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Until the advent of the suspension cam on ESPN's NASCAR Winston Cup coverage, suspension springs were almost entirely ignored by racing fans. For that matter, many racers are surprisingly uninterested in the actual specifications and quality of their springs, let alone the details of their design and manufacture. This seems a pity, For reasons of both convenience and operational efficiency, the vast majority of racing cars are suspended by coil springs-and the quality of the springs is crucial to the car's speed, driveability, and consistency.
In addition to keeping the chassis off the track, race car suspension springs serve the same basic purposes as passenger car springs. The springs isolate the components (and the occupants) of the vehicle from road shock. They control the pitch and roll attitudes of the vehicle and, in concert with the shock absorbers, the rate at which these attitudes change in response to the forces of lateral, longitudinal, and vertical acceleration. Finally, again with the shocks, they keep the tires in contact with the road surface as constantly as possible. Actually, shock absorbers do not absorb road shocks the springs do. The shocks control the release of the energy stored in the springs when they are [...]

For reasons of convenience and operational efficiency, the vast majority of purpose-built racecars, except for some Active-suspension Formula 1 cars, are suspended by coil springs. For several years, most of the Indy Cars, NASCAR stock cars and so on in the USA, and several of the leading Formula 1 cars, have been fitted with the distinctive, navy blue coils supplied by Hyperco Inc. a company founded in 1987 and headquartered in Logansport, Indiana.
The suspension springs of the racecar serve the same three basic purposes as the springs of the passenger car. First, they isolate the occupants and components of the sprung mass from road shock. Second, they control the pitch and roll attitudes of the vehicle. And third, they keep the tires in contact with the road surface as constantly as possible, because a tire that is floating (or bouncing) above the surface cannot accelerate, brake or steer.
Racing, however, imposes other, more stringent, requirements - accuracy of manufacture, minimum practical size and weight, and absolute consistency of performance. In a passenger car installation, a spring that is a bit 'off' in rate, in free length, or in load at height - or that takes a small set or a slight [...]