Drafting. Heard of it? Drafting or slipstreaming is a common practice in stock car or better known as NASCAR racing. According to NASCAR drafting is the practice of two or more cars running nose to tail to create more speed for the group. The lead car displaces the air in front of it, creates a vacuum effect between its rear end and the nose of the second car and pulls the trailing cars along with it with less overall resistance. Two or more cars drafting will travel faster than a single car.

The method of drafting can be easily applied to your daily driving (warning this requires a bit of skill in driving techniques please do not practice in heavy traffic). I have used this technique and found that if efficiently placed in a daily driving routine I can squeeze around 20-25 more miles from a tank of gas.

For me that is about a day of driving to school and back home. Every car has a different amount of wind resistance or drag, this resistance is caused from a car splitting the wind resistance around the car. If you were to tailgate (politely of course) behind another car you have slipped into that cars slipstream. Basically the car in front of you is absorbing all the wind resistance while you ride their tail, because you are behind them your wind resistance decreases significantly.

Why is this important? With less wind resistance your car slips into a vacuum of air, which then results in you using less energy to get the car to a certain speed. This basically means you don’t have to hit the gas as hard, which ultimately means saving gas!

Drive safe, and stay tuned for more tips to save gas and cash.

DOUGH-BOY

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