We hear spectators, armchair racers, team owners, drivers, mechanics, engineers, the press, and yes, let’s say anyone and everyone complaining about the look of the near vintage Indy car in use. The good news is IRL is - finally - going to change their spec car that has been running since 2003, although the bad news is that we will have to wait until 2012 before knowing if the series did found the magic formula to save the top category of Open Wheel racing in the US and in consequence, open wheel racing in this Country.
Amazing to remember that CART Indy car had 4 different engines, 5 chassis manufacturers, 16 teams and 34 drivers participating to the 1999 championship. Something was new every months and every years at that time. It was the best motor head soap opera in the US
The Dallara chassis still in use today was designed at a time oval track racing was an exclusivity in IRL, with 9 of the new emerging fast tracks of near 1 ½ mile long and 3 older super speedways, leaving space for only 4 higher downforce shorter tracks during the season.
Fast ovals, no street or road course track to compromise with and a head to head competition with another chassis builder, G-Force, led Dallara to design a very specialized chassis with a priority to be Indy 500 specific. Mind you, cars were designed as a three-year generation.
According to the rules, an IRL chassis had to be designed to potentially be used for “right and left turns” type tracks, which certainly was not a concern as it would have been easy to design new parts to create a clumsy but running car on any race track, as long as one could win the 500’s. Ultimate competitiveness on road course was not of any concern, not knowing when IRL would finally decide to expend into international type racing.
We know what happens. Road and Street Courses gradually took over half of the races and one chassis got name the only spec car of the series. The car that was designed to run at 230 mph and only leave a speed sensation to the spectators, was suddenly exposed to close scrutiny, awkwardly taking slow turns at 50 mph and showing its lack of stick in fast road course bends, creating a visual disaster in comparison with CART and Champ Cars electrifying cornering speeds and well proportioned shapes.
But let’s move forward leaving behind enough facts to write a thick book on what did happened, didn’t, and what we all have lost, including many jobs that no one seems to want talking about.
What is IRL thinking!
Here is a reminder of the attributes IRL has defined to select the new Indy car that will start competing in 2012:
Safe: The new chassis must adhere to the league's already high safety standards while exploring new technology to improve safety in all aspects of the car.
Raceable: The new chassis must continue to produce the exciting racing that has become signature of the IZOD IndyCar Series while not affecting other cars on track (i.e. less sensitive to the turbulence).
Cost-effective: The league continues to work to reduce the cost of participation for teams in the IZOD IndyCar Series, which remains an important priority in this economic climate. The new chassis must have a price point that adheres to that goal.
American-made: The new chassis must be built in the U.S.
Less mass/more efficient: A lighter chassis with less mass that produces the same aerodynamic effect in an efficient way.
Relevant technology: The league would like the new chassis to be relevant to the future of the consumer auto industry; innovative technology that is born on the racetrack and can translate to consumer cars.
Modern look: More space for sponsor logos, cars easily identifiable.
Green: The Indy Racing League prides itself on its role in the greening of racing and wants to maintain its position as a leader in environmentally-friendly initiatives with this chassis.
"Our chassis is the most complex challenge in world motorsports because of the variety of race courses where we compete," Barnhart said. "It must be designed to run at 235 mph at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and protect drivers and spectators in high-speed crashes. It must be able to run on superspeedways, speedways and short ovals as well as natural-terrain road courses and temporary circuits."
Barnhart said safety is the foremost requirement in design of the new chassis and the league has identified areas to improve through its own research and testing. A reduction of between 40 percent and 50 percent of the current chassis cost is sought - principally through the reduction in inventory necessary to transition between oval kits and road/street course kits (brakes, uprights, etc.).
Additionally, a lighter car reduces the power requirement and enhances fuel efficiency. For the fourth year in a row, the IZOD IndyCar Series will be the only motorsports property to utilize a renewable and environmentally friendly fuel (100 percent fuel-grade ethanol).
"Our drivers take the greatest risks in the world of sports driving IndyCars and it is paramount we have the best safety features designed into this next generation of cars," Barnhart said. "It is also important that we continue to develop more relevance between the new generation of IndyCars and the cars that world manufacturers will be producing in the future. Finally, we have stipulated that the new chassis must be made in the United States , preferably Indiana
Not so fast!
This reads like a commercial with self-proclaimed product quality, isn’t it?
We have seen renderings, studio concepts, ideas beings put forward by race car manufacturers and even an offbeat advance concept, all of them radical in some aspects and respecting the confusing definition of the IRL recommendations. But let’s look at the guidelines again, point after point, to understand the meaning and its consequences on a designer’s mind.
Safe is in fact one of the two aspects of a race car design. How safe the cars need to be? According to its self proclaimed safety level, IRL mention to follow the high standard already defined by themselves, while “exploring new technologies to improve safety in all aspects of the car”, which support some contradictions in its terms and essentially leave to the car designers to define themselves safety, as it should be the function of the sanctioning body to fully define safety and the various tests necessary to measure and check the extend of the submissions. This should be true even if a back door should be open to allow for some suggestions.
Raceable is a side category of competitiveness, which is the second aspect of race car design. Again, IRL is padding themselves on their own back by writing “the chassis must continue to produce the exciting racing that has become signature of the IZOD IndyCar Series while not affecting other cars on track (i.e. less sensitive to the turbulence).”
This seems to be an advice to conceive a different car as the one “producing the exciting racing”, with better rear vortices definition to allow following cars to keep a better aerodynamic balance in quantity and distribution. It is in fact what sanctioning bodies have tried to achieve around the world and through various rules changes. It seems that IRL has not defined what it would take to achieve this important task and instead has handed the relay baton to designers.
Cost-effective was and still is an important factor now pushing IRL to react with various radical considerations. The omni-justifying economic downturn topic combined with a lack of appropriate ruling evolution is leading the IRL to look at drastic measures that might not solve the problems, as the problems themselves have not been defined in years past.
An American-made car is also part of the new cost-effective scheme.
A new theme is also added, contradicting their long time philosophy of heavier car of more material for more energy absorption is now becoming less mass/more efficient.
It is a logic but short thinking process to propose the cutting cost of cars and racing them without looking first at the commercial worth of the racing to be lifted to a value of return. Ultimately, it would not matter if cars and researches would be relatively expensive if exposures and commercial values were flourishing as it was 10 years ago. Now, looking at it from the other side of the lens, even if an Indy Car would cost the price of a Formula Ford, it would still become too expensive if no sponsor would show up to pay the bills.
Going back to drastic cost reduction, to what extends amortizing the installation of a complete race car manufacturing facility in Indiana US Europe to end up loosing their advantage through exchange rate. In any case, the real final production cost would need to be justified before knowing a benefit has been made.
The lack of cost scrutiny might have been a bigger factor than some easier excuses. I believe a range of solutions covering the various aspects of cost would help more than reacting with drastic measures that, even to satisfy friends at local shops, might not control enough what became the black sheep of Open Wheel racing today.
High quality and rare materials in use to make Indy Cars are always going to be expensive and labor will remain a specialized more expensive labor to be paid. Research cost is not going away, if one wish for research to be part of this type of racing, past the pre-production study.
Nevertheless, if need be, a cost-plus system as practiced in the aerospace and defense industries would help control some of the expenditure problems, providing the cost part of the equation is well defined, as it is not always the case in defense programs.
An overreaction has never been the best solution to any problem and generally hides something, whether of past decisions, or lack of knowledge of the subject, or anything else one can imagine and suspect.
The relevant technology concern of innovation, born on the racetrack that can transfer to consumer cars, is an old dream of non-engineer mind, thinking that one can invent new features that would be effective on a race car and could be used in the automobile industry, all of that at the lowest cost racing can be.
I understand, it is a good idea but it shows so much the lack of technical and engineering mastery expressed by over-reacted and inexpert minds.
The technology, as expressed here is most of the time techniques, as well as the use of existing technologies and applied in different environments.
It is always possible that new thinking would lead car manufacturers to use these ideas in production. In this case, rules would have to open, allowing for the inventive mind to expend freer, which in return would increase cost. The Formula 1 teams were complaining about the cost of the KERS devise development, when they effectively spend 10 to 30 times more money than any top Indy Car teams.
What are we seeing so far?
All published projects have some caricatural looks reminiscent of Hot Wheels or Star War vehicles, while Formula 1 is following their rules and looking as advanced as it can be. Asking designers to define themselves a “modern look” is leading them to expend on style instead of fine tuning the consequences of well defined rules. A modern look could simply mean that a new car would have the look of having been designed in 2010 instead of in 2002. The Panoz DP01 Champ Car was a modern looking car when it was raced in 2007. Today, new collective ideas are in every designer’s minds and would create a de facto modern looking car without searching for some stylistic look, as these bright people are, in any case, not studio designers. It seems that every designer did fall into the search for a hypothetical look, maybe to satisfy some unclear emphasis on “modern look” and have a chance to be retained as a potential IRL chassis supplier.
Green is one of these terms eventually meaning nothing, or why not the consequence of mixing yellow and blue colors, or whatever we want to show as image in tune with consumption and renewable energy.
The danger of wanting to be so called green with no definition can reveal a lack of depth later. Using ethanol made of sugar cane is an apparent good thing, although when we count the energy consumption of production and transport by trucks, jumbo boats and trucks again, all burning vast quantity of oil, one can find that the green concept is rapidly fading. Worst is to be aware of the mega deforestation necessary to create farming land, itself burning vast quantity of oil and ultimately reducing the needed World conversion of CO2 by plants.
I know, paying attention to energy consumption is very important, although it has to be true savings. Mr. Rudolf Diesel had invented his engine in the late 1800’s and was looking at using available combustibles such as coal powder or various vegetable oils. His first engine was running on peanut oil. Today, we know that diesel engines can run on fast food recycled oil, raw rapeseed oil strait out of an extracting mill and who knows what researchers have found recently in converting algae and yard grass into carburant.
The development of hybrid cars and now heavy freight trucks could lead race car engine manufacturers to expend their researches into racing applications that would lead to more experiments and developments, and back to production after having been exposed to different and extreme conditions. And this might be where the transfer to production can happen; not in chassis and aerodynamic designs, as they are too specific and of a too drastically different environment than street cars.
If the series want to show "green" interests, it might be time to systematically recycle paper, cardboard boxes, bottles, cans and plastics of all kinds being thrown in trash containers, and sometime around them, during every race weekends and by the tons daily. Showing example to spectators and encouraging them to do the same would be "greener" than many other para-green ideas.
All of that is really confusing!
Green? Yes but not just for the sake of carrying the name as a label with untrue gain.
It is odd that a very conservative series, or at least the thinking behind, having kept the same car for 9 years, increasing weight for safety reasons, is suddenly opening the door to outside thinking of safety and transferrable technologies when cost is the primary concern and leading to impose manufacturing to be 40 to 50% cheaper than the actual car cost. In a short sentence, more expenses yet far cheaper!
I would assume that IRL still intent for high quality carbon fiber, resin, curing processes, high strength steel, aluminum and advanced manufacturing techniques to be used, not wire welded mild steel tube chassis and suspension.
It seems as if the IRL technical leadership is lacking of defined intentions or expressed knowledge to lead manufacturers conceiving the new generation of Indy Car.
One more concern: a unique car manufacturer and one engine label will not renew the spectator’s interest as it was more than 10 years ago when constant changes and dramas of all kind were triggering people’s interests and siding for a chassis, an engine, a team, a driver and even a technical leader or any combinations of all the variables. Believing that a new car and new engine will change the face of this type of racing is showing a lack of connection with spectators and aficionados.
FIA and FOTA went both their way out to understand what spectators are expecting from the Formula 1 championship, and combined with their expertise and decisive directions, propose one exiting championship, towing behind full ranks of GP2, Formula 2, Renault World Series 3.5, Formula 3 and GP3 championships. Here, we just lost Atlantic and Indy Lights is dying with a car that has never been of great balance and interest, born of compromises and financial interests.
Europe got hit by the economic downturn more than the US
It would be insane for us to think adding a new Open Wheel racing series today, yet Europe had Formula 2 debuting last year with a full count of drivers and just got GP3 starting now and directly competing against the venerable and popular Formula 3. At the very first test of this new series, this past March 4th, thirty one, read again: 31 drivers were at work testing their new car.
Fourteen (14) drivers were testing at the first Indy Lights test a few days earlier, not all being confirmed to start the season. And the respected highly competitive Formula Atlantic series is gone, mismanaged and condemned by IRL as a non-viable stepping stone for young drivers. Afraid of any competition, IRL did destroy everything on their path, including themselves.
I hope someone is going to understand or accept the real reasons of the American Open Wheel racing’s demise, although, it is interesting to notice that Star Mazda is still going strong.
I think history has now enough depth to define the problems and allow pinpointing more precisely how they were generated.
The tough subject will be to find and put in place the right people to implement wise technical changes and regain what was the best Racing in USA
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