff that we're talking about. And there's something wrong with him though, because he actually, I'm serious. He has an autographed tire slick that he uses as a coffee table. Like he's in that, he's in that space, you know?

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right, all right.

• 37:04Gary O'Reilly?

  So what are you doing? Are you critiquing him because of his interior design?

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, apparently.

• 37:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Or are you critiquing him because he likes NASCAR?

• 37:11Chuck Nice?

  Well, first of all, he thinks I'm gay because I don't have a tire slick as a coffee table. So that should let you know where, what different wavelengths we are.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take, we gotta take a break, but we're gonna come back with Diandra Leslie Paulecki telling us about the physics of NASCAR. And in the final segment, I look forward to just learning about transition to electric. Uh, any other thoughts and physics insights that are going on in that fascinating sport? When StarTalk Sports Edition continues.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition, featuring my exclusive interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr., otherwise known as Junior. And we've got deep physics insight coming to this episode from Dr. Diandra Leslie Paulecki, who wrote the book, The Physics of NASCAR. You know, I asked him about going electric. And if you go electric, then you might have aerodynamic noise, but you don't get that engine noise. That engine noise that is so characteristic of the sport. And so I had to ask him about it. What happens if the music goes away and it's just silent running? Check it out.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  I think their ambitions are absolutely there. I don't know that there's concrete plans, what that looks like, but there's an adage or a phrase that we used to say all the time in racing in NASCAR, and that was win on Sunday and sell on Monday. And what that meant is the car, the manufacturer that would typically win on Sunday, they would go, they were going to have a good day at the dealership on Monday. They were gonna,

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. So if Chevrolet was successful on the racetrack, their belief, the reason why they're in motorsports in general is to sell automobiles. And so if their sedan that they're trying to sell to the market is doing well on the racetrack, then more people are likely to buy that car. And so that still has some truth to it. Now, the race car that I'm right, you know, that we race on the racetrack, isn't anything like you're going to buy off the showroom floor. But we still sort of adhere to that idea that, um, you know, the manufacturers, their, their whole purpose is to raise, you know, the profitability of their, of their.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Why not? Why not? Of course it is.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so, yeah. And if they're, and if they're building hybrids and they're building and studying how to build electric cars, fully electric cars, then we too need to adapt some of that technology. We need to make it, we need to be, we need to be a place where the manufacturers want to be, to be able to showcase that technology. If hybrids is the future, and if, if fully, uh, you know, fully electric cars are the future for the consumer, then where are they going to truly test that technology? Where are they going to put that technology to the ultimate test that's on the racetrack? That's our belief. And I believe it's the manufacturer's belief as well.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, I own an electric car, and as you surely know, they're very high acceleration, right? It's just.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Massive torque.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very, very high torque at low speeds. I mean, every, so that's an interesting feature that could manifest in interesting ways.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For races designed just for that kind of car.

• 40:52Speaker 04

  I think that, that's true. And another conversation is. What will be fascinating to me is as hybrids become more commonplace in motorsports, we lose that combustion engine sound, the engine braking of decelerating into the corner, the sound of the RPMs accelerating out of the corner. We, as I say, we, race car drivers, listen to those noises to determine whether we are at, above, or beyond the level of grit, right, or we're over accelerating, over, we're over pushing.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's talking to you. The sounds are talking to you.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so when that's gone, when you get into an electric car, you lose some of that, you lose some of the understanding of what that combustible engine is telling you. I think that's going to be so fascinating, watching drivers that are, that have sort of lived both worlds, right?

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Deander, do you foresee electric NASCAR anytime soon?

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Yes. The current generation of car, they designed with the intent of eventually being able to add hybrid features to it. And what Junior said is exactly correct. The manufacturers are in NASCAR to sell cars. When they're trying to sell electric cars, NASCAR will be racing electric cars. I think the important thing there is that NASCAR is in a position to change people's minds. And so the people who now say, I hate electric cars, may get used to it, may change their mind about electric cars based simply on NASCAR adopting them.

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Deager, I just had an idea, all right? Have you ever seen low riders that move into town real slow?

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you want to sell low riders, you got to have a slow NASCAR. They're bobbing up and down, and they're just slow, and they're there to be looked at as you drive by. That's a new kind of NASCAR.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Gary, isn't Formula One having that problem with the porpoising?

• 42:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, maybe it is, but I don't think anyone's buying a Formula One car out of a showroom. He times.

• 43:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey, I must ask you, what you heard there with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Was the relationship, the intuitive relationship of sight, sound, and vibration, everything. If the NASCARs are now electric, does that relationship get broken between driver and vehicle? And how, how are we going to solve that problem if that is now going to be a problem of the future?

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they no longer become one with their car?

• 43:33Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't think so. So there's two ways that the drivers are sensing things in their car. One is eyes, ears, right? And the other, and that's where sound will come in. The other one, however, is through their butt, basically, is their feeling how the balance of the car is shifting. As they're, you know, as you lose fuel, you lose rear grip, for example. As your tire is wearing, you lose grip. They feel that in the seat and have to adjust accordingly how fast they go to make sure they're not exceeding the limits of grip. So that will still be there with the electric cars. I've talked to drivers who have driven both and they say it is a very different technique to make an electric car go fast than it is an ICE car.

• 44:17Gary O'Reilly?

  But when, when they rely on that engine rev as an audible clue as to where they are in terms of the power output, in terms of when they need to make the maneuver, if that's just

• 44:30Gary O'Reilly?

  how do you tap into that?

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Lights, lights on the dashboard. So it's the same way they go.

• 44:35Chuck Nice?

  They have meters.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  They have the, what do they call it? Well, it's not a heads up dashboard yet, but it's an electronic, a digital dashboard. And so they can pull it up, they can see the RPMs, they can see how close they are to pit road speed. They can see diagnostics for the engine if the engine is working.

• 44:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like Luke, this is like the thing that Luke was, was gonna use, but then did.

• 44:57Chuck Nice?

  The thing that came down, it is, yeah. Trust the force, Luke.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then he, then he put it away.

• 45:02Chuck Nice?

  Then he pulls it away.

• 45:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He pulls it away.

• 45:04Chuck Nice?

  And then you hear R2 going, what are you doing, you idiot? Look at all this technology. How would you trust the force?

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. R2 doesn't speak.

• 45:16Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know, Luke understands.

• 45:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Chuck was interpreting him.

• 45:21Chuck Nice?

  Luke understands.

• 45:24Gary O'Reilly?

  So the thing is-

• 45:24Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, Neil-

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want you to embarrass me, uh, my show by not knowing that R2 is not having a conversation.

• 45:32Chuck Nice?

  Here's the thing, I mean, you gotta suspend so much disbelief in order to accept anything with Star Wars. And you gotta draw the line at the talking robot.

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Diandra, please continue.

• 45:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, sorry.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ignore us.

• 45:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, that, now my problem with this is, if I go to reach the radio while I'm driving on a, on an empty road, I have a concern. I don't wanna be on a NASCAR track with twenty other cars at two hundred miles an hour going, "Oh, what does that heads up display say? What was that again?"

• 46:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 46:04Gary O'Reilly?

  And I don't need to be looking there when I need to be looking there. So surely that audible note allows me to focus with my eyes and use this other sense here.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  It definitely does. It definitely does. It's something they'll have to learn.

• 46:18Chuck Nice?

  There, there are other things that become intuitive as you drive, and I only say this, not that I've ever driven NASCAR, but I, I ride motorcycles and the same thing happens. There is no instrumentation when you're riding ninety-five miles an hour on a, on a twisty road. You don't ever look at instrumentation. But also at that speed, a lot of your hearing, which you rely on to, uh, listen to the motor, is also impaired because of the rush of wind.

• 46:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 46:56Chuck Nice?

  And so you find other ways to feel the road, to feel the bike. So you know you're at a certain speed when you go to turn and because it's a gyroscope, there's a certain amount of force that you need to use in order to pull the bike in. So I, without ever looking down or hearing the engine, I know, oh, I'm above fifty miles an hour right now going into this turn from how much force I have to pull on the, on the bars to pull the bike down into a turning position. So these are all things that you just, when you are deprived of any sense, you find another way to sense the circumstance. That's, that's all I'm saying.

• 47:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's jump into another clip of my exclusive interview with Junior.

• 47:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  DeAndre, can I call him Junior? Am I allowed?

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Everyone calls him Junior.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, thank you, thank you. I don't want to be out of order here. So, my exclusive interview with Junior where we talked about safety. Safety, and he said, "Safety is not a destination." And so, I wanted to know, "How safe is NASCAR these days?" So, check it out.

• 48:07Speaker 04

  There is a lot of subtle things, you know, the wheel tethers. Like you say, there's tethers to the hoods of the cars so they don't go flying into the grandstands when they come removed from the cars and crashes. But, there's been a lot of things. There is this, um, safety is a, is not a destination. And, you know, there's no, there's no end game. We, I'll, Neil, when I was driving cars in 1995, I thought those cars were as safe as they could be. And, and it's miles from where we are today and what we've learned and what we've, you know, what we-

• 48:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not just the car. Isn't your head now attached to? Because your head is this thing on this, on this thing we call a neck. And, your head is moving 200 miles an hour, right? People are thinking, they thought it was the car. No, your head is moving 200 miles. And the car stops, your head keeps going.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that's, you know, that's, uh, that's a fatal injury. That's part of my own, my father's injury that caused him to lose his life. Uh, the basal skull fracture is, is, some of them we heard a lot in, in years past. But when the Hans device comes out, which was developed because of, of the many drivers like my father that had this injury. Um, the Hans device basically kind of keeps your head from coming off of your shoulders in those high, high-speed wrecks. And, so, I also learned, you know, we've learned a lot about the, uh, the head surround, which, uh, the padding around the helmet itself to try to protect drivers from concussions, which, uh, which I know a lot about myself, unfortunately.

• 49:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deondre, does it, does it take a tragedy to introduce a safety feature? I mean, it kind of seems like it does, but must it? I guess I'm asking.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  In some ways it does, because there are always things that can happen that you want to predict, that you can't predict. So, for example, one of the things we thought at one point was the stiffer a car was, that is, the less give it had, the safer it was. So you were, you were enclosing the driver in a cage that would not allow him or her to, you know, get any of that energy. Well, it turns out, you want a car stiff, but not too stiff. And so we're still learning about how stiff to make a car, for example. Um, so we went through the same thing with safety belts. Uh, the problem is, if you are studying motorsport safety, you don't get a lot of data points every year. So there are, you know, less than thirty serious accidents in NASCAR. By serious, I mean, you know, someone hitting a wall really hard, uh, someone going upside

• 50:51Speaker 02

  down and catching on fire. We don't have a lot of those. So if you're trying to study how to prevent them, you just don't have the data to be able to predict everything that's going to happen.

• 51:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so that's a good problem, then?

• 51:03Speaker 02

  It is and it isn't.

• 51:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't have the data on, you don't have the data on bad accidents, because there aren't bad accidents, right? I mean, that's kind of interesting.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Well, there are bad accidents, but there aren't enough of them that you could, you know, it's like, if you have an incomplete data set and I ask you to predict something from that, you're not going to be able to predict everything.

• 51:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't.

• 51:21Gary O'Reilly?

  But if you take the element of danger away, are you not then affecting the certain bit of something that attracts the crowds to the track?

• 51:32Chuck Nice?

  He's talking about me. He's being polite. He's saying, if you take the potential, the potential of death out of the sport, don't you get rid of the macabre, uh, people like Chuck Nice, who just love to, don't want to see anybody get hurt, but are thrilled by the potential of it happening?

• 51:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Maybe.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  You may, but you know, there's a whole nother group of people who have no interest in that. Look at, look at sports car racing. They very rarely have accidents. And there's a whole slew of people who follow that.

• 52:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. And listen, I, I think that uh, as long, if nobody gets hurt, crashes are spectacular. But what you want to see at the end of it is when the guy gets out.

• 52:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they walk.

• 52:19Chuck Nice?

  And they walk away, like, that, that is the happiest you can be. It's like you saw this spectacular crash and then you saw a guy get up and walk off and.

• 52:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it, and it looks, and it looks back at it.

• 52:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 52:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, was this in the middle of that?

• 52:32Chuck Nice?

  Like, you know, that, you know, but because it's really, I mean, there's, I mean, we, we went through it in the, in the NFL this year. We actually saw an ambulance take a player off of the field first time and God knows how long that's happened. And it was really just kind of almost like a, you, you, you felt, it was like a national tragedy. Because it's something about that shared experience of seeing it all together. It was awful. It was just awful. So you just never want to see it.

• 53:02Gary O'Reilly?

  So for me, Neil, the chilling words by Dale Earnhardt Jr. there at the end. Concussion, that's something I know a lot about, unfortunately.

• 53:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 53:11Gary O'Reilly?

  From your discussion, and we've not got into hearing him say this, but he is going to donate his brain to science. Once he passes away. Because of the concussions he has. Yeah, I know, a little fine devil's in the detail there. So it's that sort of thing where you're saying, people need to know that much more. And so to your point, Doctor, the data points are going to come from a whole load of different sources, not just from the cars themselves.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Most definitely. And in fact, one of the things Junior has done already, including in addition to donating his brain, is just speaking out and getting out of the car when he had a concussion and telling people, "Look, I, it's not safe to drive when you have a concussion." Because there is that, you know, macho, you know, "I'm going to have a broken jaw and drive. I'm going to have a broken arm and I'm still going to get in the car." He really changed a lot of people's attitudes about that. And so he's done a great service to the sport that way.

• 54:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Gary, I think we have an extra clip on, on, on, on brain research. So let's, let's see what's going on there. Check it out.

• 54:18Speaker 04

  There's been a bunch of studies on NFL, football players and other athletes as well. It wasn't anybody really in the motorsports industry that was looking at this and thinking and considering donating their brain.

• 54:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so that came after the football awareness.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Research, yeah. I saw all of that happening and saw the, you know, the ground swell of support to try to provide anything for research, right, to move this further. I met with a lot of doctors in my own rehabilitation that I fell in love with and really respected. And I wanted to help them and do the right thing as well for them, well beyond my life. I wanted to continue to be an advocate for helping other people. And so, you know, anything they can learn from my experiences and anything they can learn from anything that I can do post my life, I will, you know, after I'm gone, I would, I would want to be able to do that. I, I, so yeah, that was a very easy decision for me.

• 55:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm glad we, we had that clip. So that really, that completes the, the picture of this treasure, this American treasure, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and what he's done for the sport and what he'll continue to do for the sport even in death. DeAndre, do you have any sort of closing remarks you can give us based on all you've heard and what you know and your wisdom and insight?

• 55:44Speaker 02

  So I really enjoy listening to drivers talk physics because when they talk the science of the racing to people like us, they feel compelled to use, you know, the right words and talk about aerodynamics and that. But what's really fascinating is that they have an experience of physics that you and I don't have because they have all the G-forces, all the turning, you know, all the, all the feelings that you get driving a car. And I think it's a really great way to sort of merge these two worlds. I'm really glad you talked to Junior because I think he's one of the great ambassadors of the sport.

• 56:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we learned as well. It's been a delight, DeAndre, to have you back on StarTalk. So, DeAndre, where do we find you? What's your social media footprint?

• 56:26Speaker 02

  I am at DrDeAndre on Twitter. I am at DrDeAndre2 on Instagram, only because I had one account and couldn't figure out how to get back into it.

• 56:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  And I think you can find my page, my website, Building Speed, it's buildingspeed.org. That's where I put most of my really technical stuff about motor sports. But then again, I also write two columns a week for NASCAR Talk for the NBC Sports. And you'll find things on there that cover everything from things that we talked about today, with the tire to the odds of, you know, someone winning the Daytona 500.

• 57:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay. So that's the math and the physics coming through there. It's been a delight. Thank you for giving your time to us and our sports-loving audience.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 57:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Gary, good to have you, man. Pleasure, my friend. All right, Chuck, this has been another episode of StarTalk Sports Edition. The Dale Earnhardt Jr. interview. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.