Interesting Item on New Chassis in Indy Star (Merged)

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally Posted by JagtechOhio

And the old Dallaras are now worthless.

I see your points when it comes to teams shelling out for new equipment in 2012, JagtechOhio, but

- Exactly how competitive would the current Dallara be when it would be dragging a 200 lbs. anchor against the new cars? I think we know the answer to that question, don't we?

-How much would it cost to refit that old Dallara to hold the new engines, and?

-Why would Dallara want to get involved in creating new engine covers for the old cars (sans airbox) or those refit chits and bits to accommodate the new engines when they are focused on selling the new product?

I highly doubt that seven guys sat around in a vacuum to come up with this...I would think that they would have talked to all of the builders about this scenario and gotten input from them before taking this step.

[ptclaus98]

Originally Posted by mountainstar

Well Champcar's problems went beyond the DP01 and what it could solve. Once a few problems were sorted it was a pretty racy car. Champcar's destiny was set in Sept 2006 and not much could have changed it.

Same with indycar, I think to really set themselves apart they needed to go radical and I think there are too many problems now that this new car can overcome. The golden goose has been cooked.

The only hope for revenue and competition is to bring in another manufacturer. But honda has already made it clear they are bare boning it, so I don't know how that would sit with them. They are fence sitters anyways and I wouldn't count on them.

Why go radical with a chassis? At the end of the day, prospective fans don't care about what the car looks like. They care about the nut behind the wheel and the lump behind him. I guarantee you if they found a way to work VAG in, that there would be a built in fanbase as long as they could slap TDI or TSI on it. Get Ken Block, or Travis Pastrana, or Tanner Foust in a car, if only for a test. Get over to ESPN and do anything you have to to get airplay and get your stars on. Getting Dario and Helio on SportsNation at 4 PM on a weekday got more eyes on them than anything on Versus will. The chassis is for the fans that are already in the fold.

[mountainstar]

Originally Posted by JagtechOhio

This is NO plan, exactly like the engine specs. This is an invitation to potential investors and suppliers, period.

Dallara roller: $349K
Dallara roller with body kit: $385K

Alternate body kit supplier requirements:

IRL approval
Safety testing
Fixed price
Production capability to supply all teams.

Now that's what Barnhart said. If the complete body kit is capped at $70K, that makes an alternate builder peanuts. And he has no guarantee that his R&D time will net him a single sale.

Same as the engines. If you invite them, it doesn't mean they will come. If they come, it doesn't mean they will be competitive.

And the old Dallaras are now worthless.

It's a defacto spec Dallara/ Honda series, which only changes if competitors chose to gamble on participation.

One car team: $385K for primary chasis and body kit, $385K for T car, $700K for Honda engine lease.
That's $1.477 Million before you buy a tire or hire a grunt. Or you go home.

I don't really "get it". I could understand maybe the basic monocoque being made by one manufacturer but then they should leave the rest of the car open, especially the suspension. I don't see too many of the established manufacturers climbing all over themselves to produce a few body panels and invest R&D time and money into producing something that beats the dallara.

The old car though, teams have amortized the cost of them via depreciation and it's a cost of going racing. These old dogs only have a finite "life" to them anyways.

All this is to me is a punt with a few bones tossed out as weak appeasement.

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally Posted by mountainstar

I don't really "get it". I could understand maybe the basic monocoque being made by one manufacturer but then they should leave the rest of the car open, especially the suspension. I don't see too many of the established manufacturers climbing all over themselves to produce a few body panels and invest R&D time and money into producing something that beats the dallara.

The old car though, teams have amortized the cost of them via depreciation and it's a cost of going racing. These old dogs only have a finite "life" to them anyways.

All this is to me is a punt with a few bones tossed out as weak appeasement.

Personally, I would have done just the monocoque, too, and left the rest open to allow the other builders to design their own suspension bits, aero kits, etc.

Teams are allowed to do their own suspension parts now...they won't be able to in this new scenario...at least for now...I think this is a potentially bad part of the idea, because Dallara's price for those parts a going to be marked up, and the teams can produce them cheaper or they wouldn't already be doing it now.

[mountainstar]

Originally Posted by ptclaus98

Why go radical with a chassis? At the end of the day, prospective fans don't care about what the car looks like. They care about the nut behind the wheel and the lump behind him. I guarantee you if they found a way to work VAG in, that there would be a built in fanbase as long as they could slap TDI or TSI on it. Get Ken Block, or Travis Pastrana, or Tanner Foust in a car, if only for a test. Get over to ESPN and do anything you have to to get airplay and get your stars on. Getting Dario and Helio on SportsNation at 4 PM on a weekday got more eyes on them than anything on Versus will. The chassis is for the fans that are already in the fold.

Well I guess I should have clarified what I meant by radical. And what I mean is they should have found a way to open it up a bit with the rules and what could be produced and by who.

And yeah I do think people care what the cars look like. Who wants to watch ugly cars?

[ptclaus98]

Originally Posted by mountainstar

Well I guess I should have clarified what I meant by radical. And what I mean is they should have found a way to open it up a bit with the rules and what could be produced and by who.

And yeah I do think people care what the cars look like. Who wants to watch ugly cars?

To the random Joe off the street corner, open wheeled cars are all different shades of the same stuff. It all looks weird. To the casual fan and above, you're right, but I think people overestimate the number of casual fans.

[mountainstar]

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

Personally, I would have done just the monocoque, too, and left the rest open to allow the other builders to design their own suspension bits, aero kits, etc.

Teams are allowed to do their own suspension parts now...they won't be able to in this new scenario...at least for now...I think this is a potentially bad part of the idea, because Dallara's price for those parts a going to be marked up, and the teams can produce them cheaper or they wouldn't already be doing it now.

Always follow the money.

I've been told there exists an "indycar tax" on all parts sold by dallara and I am sure that arrangement would continue here. Clearly where the money is, is in spare parts. So it works for indycar, they continue to get their pockets lined with taxing the spare parts sold and dallara builds a facility near the speedway and I am sure there is all sorts of other back room dealing we can only imagine.

I see the body panel thing for what it is, a bone tossed to the other companies and maybe the fans that want to see some differences in the car. It's superficial and tiny. I also can't see dallara being too interested in having competing companies like Lola pour over it's intellectual property to make a competing body panel kit that is competitive and works with the dallara car.

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally Posted by mountainstar

Well I guess I should have clarified what I meant by radical. And what I mean is they should have found a way to open it up a bit with the rules and what could be produced and by who.

And yeah I do think people care what the cars look like. Who wants to watch ugly cars?

I agree with this as well, mountainstar...

Gosh, maybe I need to go to Confession...the apocalypse must be drawing near!

Seriously...I think that a common basic monococque with the freedom to design everything else within some loose guidelines that would open up the creativity would have been the best move.

As far as looks, I would not have wanted to see a bunch of DeltaWings running around on the track...and the current Dallara is an ugly race car.

[Jonerz]

They should ban Dallara from producing side pods, rear wings, engine covers and front wings to FORCE teams to produce their own and perhaps encourage Delta Wing, Lola, Swift etc. to produce kits as well.

Okay, unreasonable? Yes. But this will just turn into a Dallara/Honda show again. Let's get ready for "Next Generation IndyCar Chassis" talk in 2015.

Chris

[ptclaus98]

The Dallara, while an ugly race car, gives us some pretty good racing, though. I wouldn't have minded if they retrofit them personally. My gripe is mainly with HPD and their milquetoast engines. It's all great saying your engines never blow up, but any one with a brain can see that they probably don't run those engines any higher than 85 percent of their performance capacity. A 3.4L pure race built V8 that runs 10K revs isn't that impressive, especially when their street cars run to 8K pretty easily. Hell, F1 V8's barely ever explode any more and they run to 18K.

[JagtechOhio]

From ESPN chat underway right now:

Gomer from Earl, Indiana:

Good job having the guts on making a hard decision Randy. Will Teams like Penske and Ganassi be able to make skins for the new cars?

Randy Bernard (4:28 PM)


Yes. They will be able to make aero kits for their new cars, but you're only allowed two sets of kits in one year. And if you make a set, you have to be able to sell them to any other team for a max price of $70,000.

[Amar7605]

You gotta admit, IndyCar tries to walk a fine line to keep people happy. The new design is a compromise for all manufactuers. Perhaps it's a good thing, perhaps not. We shall see. As long as the racing stays competitive, to me that's all that matters.

[Jonerz]

Do we think Ganassi and Penske will spend the money to produce their own stuff? I sure hope so, at least we'd have three different-looking cars in the field.

Hopefully bigger horsepower and ChampCar-like aerodynamic principles will put the drivers back in the gladiator league and we'll have a 1980's-like boom. Then, when IndyCar is popular again they can get multiple chassis and proper open competition again.

Don't know how I feel, but the formula, even if it isn't what I or many IndyCar fans initially wanted, does have potential.

Chris

[mountainstar]

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

I agree with this as well, mountainstar...

Gosh, maybe I need to go to Confession...the apocalypse must be drawing near!

Seriously...I think that a common basic monococque with the freedom to design everything else within some loose guidelines that would open up the creativity would have been the best move.

As far as looks, I would not have wanted to see a bunch of DeltaWings running around on the track...and the current Dallara is an ugly race car.

Yes I agree might be time for you to go to confession. Those that supported tony george have a lot to answer for.

You have to wonder what ganassi's thoughts are on all this after his move with the delta wing to take intellectual and financial control over chassis supply and parts. It's clear the speedway is keeping the dallara money train close to their chest. Unfortunately I don't have the inside line at ganassi anymore so I don't know.

Personally I find myself these days gravitating to other parts of motorsport that traditionally I would not have followed. Things like targa rallies, historics, open road motorcycle racing like the Isle of Man TT, off road racing and so on. Reason being there is no creativity anymore with things like nascar, F1, indycar and so on. No creativity with the tracks, cars and even the drivers are soulness PR automatons. Boring.

[dyewat808]

Originally Posted by Tim Northcutt

You missed half of the announcement...

This is the whole concept:

The base of the new car is a rolling chassis and advanced safety cell produced by Dallara. The rest of the car will be produced by different manufacturers who can build "aero kits".

Thus Swift, Lola, BAT, Dome, or any other manufacturer can build the aero parts of the body, subject to ICS approval, with a cap of $70,000 for those kits to be mounted to the Dallara roller chassis and safety cell.

This is a great plan...variety coupled with the safety cell being built by a manuafcturer that has been in the series for many years.

If others don't grasp that, they need to have Vanna White sell them a clue for $250

Ah apologies, I did miss that.

Thats...actually quite interesting. Any idea what these aero guidelines are?

[JagtechOhio]

The first issue is aero wake turbulence. Instead of being uniformly reduced as was the intent of Swift or Lola or BAT, it can be exploited for a competitive advantage by the components of a particular manufacturer.

Does Dallara want to make their cars easier to follow and pass? Not if a Peterbuilt Windjammer Special is trying to track it down.

[DanicaFan]

I agree, this is something we will just to wait and see how this all plays out.

[duke_toaster]

Originally Posted by DanicaFan

The cars will be manufactured here in Indiana.

Was it the IRL's idea for Dallara to set up a new place just for the IndyCars? Surely they could just build them in Parma where they do practically everything else.

[6157]

I am amazed at how little the fans have understood about this announcement.

[JagtechOhio]

Pleas, don't hesitate to enlighten us all once again.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by JagtechOhio

The first issue is aero wake turbulence. Instead of being uniformly reduced as was the intent of Swift or Lola or BAT, it can be exploited for a competitive advantage by the components of a particular manufacturer.

Does Dallara want to make their cars easier to follow and pass? Not if a Peterbuilt Windjammer Special is trying to track it down.

So effectively the new car is a Dallara/Honda with aero styling by the manufacturer of your choice.

What if the Dallara rolling chassis/tub turns out to be rubbish, what then?

I know HRT F1 team ran out of money, so they couldn't pay for the car's improvements but what were Dallara doing, building a car that needed so maney improvements in the first place?

[awrb]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

So effectively the new car is a Dallara/Honda with aero styling by the manufacturer of your choice.

What if the Dallara rolling chassis/tub turns out to be rubbish, what then?

I know HRT F1 team ran out of money, so they couldn't pay for the car's improvements but what were Dallara doing, building a car that needed so maney improvements in the first place?

I don't think the Dallara will be rubbish, they don't have a history of building bad cars. As for the HRT chassis, it is not that HRT couldn't afford updates to the car but the team actually missed payments to Dallara, causing Dallara to stop and start the project a few times, hence why the car isn't very good.

I think this is a decent rule set, and I think we'll see a much improved IndyCar in the future. It's not the open regulations we all wanted, but hopefully it's the first step toward that.

[ptclaus98]

Originally Posted by JagtechOhio

The first issue is aero wake turbulence. Instead of being uniformly reduced as was the intent of Swift or Lola or BAT, it can be exploited for a competitive advantage by the components of a particular manufacturer.

Does Dallara want to make their cars easier to follow and pass? Not if a Peterbuilt Windjammer Special is trying to track it down.

See, I was under the impression they were going to use Swift's "Mushroom Buster". I take it by this post that they aren't?

[gttouring]

WTF is going on?
aero bits from other builders? and in 2+years time? oh man
this is really a weak attempt, they might have well stripped the current car, which can withstand a hellfire missle, start with that tub and use the current V8 and new engine and the rest a clean slate - if they are just going to use Dallara anyway.
when a new car is in the live carbon i will have a final say but:
1)at least they are moving forward. 2)at least potentially more than one engine

[JagtechOhio]

claus. I didn't hear or read anything from the IRL that mentioned the mushrrom buster at all, and Swift was not discussed as a continuing participant. I asked Swift on Facebook today, they are often cooperative, and they have not answered yet.