INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
It's the automaker's new motorsport hub in the heart of NASCAR country, but the 130,000-square-foot (12,000 m2) facility is for much more
There are cutting-edge driver-in-the-loop simulators, shaker rigs for punishing suspension, and even an entire gym for drivers to work on
remote support for GM's teams at their respective racetracks
It's pretty busy most weekends; this Saturday and Sunday, Chevrolet is racing in both IndyCar (in Alabama) and NASCAR (in Texas), next week,
it's Chevrolet and Cadillac in Belgium for the World Endurance Championship and Northern California for IMSA, plus NASCAR in Kansas
Starting next year, F1's 24 races a year will be added to the mix as well.The technical center had been sanitized before our group of
journalists arrived, perhaps rendering the camera ban moot anyway
If only websites were scratch and sniff.The person with overall responsibility for it all is Ken Morris, whose full title stretches to
senior vice president of product programs, product safety, and motorsports
The last of those items in his portfolio is almost certainly less important to GM than new products or those products being safe, but that
doesn't mean it doesn't have real benefits
The days of a widget being tested on a race car and then fitted to road cars shortly afterward are mostly an artifact of the past, but there
are other ways that motorsport programs make for better vehicles for the rest of us."I love the sport of it, of course, but I really love
watching engineers develop over time and learn how to improve, improve, improve," Morris told me
"I think it's not a given that a vehicle is really well integrated, from not only the tuning of the car, which is important, but body
structure, torsional stiffness, all those kind of things are so important
And if the engineers don't have the right kind of backgrounds or right mentality, those things can get ignored, and it shows up in the end,"
