Haas flying ahead with plans for wind tunnel

KANNAPOLIS, N.C. -- Wind tunnels are like a mid-sized town with only one dentist. Someone is going to have to live with cavities.

Haas CNC Racing is trying to take advantage of that by building their own tunnel, which can be used by any team willing to pay top dollar for an hour of its time.

The Car of Tomorrow may eventually eliminate some of the cost of building cars, but car owners will simply spend money somewhere else, and spend even more excessively.

The annual Nextel Cup media tour was held last week. It is a dizzying four-day tour that features excessive use of the words "excited," "looking" and "forward." Sometimes they are "excited to be looking forward."

One of the stories that was glazed over in a cloud of haze was the fact that two teams (Penske Racing and Haas CNC Racing) are about to embark on massive expenses in order to gain the tiniest of edges.

Penske is building a full-scale test track on its property. How in the world will they move all that dirt needed to build its banks? Are they going to buy hundreds of thousands of tires from Hoosier?

(If Penske does build a test track, it would have to use a tire from someone other than Goodyear, because Goodyear is allowed to lease tires, not sell them, and they can only lease tires at an official NASCAR event).

But even more intriguing is the story of Haas CNC Racing. For years, it has been billed a small one-car (now two-car) team, but the team just built a beautiful 150,000-square-foot shop, nearly three times the size of Petty Enterprises. And get this. The team will have its very own wind tunnel next season.

And it's paying cash for the thing -- $40 million.

"Fortunately, we don't have a mortgage," says Joe Custer, general manager of Haas CNC. "There is no financing involved."

He said that almost cryptically. It will take several years for the Car of Tomorrow savings to kick in to pay for the wind tunnel. Say, 2078.

Not that $40 million will hurt the owner, Gene Haas, all that much. Haas, a California businessman, has made a bazillion dollars in the machine tool manufacturing business. Whether a wind tunnel will help his teams compete with Joe Gibbs is another story.

But that is the kicker. If Joe Gibbs Racing wants to use Haas' wind tunnel, it can. The team will have to pay through the nose to garner some time in it, but have at it. Denny Hamlin will thank you.

The wind tunnel is one of the most under-reported stories in NASCAR, mainly because reporters are not overly welcome visitors in the garage, much less a secret test site. Wind tunnels give teams specific information that is very valuable on the open market, and those secrets must remain hidden.

Haas CNC's wind tunnel will be located off-site at the Concord (N.C.) Airport, giving all Charlotte-area teams an alternative to wind tunnels in Ontario, Georgia and Michigan.

The 180-mph Haas wind tunnel, Custer said, will be the only one that can measure aerodynamics under the cars.

"It can measure in areas that the existing tunnels can't," Custer said. "Clearly, [NASCAR] has made the box smaller aerodynamically, but clearly, it is more important to have a more precise measuring tool to separate the good car from the bad cars."

Custer is banking heavily on the fact that other wind tunnels compete with NASCAR for an allotted time.

"You can't buy time at certain wind tunnels. It is booked, and that is problematic," Custer said. "That is the whole point. We are not going to lock anybody out. We want to use price to allow people to have access."

The tunnel will actually be operated separately from the racing organization, for several reasons: It will have a different business model, and Custer doesn't want other teams to think he will steal anyone's data.

"It needs to have integrity," Custer said. "There would be no connection there as to us having access to everyone's data. If we ever did that, our investment would be done."

The company that is building the wind tunnel, Jacobs, is one of those companies you've never heard of, but it reported revenues of more than $7 billion in 2006 alone. According to Custer, Jacobs also had a hand in building the wind tunnels used by a group of Formula One teams.

So yeah, costs are going to continue to skyrocket in NASCAR.

The Car of Tomorrow is slowly winning over many of its critics, but if NASCAR thinks costs are going to be contained, it's crazy.

Because the Car of Tomorrow limits what owners can do with the actual chassis, the owners are going to spend, spend and spend on other things:

• Increased wind tunnel time (money)
• Stronger, faster pit crews (money)
• Increased engineering (money)
• Long-term contracts for top drivers (duh)

But a team building its own wind tunnel? Mind-boggling. NASCAR is truly going global, and global tickets cost twice as much as domestic. That is why team budgets will double in the next five years.

I wrote last season that the first $20 million champion would occur in the next five years, and you know what? Jimmie Johnson nearly got there in 2006. In the next 10 years, it is not heresy to say that a driver could earn $40 million in a single season.

Just think. Jimmie Johnson could afford his own wind tunnel.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.