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The guards are a good idea in principle, but won't work very well in practice because of inertia and velocity which you can't really compute for when designing them, whatever shape they are, there's always going to be a situation where the following car can get launched.

If anything these guards could be likened to the height of the fences at the Grand National (here in the UK they are calling for them to be lowered even more because horses die when they fall, but they're also not taking into account the increased speed the horses are carrying now because they don't have to slow so much to get over the fence).

The guards are lulling the drivers into a false sense of security because they've drunk the Koolaid and believe that because of them, there's no way the cars will get launched, in that race I saw much more front to rear contact than I saw in last years whole season, especially at lower speed where the guards are appearing to do their job properly.

As I said at the time, I'd be more concerned about the lack of energy dissipation when the car hit the wall than the flight itself, you're never gonna stop light open wheel cars from taking off given the right set of circumstances.

Bullcrap to the "any car would've reacted like that" stuff, that's just a received opinion...

In that corner, at that speed the car should've dropped back to the ground a lot quicker than it did but it seems the new sidepods and rear end allowed the car to get a bit more lift than any other car would at those speeds.

Exactly what kind of idiots do we have running tech for this series?
They pinned their entire hopes for safety on the new car on a couple of wheel guards yet still gave us the same over downforced, low powered shit that means the cars will fly just as bad as the old ones did?

Now when the new cars came out looking ugly with a detritus of a rear end people sighed and said "well, it doesn't look good but at least its safer"

Yet the cars will still fly and the cars are still underpowered...so why exactly did they make the cars so ugly?

I do not understand the decision making process over there. They could've started with a blank sheet of paper and rid us all of this situation. I realise no one is going to bring back the chasis spec of the mid-late 90s but I don't understand the philosophy behind the cars we are being given now, aside from the fact they occasionally produce stage managed side by side racing on ovals.
They had their change to completely re-invent the wheel but they thought things were good as they were, just needed slight tweaking.

Well guess what, they were wrong, enough time has passed for the whole "benefit of the doubt" stuff to be done with now and the new car is just as big a piece of crap as the old one, albeit a little faster...

Well done Indycar, well done *sarcastic clap*

I like it, although I do agree that they had a awesome opportunity to make something immense, and with regards to Marco flying, I'm thinking that the downhill part of the track where they touched would have contributed to him staying in the air for so long?

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


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

Well it's not really that steep...

Xpert!11!! they should hire u!!!!!!

Seriously, calm the motherfuck down. Once again, making hens out of feathers, or dinosaurs out of hens.

We're in for the greatest season since the split, trust me.

Going back to the Andretti/Rahal incident & what the car did.
I don't really think its a concern or even a problem unless it happens again & again under several different situations.

To me what happened was what was to be expected in that sort of contact, Rahal braked earlier than Marco expected & the speed difference (Even though probably not that great) & wheel to wheel contact launched the car in a similar way to what I've seen in many other categories over the years.

What would be a real worry is if the new car starts going airborn as easily as the old one in more minor situations such as getting sideways, running over debris etc... like we often saw with the old car on ovals.

The wheel guards not working as many had hoped is an issue, However at least there is some data to look at in the hope of making them stronger to at the very least limit the possibility of this sort of thing happening too often.

The wheel guards worked exceptionally when Franchitti hit Briscoe. It was Dario's wing that broke, not Briscoe's rear wheel.

Maybe Briscoe would have gotten a puncture without them, so okay. But that doesnt have to do anything with cars launching in the air. You get rarely launched if its just your wing poking a rear wheel.

Excuse me? Are you trying to say that it was only Andretti's wing that touched Rahal's rear tyre? Because the video evidence says otherwise. Rahal was turning when Andretti hit him.

[youtubeidiot]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCBvDvm-g5s[/youtubeidiot]

I don't think Beezle is suggesting that but saying the exact opposite.

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

You see this sh*t? That's not an airborne flip, that's a racecar that's out of control after climbing the rear of another car after a big impact with big speed differences. You know what that is? That's the complete opposite that we had in IndyCar oval races during the past decade, remember? You know, cars had a small contact with small speed differences and made a huge flip? Or when a car behind pushed the car in front sideways, causing a blowover.

Seriously, anyone who's now saying that DW12 is WORSE than the car we had before is jumping the gun. So far we have not seen any oval races and we have seen only one incident that you can barely call "caused by aerodynamics". The hell, you could open a car window in a 50mph, wave your hand around and hit your elbow on B-pilar and blame the bad aerodynamics of your palm for it. There's always the aerodynamical forces playing a role when going faster than a walking pace. The question is whether or not the IndyCar has made a difference with the car design that prevents high speed blowovers that were too common for the old car. The Andretti/Rahal incident is not an example strong enough to say that they have failed with that task.

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

Strictly speaking there are aerodynamic causes which made that worse.

Shot 1: The car comes off the ground due to contact.


Shot 2: The right front has now come back down


Shot 3: The right front is now back off the ground, purely from the underbody catching air


Shot 4: The car is even higher in the air, despite earlier having come down.


Now obviously you are right to say that this is not enough to declare the car worse than the previous one, however it is extremely worrying. The car is travelling significantly slower than it would on an oval, with a higher downforce package, and aerodynamic effects were still able to raise the car after it originally caught air. And this is without mentioning the wheel guards.

There is nothing to suggest here that this car is worse than the old one, however there is nothing to suggest that it is better either. And that should be raising alarm bells.

Code name is just the Joker of the open wheel world, he just wants to watch it burn. lol

I can only say that at least IndyCar knows how strong the wheel guards really are. Just hope that they actually do something about it.

Or go high horsepower-low downforce, like they should have done in the first place.

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Ducks Angels Sounders Spurs

Rahal put on probation for 6 races. We all know what the real danger is; reckless drivers.

Ellis gets it!

I'm not saying its WORSE than the last car, I'm saying its the SAME as the last car, yet the IRL tech staff sold us all on the notion it'd be a revolutionary step towards greater safety and so much better than what had come before.
So far despite it being a bit quicker than before its all the same old crap that came before.

I guess what I'm really frustrated at is the wasted potential of the whole deal.
When they first announced a new car, maybe it was just me but I hoped for a revolutionary change in the philosophy of the car, I knew it wouldn't be back to the Mid-90s but I hoped at least for something different to the crap we'd been served in the name of Open Wheel racing up to that point.

Yet instead of giving us change they gave us the same old high downforced, low powered crap and sold it to us like it was a huge revolution.
Perhaps what frustrates me the most is I just don't get the thought process or the logic behind doing such a thing.

They had the potential to take this thing to the next level and give us all something we could be proud of,
NASCAR took a misstep with their COT that they're quickly trying to correct with the cool looking new cars, so maybe there was even a window into eroding some of their massive lead in mass popularity stakes, but they fucked it up yet again.
So yeah, if that's what they want to give us the whole thing can burn as far as I'm concerned

The car floated. That's the difference and that's the worrying aspect.

Indy will be the biggest test....if we get through the whole month without some more air I'd be stunned.