Indy Car Buffs

[Dad2leia]

I figured what the heck, start this topic.

Any one here a true Indy car buff that really enjoys the technical specs, facts, figures, engines, and such on the IRL chassis? I try to keep abreast of the engine changes throughout the years ans was wondering if anyone else was just as crazy about it as me.

Also, any of you been around the Indy 500 crowd long enough to know some of the details of some of the earlier engines, such as Miller and Offenhauser?

 

[Lonnie]

Today's cars are kit cars. You buy a kit, a very expensive one, then you go racing. If you're caught thinking beyond the setup, that's called cheating. If you come near one of those engines with a screwdriver or a wrench, you'll loose your engine lease, no tuning allowed. The race has changed over the years. Today it's chassis setup, pit tatics and driver. There are not very many Americans because it costs so much to come up through the ranks. Drivers with money or a sponsor are the choice over talent, most of the time. Look at the Indy 500. There are drivers there with money that should not be driving at that level. For a good driver with a good team behind him it's like playing chicken as you catch the back markers at almost 200mph. But this racing is better than NASCAR. NASCAR is a parade of dump trucks with billboards on them. The new dump trucks have increased capacity and are harder to drive. These NASCAR COT cars with not be able to pass and there will be a lot more crashing, something that sells tickets. Soon there will be Indian Reservations established at these race tracks so you can bet on the races. You will be able to bet on the winner, but you will also be able to bet on first to crash, first to screw up a pit stop, first crew man to get run down and first car to catch on fire. You can pick your favorite billboard, they each have a number, a driver and a pit crew. Indy cars can make up the difference because they have open-wheel cars. Touch wheels and you have lift-off, always a fan favorite.

 

[Pablo]

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Today's cars are kit cars. You buy a kit, a very expensive one, then you go racing. If you're caught thinking beyond the setup, that's called cheating. If you come near one of those engines with a screwdriver or a wrench, you'll loose your engine lease, no tuning allowed. The race has changed over the years. Today it's chassis setup, pit tatics and driver. There are not very many Americans because it costs so much to come up through the ranks. Drivers with money or a sponsor are the choice over talent, most of the time. Look at the Indy 500. There are drivers there with money that should not be driving at that level. For a good driver with a good team behind him it's like playing chicken as you catch the back markers at almost 200mph. But this racing is better than NASCAR. NASCAR is a parade of dump trucks with billboards on them. The new dump trucks have increased capacity and are harder to drive. These NASCAR COT cars with not be able to pass and there will be a lot more crashing, something that sells tickets. Soon there will be Indian Reservations established at these race tracks so you can bet on the races. You will be able to bet on the winner, but you will also be able to bet on first to crash, first to screw up a pit stop, first crew man to get run down and first car to catch on fire. You can pick your favorite billboard, they each have a number, a driver and a pit crew. Indy cars can make up the difference because they have open-wheel cars. Touch wheels and you have lift-off, always a fan favorite.

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ROTFLMWAO!!! That WAS good. Like all things funny, way more fact than fiction.

Can you do paragraph or two on F1?

 

[shanneba]

Anyone else remember the dual engine Porche? I believe it ran in the mid to late sixties, didn't attempt to qualify.
I liked when they could run a stock block, lots more pieces came out of those when they blew!

 

[Lonnie]

F1 is too easy. It's a traveling circus for the rich and important. You can't use a kit car, so far, maybe next year, and you have a set of instructions and rules that tie you up in knots. They've got a new guy, good ole Lewis Hamilton, and he is in first place in his rookie year on the same team as the two time world champion, Grumpy Alonso. Lewis is winning, on two tracks he has never seen before. He has screwed up though, he's placed as far back as third. His places in the first half of the season have bettered many drivers whole career. Just wait until he gets some experience and learns the ropes, like next year. And just think of all the places the F1 circus visits that do not allow people of his color in the front door for their dinner parties. Honda is spending close to half a billion dollars and a non factory team using Honda's old chassis is beating them. More fun to come.

 

[Dad2leia]

Ok Lonnie, I see your point, but how's about some positive stuff from the earlier days then, when it wasn't so restricted, commercialized, and was actually enjoyable to tinker with?

 

[Lonnie]

There were no good-ole-days. When I first worked on a pit crew at Indy the cars were death traps. There were no speed limits in the pits, which meant that if you were changing an outside tire, you could get picked off by a car going well over 100 miles per hour. You could get cooked in a pit stop fire because you wore no protective gear and you can't see the flames. If you saw a guy jumping up and down and doing a dance you threw a bucket of water on him, he was on fire, no fire suit or helmet. The cars were a lot more interesting and the racing was a lot better if you like passing and seeing cars of differing performance dealing with each other, but a lot of drivers will killed and hurt.

Here's my formula for a new class of racing.
1. Setup safety rules, tough ones.
2. Supply a restrictor plate for about 600hp
3. Use any engine you like, modify it any way you like, any size you like.
3. Minimum weight 2000 pounds, including driver and full tanks.
4. No carbon fiber or exotic materials.
5. Metal brakes, no exotic materials here, either and no ABS.
6. No electronics, nothing.
7. Magnito ignitions only.
8. No traction control and throttle cables required, no fbw.
9. Mechanical injection or carbs
10. Spec tires and wheels, but many choices, safety.
11. Methanol fuel only, spec supplier. No additives.
12. No movable aero devices, but free for aero overall
13. Open wheel or closed wheel, open cockpit or closed your choice.
14. Any wheelbase, any track, any engine location or configuration. Multiple engines ok and all wheel drive ok.
15. Tough pit safety regs including gravity fueling, and not work while fueling.
16. No limit on changing engines or tires.
17. Adopt a F1 knock out style qualifing.
18. Score points for every lap for every driver. Start at 100 for the first car to pass each lap, 99 for second, 98 for third and one point increment to last place.
19. Have a light on top of the cars. Car in first place gets a green for that lap and it changes every time the points change. The winner is the high point car, may not be the first one to finish the race. Computers and chips can handle all this stuff.
20. Season leader gets a blue light lit, and it can change every lap of every race. All other cars have lights out.
21. Every pit stop is timed and the most efficent pit crew is tracked threw the season and receives a championship award just like the car and driver. Lowest elapsed time in the pits is the measure and they get a green light in the pits.

This would be a racing class I would follow. There would be tons of things to read about what each team is doing and this would bring a lot of fans back to racing. Young fans would like the lights and scoring, engineering types would like the different cars and fans in general would enjoy the on track action and teams could afford to build cars. There could be seperate classes by just changing the restrictor plates. This would not be NASCAR restrictor plate racing because you could put the plate where ever you like and put any engine under it and you would not be pushing a dump truck around the track. This would be a change, to stop saying its a driver's class because the cars are the same and say it's a fan class because the all cars are different.
What do you think?

 

[ccs v2.0]

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Can you do paragraph or two on F1?

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+1 I also want to hear his take on Max 'n Bernie, after he's done with the Tony George bio, of course.

 

[Footpounds]

I would like to hear an assessment of Danica Patrick too. I'm guessing she is an invention of the popular press designed to sell tickets but I need confirmation on that.

 

[ccs v2.0]

Sell tickets? nah...

Add Robin Miller to the list. We need to make it balanced.

 

[Lonnie]

Danica is the real deal. Her first win is comming, and soon. She's finally on a team that can teach her a lot, and bring her along. She understands how the cars work and what adjustments do. She just needs some more work to put the pieces together. She has a lot more pressure on here, media wise than anyone else in the sport and that has to be tough to deal with. Besides, she is a good looking woman, too.

 

[Dad2leia]

Lonnie, I really do like your setup. Being an engine buff, I would really enjoy seeing different engine configurations going against each other, instead of one setup where the engines are within tenths of a horsepower of each other. It would make the driver one of the major factors again, instead of just the one who makes the system go around the track for the alloted miles of the race.

I also like your points and lights system. It would be a truer test of a driver's ability, as opposed to the points system now.

Wow, you were part of it eh? Nice to have your interest in my thread. Thanks for the information Lonnie.

And lastly, Danica is MY babe!!!

 

[chewbacca]

I would like to see IRL and the Champ series merge back into one entity. The talent pool has been strained due to the 2 series fighting it out for audience share/fan base. This past Indy 500 (nee, Indy 420, anyone?) was a good example IMHO, the driver from Venezuela, driving the "Hugo Chavez Commie Special" had no buisness being out in that field of drivers. Danica, on the other hand is the "total package." She is (okay, sexist moment here) very good looking, can bring in boucoup endorsements and best of all. she can drive.

 

[Indy500]

The only way IRL and Chump car will merge is if(when)Chump car runs out of money.Both Mr. George and Mr. Kalkoven(sp?)would like to merge if they were going to be in charge, but there egos are too big to let someone else be in charge. I really wish they would get back together, but I am not holding my breath.

 

[HondaF1Fanatic]

The only thing the IRL has going for it is the Indy 500. The cars are antiquated unsafe junk, and the engines are better suited to a tractor than a race car (an F1 engine makes more HP from 1.1L less displacement using a lower energy fuel). If they take the chassis/engine formula from Champ Car and go back to a mix of ovals, road courses, and street courses along with the Indy 500 it could probably compete with NASCAB but until then we will get stuck watching 10 decent drivers go roundy roundy in a ---- league (IRL) and watching ~5 good drivers with 13 pay drivers clog the road in another ---- league (Champ Car). I much prefer racing that involves turning both left and right but neither OW league in the US gets me excited as they are both ridiculously flawed. Tony and Kevin: Please remove your heads from your hind ends so we can see US OW racing as a competitor to F1 again.

Jon