Joey Cohen, head engineer, gives you an inside look

Hello to all the Con-way Freight racing fans! My name is Joey Cohen and I am the head engineer on the No. 16 Con-way Freight Ford Fusion driven by Colin Braun in the Nationwide series. I am excited to visit and tell you a little about myself and the activities I perform weekly for the race team as an Engineer.

I am 25 years old and have been at Roush Fenway Racing for four years now and am proud to say that all have been with the No. 16 team. Prior to working at Roush Fenway, I received my Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a concentration in the field of motorsports.

On a weekly basis, I work closely with the crew chief Eddie Pardue, the car chief Ryan McKinney, and all of our team members to prepare the car to race every week. This includes work in the areas of kinematics, aerodynamics, and computer simulation, as well as race strategy at the track. Every week we visit what is known as a “K-rig” to evaluate different suspension options to optimize our car for the upcoming race event. These test machines are available for our use at the Roush Cup shop in Concord and get used by all teams during the week.

Something that people may be more familiar with is the wind tunnel. The tunnel we utilize most often is located here in Mooresville, N.C. making the logistics easier. The two most common cars taken for evaluation are the speedway and down force cars (cars used at 1.0 - 1.5-mile tracks).

The most well known part of my job involves traveling with the team every week to the track to serve as the race engineer. As a race engineer, we are responsible for keeping track of changes in practice, providing the crew chief with practice reports, and communicating with the other Roush teams. We are basically the information network as a group. I also calculate fuel mileage during the race and assist the crew chief with race strategy. I communicate with the other engineers during the race through instant messaging and radios.

This week we have the opportunity to test Daytona International Speedway for the upcoming race with the New Nationwide car. I have spent the weekend preparing the car with instrumentation for collecting data for certain areas of the car such as suspension travel, driver inputs, and engine performance. I will also monitor the system at the test and relay information to the crew chief about the car’s characteristics and performance.

I hope everyone has enjoyed hearing a little bit about my job as an Engineer.

Thanks for checking in, on to Daytona!

Be sure to follow me on twitter @JCohen16 for more insight!

Insights from the crew chief

Hello everyone. My name is Eddie Pardue and I’m the crew chief for the No. 16 Con-way Freight Ford. I just wanted to check in and give you a little bit of insight about how I got to where I am today. I have been at Roush Fenway Racing for eight years and worked as shock technician and spotter on the No. 6 car with Mark Martin prior to becoming a crew chief. When Roush Fenway expanded its Nationwide Series programs at the time Greg Biffle was the driver of the No. 16 car, I was named crew chief. Being a crew chief has a lot of responsibilities. Just a few of them include scheduling of the work to be done on the cars, working on and finalizing race track set-ups, and pit stops. Organizational and motivational skills are necessary in being a good crew chief too, but these aren’t to be overlooked by the need for technical skill.

I’ve really enjoyed working with Colin and seeing him grow in the sport. We are excited to get him back in the car at Dover in a few weeks. Dover is a very fast track and is unique for being high banked and concrete. It is one of only a handful of concrete tracks on the circuit. We are looking to have a strong run there as we always do. Colin has done well in the Truck Series at Dover so he will be right up to speed in the Nationwide car as well.

I hope that gave everyone some insight in to my world as the crew chief of the No. 16 Con-way Freight car! We’ll catch up with you all again soon.

Eddie