As NASCAR program manager for Ford Racing, Pat DiMarco knows all about racing rivalries.

But Ford and Chevy have nothing on the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry to which DiMarco, a two-time graduate of OSU (undergraduate and also grad school), is accustomed. DiMarco talked recently about his role in racing these days, as he heads up simulation programs and studies for all of NASCAR's Ford racing teams, and how he still tracks the Buckeyes on the gridiron.

Q: So you are a native of Ohio and attended Ohio State University?

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When we race once at a track in a season, we learn from what we did wrong and really put ourselves in position for success the second time around at the same tracks. I think we learn from our failures.

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PAT DIMARCO

DiMarco: I grew up in Cleveland, the suburb of Garfield Heights. I got bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering at Ohio State. From there, I moved up to Ford -- basically for the main purpose of going racing, to get into the racing division.

Q: Are there a lot of race fans at a school like Ohio State?

DiMarco: It's a stick-and-ball sports school, but I would go to Indianapolis for the 500 from when I was about 10 years old on. The first year I went to Indianapolis was the first year they brought the [IndyCar] race to Burke Lakefront there in Cleveland. So that's what got me started. I would go to those two races a year and I just loved it. I got into it and never let go until I got to Ford.

Q: Talk about what you do now with simulation, which seems to have increased in importance in racing in recent years?

DiMarco: I have sort of two roles now, where I'm in charge of the interface between the teams in NASCAR and Ford. I'm the guy on the ground every weekend at the race track. Then I've come up through and I'm also still responsible for our vehicle dynamics and chassis [development] with the engineering department. That's where all of our simulation and element analysis and computer software tools come from -- all the guys who work for me.

Q: How much has simulation changed in recent years?

DiMarco: I've been doing it for 12 years now. And the simulation program I used 12 years ago with the Truck Series was an Excel spreadsheet. You would type in numbers and get some basic balance characteristics of the car and weight transfer, and that's what we used for simulation back then. It was all programmed by ourselves in Excel. It was very tedious.

Now we have software guys who do that for us, and physicists that do all the math equations, and we pull it all together in basically what is the equivalent of a commercially available tool that engineers can buy off the shelf. We provide that to our teams. (Continued)