Are suspension systems magic? Apparently, some racers think so.

Aaron Lambert of Penske Racing Shocks in Reading, Pennsylvania, said for many of his customers, how shocks and dampers work "is the black magic of racecars."

Frank Simonetti of Swift Springs USA in Chino Hills, California, said, "For some guys, a spring is black magic. There's a lot to a spring, and it's something a lot of people don't know about."

Both companies are focused on educating their customers as to how their products work to remove some of the "magic" stigma and enable racers to optimize their suspension setups.

"You can build a great product, but if you don't educate your customer on how to use it, you're just selling them a product," Simonetti said. "We want to educate our customers. We want our customers to understand why it's different, why it's better."

"Ultimately, if you have the right tools to test the components, you can pretty quickly see how they work," Lambert said. "Our focus is on tools to help them run the shocks, but run them smart, understand what they're doing and why."

Pulling back the curtain on the "magic" of suspension systems is just one trend we noticed as we spoke to manufacturers across racing segments about the latest in racing suspension technology.

What Drives Suspension Development?

At Penske, "we continue to see a lot of development in series such as Formula 1, NASCAR and sportscar," said Lambert. "A lot of the development is driven by the rulebook and what you can and can't do. If there were an open rulebook, we'd be developing a lot of different things, but you have to stay within the rule set for legality reasons."

"We go to the races," Simonetti said. "I probably attend 160, 170 nights in racing. Bubba [Gale, inventor of the spring smasher and a Swift employee] attends about 150. We sponsor quite a few teams, and we work with them to find out what they're looking for."

Simonetti also works with chassis manufacturers, including Longhorn Chassis, Rocket Chassis, MB Customs, Razor Chassis, GMS Race Cars and more. "They're always changing chassis design to build a better chassis, because the chassis is actually the biggest spring in the car. So we work very closely with the racers who buy those cars, as well as the manufacturers, to decide when we need to build something new."

Circle track racing drives development of "new product, new techniques, new designs and then that can then spread out into other race disciplines," Simonetti said.

Road racing is the major focus of AST/Moton Suspension, which is headquartered in the Netherlands. "We supply something like 20, 22 different single-make series championships in Europe, where they are allowed to use only our dampers," said Coen de Korte. "They expect from us that we do the best we can to make the suspension as light as possible, to really make sure there's not a lot of friction in the damper. We have four engineers. We're constantly reviewing our suspension to see if we can make it better."

The Ongoing Quest for More Data

Not all new suspension tech is in the suspension itself. Lambert's comments on "tools to test the components" referred to software and other tools Penske is developing "to help test the shocks themselves, to give the end user a better understanding and education on what the shocks are doing, how to apply that when you're racing, and what that means from a feel standpoint and a handling standpoint."

Penske manufactures its own shock dynos, and a new version of the dyno software is in the works, Lambert said.

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