The History of Indy Car

IndyCar is one of the well known open wheel racing in the world. Even though its centerpiece, “Indianapolis 500-Mile Race”, is considered as one of the very oldest events in the motor racing history, the history of the current IndyCar begins in the year 1994. During this year, Tony George, who is the president as well as the CEO of “Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation”, found the IRL or Indy Racing League. IRL started racing in the year 1996, creating a separate group of drivers as well as team owners from the CART, which had authorized the Indy racing since the year 1979.

Tony claimed that CART championship was very expensive for the teams. It had many foreign drivers and diverted from the American customs of the oval racing by including more road course races to suit the Formula 1 as well as the Formula 3000 drivers. Some people suggest that the efforts of Tony George to run his series were backed by Bernie Ecclestone, who is a F1 supremo. He considered the CART races as a possible threat for the F1′s domination.

There was also a litigation involving the usage of the ‘IndyCar’ trademark. This was settled off-court during December 1996. The condition of the final settlement agreement was not completely disclosed. However, from the year 1997, CART series did not include “IndyCar” anymore. IRL was also not able to use the name before the year 2002. The first IRL schedule consists only three races, which included the 500 and Indy 500, were the virtual drivers coming out of the retirement.

However, the previous F1 vice-champion, late “Michele Alboreto”, participated as a draftee in al the three rounds and finished 11^th position in the championship. The race was won by “Buddy Lazier”, who is an American veteran.

The 2009 IndyCar Championship

The final championship race of IRL IndyCar season organized in 2009 was a three-way combat between the best three championship contenders. Scott Dixon, Ryan Briscoe and Dario Franchitti drove away rest of the field. The race was very interesting and thrilling.

However, Dixon and Briscoe had the fastest and powerful cars on the track. Once they completed the first few laps, it became obvious that Dario did not get the pace of leaders. Dario and his crewmembers decided to conserve the fuel and let Briscoe and Dixon battle it out in the front.

The “Firestone Indy 300” was the first race organized in the league history to run from the green flag to the checkered flag, without any caution periods. As the race was competed without any incident or accident, Dixon and Briscoe were trapped in losing the strategies. Both of the leaders were said to pit on the lap 144.  For them, slow down and conserving the fuel was pointless. Therefore, their only option was to carry on the race to run full on. Dario made his pit stop in the final lap on the lap 150 as he had the guarantee to finish the race without any other stops.

Ryan Briscoe led the “IRL IndyCar Series Firestone Indy 300” on 10the October 2009 at the “Homestead-Miami Speedway”. Ryan Briscoe said that he knew that he would be stuck in the lap. On the lap 187, he earned two bonus points as he led most of the laps in the race. Dario was going slowly, virtual to the leaders, which Dixon and Briscoe almost passed him by the lap 190. However, Dario had the discipline and tried to hold his strategy.

However, if you want to know more about the 2009 IndyCar 2009 Championship, researching on the internet is a wise option.

Merging for a good cause– INDY CAR & CHAMP CAR

Indy car and champ car are the terms used for a kind of open wheeled cars used for racing. The open wheel car racing had a lot of fans in the United States of America. For conducting the races in a more organized manner a sanctioning body was necessary. United States Auto Club (USAC) was the primarily existed sanctioning body succeeding the American Automobile Association. Some of the team owners who disagreed with USAC formed a different sanctioning body in the name of Championship Auto Racing Team (CART) in 1979.

This was commonly called as champ car. With the passage of time USAC lost its prominence and CART became the sanctioning body. It continued to organize open wheel car racing in America. In 1994 due to internal disturbances CART divided into two to form a new racing series called the Indy Racing League (IRL). The difference between the two was the amount of money spent on racing was very less in IRL as compared to that of CART. Till 2000 CART remained the prominent body. But after that IRL started to gain strength which was helped on by the mismanagement and such other problems inside CART. Then came the period of financial crisis to CART and the property of the sanctioning authority was sold.

The new name was Open Wheel Racing Series (OWRS). But later when the principal sponsors withdrew their support the official name became Champ Car World Series. It was a matter of time the CCWS fall apart. In 2008 an agreement was signed to join the CCWS and IRL. Thus champ car and indy car has merged. The division back in 1994 has hurt both the series. The agreement has sold the sanctioning power of champ car to IRL for about 6 million US Dollars. Thus all the assets and history of CART and champ car now vests with the IRL or simply called as indy car.

IndyCar Drivers Hall of Fame

The Motor Speedway historian of Indianapolis, Mr. Donald Davidson as well as the chief mechanics of Indianapolis 500, Frank Coon and Jim Travers are the inductees into the “Auto Racing Hall of Fame” of 2010. The induction ceremony of this event will take place on 27 May. A panel of around one hundred and fifty electors comprised of the Hall of Fame members, motor sports journalists, leading auto racing participants as well as other officials will vote yearly for the “Hall of Fame inductees”.

This “Auto Racing Hall of Fame” was found in the year 1952 by American Automobile Association. This is located at the “Indianapolis Motor Speedway” from 1962. Davidson developed an avid interest in Indianapolis 500 when he was an adolescent in England. Arriving at the IMS in the year 1964, he thrilled the racing community with his skills to recite year-by-year accounts of the participants’ careers.

After returned permanently in the year 1965, Davidson was invited by “Sid Collins” for joining the international IMS Radio Network. He was appointed by “Henry Banks” as a USAC statistician, where he remained for almost thirty two years. He was also named as Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s historian in the year 1998 as well as in 2010.

Along with the numerous radio and television assignments, the raconteur Davidson also played as a host to the well known radio show, which was know as ‘The Talk of Gasoline Alley’ on 1070 AM.  His writing credits included numerous historical articles as well as columns.

There are also many websites on the internet, which will provide you information on the Hall of fame of Indy Car drivers. Moreover, you will be able to see the whole profile of the drivers. Most of the fans of IndyCar are opting for these websites to know more about it.

Indianapolis 500 Speedway Track

The Indianapolis 500 Motor Speedway track, which located in the Speedway of Indiana in United States, is known as the home of “Indianapolis 500-Mile Race” and the “Brickyard 400”.

It has established since the year 1909 and is known as the original Speedway. This track has a permanent seating facility for more than 257,000 viewers. The infield seating, raise the capacity to about 400,000. It is also known as the largest as well as highest capacity for sporting in the world.

Considered flat by the American standards and high-banked by the Europeans, this Motor Speedway is of two and half mile. It is rectangular oval with the dimensions, which have remained basically unchanged ever since its inception.

The authority also constructed a modern “infield road course” between the year 1998 and 2000. This also incorporated the western as well as the southern portions of oval circuit to create a 4.192 km (2.605-mile) track. In the year 2008, this road was modified for replacing the southwest turn with an added infield section, which is basically for the motorcycle use.  Altogether, the present grounds have extended from an original 1.3 km (320 acres) on which the Speedway was previously built for covering an area of 559. Located on the “National Register of Historic Places” in the year 1975 and was also designated a “National Historic Landmark” in the year 1987. This track presently remains as the only landmark to be joined with the automotive racing history from its inception.

In addition to the “Indianapolis 500”, the Brickyard 400, which is of NASCAR, also takes the place. This Speedway also hosted “United States Grand Prix” for Formula 1 from the year 2000 to 2007. If you are looking for an option to know more about this track, researching on the web is the best option for you.

Indycar 2010 Season Schedule

The Indy Racing League has released their 2010 race schedule for the IndyCar Series. The seventeen event calendar including eight street/road course races, eight oval races and one yet to be decided. A couple of venues that had become staples of the series have given way to new tracks.

The season will open on March 14 in Brazil, at the venue yet to be determined (the safe $ is on this being a road/street race). Then it is back to the States for races at St. Petersburg FL, Birmingham AL (Barber Motorsports Park) and Long Beach CA.

Next up will be a stint of ovals; Kansas, Indianapolis, Texas & Iowa. This will be followed by five road/street veunes; Watkins Glen, Toronto, Edmonton, Mid-Ohio & Sonoma/Infineon. The season will wrap up with another set of ovals; Chicagoland, Kentucky, Motegi (Japan) and Homestead-Miami.

Gone from the schedule are the ovals at Milwaukee (which shut it’s doors last month) & Richmond, as well as the street race at Detroit, which had been canceled for this year due to the economic climate.

“We couldn’t be more pleased with the diversity of the schedule as it will help us maintain a championship tradition that has been exciting for both competitors and fans,” noted IRL president of competition, Brian Barnhart.  ”The 2010 schedule keeps in-line with our goal to create a championship that requires drivers and teams to master a variety of tracks over the course of the season, and hopefully once again see our title battle come down to the final race of the year.”

There is no word as of yet as to the 2010 schedule for the Firestone Indy Lights Series. I will post it when it becomes available.

Tiny details makes the Indycar Speed increase.

The biggest areas of performance teams will exploit to produce a fast lap around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway comes in the form of aerodynamics. Most teams save a special set of “Indy bodywork” just for the Speedway that has received weeks of effort to perfect its shape, to fill the smallest gaps and seams, and to minimize and areas where air might become blocked or impeded as it travels inside or over the car.

Teams also spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting angles of the exposed suspension items, going so far as to spend time testing up and down long airport runways or automotive proving grounds, doing nothing other than rotating steering arms and sidepod mounting struts in minute increments to find the most aero-friendly angle to use on the super speedways.

For the sections of the body where transitions happen – where the front wings meet the nose, where the radiator blocking panels meet the sidepod, or where the front suspension mounts to the chassis – teams use thin and rubbery “helicopter tape” to smooth airflow and reduce drag. In its thinnest form – about three millimeters thick – helicopter tape also helps to minimize damage to an IndyCar’s carbon fiber body from the rocks and debris that are thrown rearward at over 200 mph.

With its origin as a pliable tape used to protect the leading edge of helicopter rotor blades, auto racing is a perfect alternate use for the product and even at upwards of $300 per roll for the highest grade of tape, it is a high consumption item during the Month of May as it is used every day by every team.

At the front of the Dallara, front win end plates (FWEP) provide the biggest opportunity for teams to produce their own solutions. Most teams run with the stock end plates provided by Dallara, but some, like Target Chip Ganassi Racing, spend considerable time testing and developing their own FWEPs.

While the aero gains are minimal, finding an improvement of a few hundredths of a second around Indianapolis can make the time and expenditure well worth the effort. The FWEPs are designed to match the wing angle range a team expects to run, which gives a further indication why different teams will produce their own FWEPs.

Gurney flaps are also open, and everything from carbon fiber to old school aluminum Gurneys can be seen up and down pit lane. Their size and height also vary. Some teams prefer to use Gurneys with a uniform height, while some teams opt for ones that are flush in some areas and stand tall in others.

The Dallara’s rear wing section is also a place where many differences can be found, but those variances are found mostly with the how the wing is mounted to the chassis. With teams running their rear wings tilted back as much as five degrees in qualifying, mechanics need to be able to make quick adjustments based on the engineer or the driver’s call.

As HVM Racing IndyCar engineer and SPEED.com contributor Michael Cannon shared, the extremes people will go to in order to shed downforce to gain straight line speed at Indy straddles a fine line.

“The rear wing stops losing drag and just starts making lift at about negative four point five degrees. Anything more is just truly terrifying but you will see people run negative five degrees. Simply because you can flatten out the front wings and there are a variety of ways to shave off just that much more drag, the downforce number, the drag trade off for downforce is big. You lose a lot of drag, and gain speed, but the car is almost impossible to hold onto in the corners. The guys running negative five degrees are truly heroes!”

The majority of teams use mount plates that provide a range of adjustment at the base of the plates where the wing is bolted to the crash attenuator, while others use plates with few external holes of adjustment, opting to make their wing angle changes inside the wing where it mounts at bottom of the element. The latter style of adjustment offers small aerodynamic gains, but takes considerably longer than the former style of mount plate. A few teams have developed a ratcheting style of angle adjustment — the fastest method of all — but it puts extra items in the airstream.

Rules dictate the rear wing end plates (RWEP) must conform to a specific point of coordinates in relation to rear wing angle, and as a result, when wing angle changes are made, teams usually make an adjustment to the angle of the RWEPs.

Dampers are another area where teams are free to use the product of their choice. Ohlins, Penske and Dynamic shocks are three of the most common solutions, but Cannon says teams tend to go with what seems to be winning at the moment.

“It’s a case of ‘monkey see monkey do’. We’ve been running around on Ohlins and what we are doing with the Ohlins is better than what we are doing with the Penskes at this point in time. Is one better than the other? I doubt it. A highly developed and highly evolved damper is your best option. At the end of the day, Ohlins makes an excellent and very adjustable damper, the most common one is a through-rod design. It uses a series of springs and shims to generate force; they are very configurable and very light weight but they are a through rod damper.

“They don’t offer the same platform or support feeling that a monotube damper does like the Penske. There is a bit of nose pressure with the non-through-rod design which tends to give the car’s platform a bit of stability and the drivers like that especially as the downforce gets shed off the car. There is also a frequency issue, the shim damper can be better at fast amplitude, that’s very high frequency stuff and that’s what you see at Indy.”

Indy Car 101

Welcome to Indycar 101 , everything you every wanted to know about indycar part of the Sport 101 group