Are There a Higher Than Expected Number of Early Life Critical Part Failures in NASCAR Vehicles? A Reliability Study (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing ‪)‬

Abstract This paper investigates whether or not the DNF's (those who 'did not finish the race') due to early life critical part failures are higher than would be expected in NASCAR vehicles. The hypothesis is that early life critical part failures are, in fact, higher than would be expected in NASCAR vehicles. This hypothesis is based on the fact that NASCAR teams have sizeable budgets and use only highly specialized components. In addition, the extensive mileage typically associated with commercial vehicles is not required of these parts. This paper develops a reliability model to test whether the average time of failure for these critical components is higher than what would be expected of high performance critical components.