TBK-Light.com

I know he's doing his job, but Randy Bernard is a bit of a c**t.

Ironically if the cars were much faster on the straights they would be slower in the corners as the drivers would have to use the brake pedal, something the pack racing doesn't require at the moment.

And no, if they took off the wings you'd have Super Formula Ford, which would be cool in theory but might be too far in the other direction.

Hopefully the turbo engine will mean they can mandate a sensible amount of downforce that doesn't create pack racing and if the cars are becoming too fast a la Texas they simply lower the boost until people stop blacking out....
(which I doubt the IRL would ever get near anyway, their cars aren't as fast)

Old spec IRL cars (the first chassis with the normally aspirated engine) were actually good for the kind of racing we expect to see on ovals.

The car had much smaller wings and apparently the chassis itself didn't produce that much downforce. A while ago, I asked Eliseo Salazar about it, and he told me something like "Yeah, we had to lift the throttle, and the one who lifted less during the race was the winner".

Don't remember the new car looking so square...

not necessary, the chassis itself produces enough downforce to get round most banked corners flat without the wings, that's the problem. It might work at totally flat tracks like Milwaukee (wouldn't even work at Indy), and then they'd probably just be confidence lifting for the corners, they'd be a bit faster on the straights, but not much thanks to the drag factor.

IMHO they need to add weight to the cars, at least 40% more, then give them a bit more power but that wouldn't necessarily cure the problem at places like Texas and Vegas cos of the banking, then the IRL need to be more pro-active on the regulations with the wings, stop the teams arcing them up to produce lift, aka reduce drag.

IIRC that original IRL spec car was a lot heavier than the Dallaras, if this new car turns out to be no different to the old one they only have themselves to blame, they had a blank sheet of paper to work with.

Um, wat? Citation, please. This is completely foreign to my knowledge of the way winged formula cars work. As I understood it, in general, a lot of the downforce is provided by the big front and rear wings. Removing the front and rear wings would mean that only the undertray, the shape of the car, and other factors would provide the downforce.

I'm not inclined to believe, personally, that a wingless chassis would have *more* downforce than a winged one. As an example, the IRL actually uses engines with less horsepower than USAC Silver Crown cars, but I can guarantee you that a Silver Crown race at Las Vegas will end up being slower. Underbody downforce can be significant, granted, but if the wings were used only for lift IRL cars would take off even under normal conditions.

Googling, I found a link that, while unofficial, makes some sense to me. It seems like there was a rule change in 1997 to flatten the undertray (reduce chassis downforce) and increase the wing downforce. However, at the same time, the rules mandated higher wing angles to increase drag and thus reduce top speed. Maybe that's what you were thinking of.

At any rate, I'm not going to armchair quarterback the specifics, I only want to see specs that allow cars to pass each other and allow cars to actually have to lift. Maybe that means that some tracks are no longer suitable for the IRL cars, that's fine.

All superseedways had a minimum wing angle with the exception of Indy. At IMS teams could run negative rake. In doing so teams eliminated drag not downforce. This was a TG rule as Tony did not want the cars running faster speeds outside of IMS.

That could race at Texas.

http://www.racer.com/q-a-justin-wilson- ... le/218925/

4th or so question.

Basically, the wings on the IRL car are made in such a way that they produce a lot of drag, to reduce that drag, the teams arc them up (or put them on the minimum wing angle), this reduces the drag but in turn causes lift, but on the bigger tracks it doesn't really affect the downforce of the car because the banking takes care of that.

First new cars delivered for teams.

http://www.indycar.com/news/show/55-izod-indycar-series/51042-an-early-christmas-present-for-teams/

_________________
"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

You can see how they do this in these images:



For comparisson this is how CART ran the wings at Indy in '95:


And how Arie luyendyk qualified in '96 when he got the lap record:

Damn that mid 1990s Reynard with speedway wings was beautiful.

Can somebody post the Dan Wheldon Autosport story on here?

This reminds me of what Jeremy Clarkson said in his book "I Know You Got Soul" about Space Shuttle, the Concorde and the Blackbird SR-71 - if you want to see the future, you have to go to the museum.

If you want to see the fastest cars on Indianapolis, the future of space traveling or the fastest aeroplanes you got to go to the museum.

I mean, what the hell? Racing was faster, the aviation was a super-sonic miracle and the man fucking walked on the Moon before I was born. Now what?

_________________
"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

Ah, okay. So it's less "taking the wing off" than a stupid regulation on how they have to angle the wing that's causing the wings to be more lift. Gotcha. (This probably accounts some of why this car is more prone to blowovers as well...)

Here's a cool find: Sam Schmidt plays "Press Your Luck", from 1985. Won the following day too.

It's how they choose to angle the wing, not how they're told to.

Think of it this way, if you angle the wing backwards like they do so much that is causes lift (thus reducing downforce & drag), literally cutting the wings off without changing anything else, would equate to more downforce being produced overall.

It does go against the theory of wings, until you put them at certain angles like they do, it's a crazy situation that the league has bread themselves with the rules.

If you put an IRL car alongside one of those old Champcars you'd see the difference immediately, the Champcar is essentially a brick with a pretty nose on the front (shape wise) which probably produced very little downforce whereas the IRL Dallara is shaped like one big wing, producing err, massive amounts of downforce.

_________________
"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

No visibility and probably still safer than the 2001 Champcars (at Texas).

hahaha how did u come across those clips of sam?