Doug Yates has made some very large strides since he took over the reins of Roush/Yates Engines from his legendary father Robert. The first leap was the development of the FR9 engine, Ford’s first ever purpose-built race engine. It has proven to be a mighty bullet in the NASCAR wars. (Now if we could only get one to “fall off the truck,” so we could put it in a “stealth” Mustang…)

There was no rest for the winners at the Yates shop in Mooresville, N.C. as development began on the fuel injection engine. “This was a big job,” Yates says. “It’s the biggest change in engine technology in NASCAR in 63 years. It was even bigger than building the FR9 engines because the technology was so new. Getting the fueling right and getting the sensors right was a big challenge.” Now, with half a season in the record books Yates says, “I would give this engine an A.”

Although NASCAR had a few limited tests and the team logged thousands of hours in the dyno rooms, nothing compares to the “trial by fire” of a real race, both literally and figuratively, done at this year’s Noah’s Ark, err Daytona 500. Doug Yates and everyone in the shop were standing proud when Matt Kenseth’s Valvoline NextGen Ford flashed across the finish line at the checkers.

Since then, Yates has spent a lot of time with the engineers at Freescale/McLaren Electronic Systems (go to www.freescale.com, and read “The Power inside NASCAR Fuel Injection”). The company has a long and successful history in other forms of motorsports, most notably in Formula 1. More...

Powerless in St. Pete? The IndyCar series is showing signs of growth not seen in decades. Insiders think there may be more than 30 entries for the season opener in St. Petersburg. That’s great news in my book—and an alternative to NASCAR mania. If you haven’t noticed, the stock car series is headed downhill, showing weaknesses in team sponsorship, TV ratings and track attendance. The problem at IndyCar is the very real prospect that there may not be enough of the new turbo engines to go around. While the established teams have no worries, it’s the new guys who may be holding the short end of the stick.

This is baffling given the fact that there are three engine manufacturers. Small teams have offered engine suppliers every penny they have (and their first-born male child), yet have heard nothing but the droning hum of the phone line going dead. Hopefully, IndyCar brass will light some fires under the recalcitrant engine manufacturers—or have to add a big “soap box derby” style hill to the St. Pete road course, and add a “Coaster” class for the engineless entrants.

Ford Unveils the 2013 Racecar Ford scooped all the other Sprint Cup manufacturers when they unveiled the 2013 Fusion racecar during the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour. The new design departs from NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow “kit car” that basically required all manufacturers to run identical bodies. The only difference comes from manufacturer specific decals on the noses and tails of the COT. The 2013 Fusion racecars now have real bodywork. They look a lot more like their street-going brethren. More...

There was a time when you could really get the job done in the Baja 1000 with a fiberglass-bodied dune buggy powered by a 1600cc VW engine pumping out a whopping 60 horsepower. These days, however, competitors in the famous off-road race are pulling out all the stops, including Mopar, which unholstered its new V-10 competition off-road race engine and scored the win at the 44th Tecate SCORE Baja 1000.

The 800-horsepower V-10 Competition Race Engine for drag racing debuted at the 2011 SEMA show in Las Vegas. The drag-race engine spawned an off-road version that Kent Kroeker, owner of Kroeker Off-Road Engineering, shoehorned into a Ram 1500. This potent combination propelled Kroeker and his co-driver Alan Roach nearly 700 miles through the rugged desert of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula in just over 20 hours to bag the Class 8 victory. Kroeker began the race and drove through the San Felipe loop, with Roach then taking the wheel for the remainder of the distance.

“Winning the Baja 1000 means laser-focused excellence that can’t be demonstrated any other way,” said Kroeker. “The performance of the new Mopar V-10 was superb. We were the only vehicle in the Baja 1000 using Mopar power. Mopar engineers sculpted its characteristics around my description of what is needed to win in long-distance desert racing.”

The Class 8 division that Kroeker and Roach competed in with the Mopar V-10 is comprised of full-size, two-wheel-drive trucks. Kroeker and his team put the Ram 1500 for Baja together in six weeks, and were the only team in the race using Mopar power, although it’s a good bet they won’t be the only one next year.

If you want something done right you have to do it yourself––or at least help the guy who’s doing it. That’s the idea behind the a new program that lets you help assemble your new LS7 or LS9 crate engine at GM’s Performance Build Center.

Even though you’re supplying some of the labor, the buy-in isn’t cheap––the LS7 has an MSRP of $22,756.10, and the LS9 has an MSRP of $32,050––but you’re getting 505 horsepower and 470 lb.-ft. of torque in the naturally aspirated LS7 and 638/604 in the supercharged LS9.

The price of the engine also includes a trip to GM’s unique Performance Build Center in Wixom, Michigan, where you’ll join a specially trained engine builder to assist in the start-to-finish assembly of your engine, from installing the crankshaft in the cylinder block to topping off the engine with its intake system. In the case of the LS9, it also means installing the supercharger assembly. More...

Desperate times call for innovative measures. Ford, a company whose reputation rests in part on big-inch high-performance engines, is doing a U-turn in search of the engine of the future. And that future, according to Ford, will include the company’s smallest gasoline engine ever, the 1-liter EcoBoost, which will debut in Europe and eventually be available worldwide.

The turbocharged, direct-injection, three-cylinder EcoBoost will appear first in the European Ford Focus early next year. A 125PS (about 123 horsepower) version will come first, followed by 100PS version. Both will have ultra-low CO2 emissions, and the 100PS version is expected to have the lowest emissions in its class.

The EcoBoost’s performance is equivalent to that of a 1.6-liter engine, but with better fuel economy and lower emissions. In addition, the engine’s small size gives it the highest power density of any production Ford engine to date.

The 1.0-litre EcoBoost engine was developed by Ford experts across Europe, including engineers at Ford’s European Research and Advanced Engineering Centre in Aachen, Germany, and the Dunton Technical Centre, UK.