New look for IndyCar in 2018

http://www.indycar.com/News/2017/03/03-31-Added-2018-car-images

Better, but still a crapwagon.

At least they got rid of the stupid bumpers. That is a big step in the right direction.

Doesn't look too bad I guess as far as modern single-seaters go, and clearly an improvement over the previous one indeed (but that wasn't too hard now was it ?). Still very sad to see the state of Championship Car racing when you consider its fabulous history . I mean spec series, really ? I still hate Tony George after all those years !

Frank Verplanken wrote:

Doesn't look too bad I guess as far as modern single-seaters go, and clearly an improvement over the previous one indeed (but that wasn't too hard now was it ?). Still very sad to see the state of Championship Car racing when you consider its fabulous history . I mean spec series, really ? I still hate Tony George after all those years !

I agree 100%  Not hard to improve on the current car, where else can you go but up at this point. The core problems of the series remain:

- only one chassis, so yes, it's a spec series
- only two engines, but they are so similar that it may as well be one
- a complete lack of power and way too much downforce
- management that is still (IMO) hell bent on selling the series as some sort of open wheel NASCAR, which is wrong on so many levels

Maybe McLaren should come back to IndyCar, they would be more sucessful than they are in F1 at the moment.
But seriously, one chassis... Looking back to the 70s, there were so many.. I think they should bring back that kind of developement.

Jason White wrote:

I agree 100%  Not hard to improve on the current car, where else can you go but up at this point. The core problems of the series remain:

- only one chassis, so yes, it's a spec series
- only two engines, but they are so similar that it may as well be one
- a complete lack of power and way too much downforce
- management that is still (IMO) hell bent on selling the series as some sort of open wheel NASCAR, which is wrong on so many levels

Yes and I don't see any of these problems being smartly adressed in the future... Don't really care anyway as I don't follow modern racing at all, the last F1 race I saw was Monaco 2008, while I did see a few Indy 500s since then but it's too painful to watch I can't do it anymore . I was very sad about the state of our sport for many years, but now I have reconciled myself to the notion that racing as I like it is dead forever, so what can you do really Plenty of good racing from the 20th century to keep me busy for the rest of my life anyway !

Dallara's factory is just two blocks from Indianapolis.  They essentially have a monopoly on the chassis business for IndyCar, and until that changes, the series won't be able to get back to the former success it enjoyed IMO.

Spec racing and balancing is the curse of modern motorsports, or shall I say racetainment? I'm more and more desinterested TBH.

Skyrocketing costs were part culprits of the dismise of CART, but it's true they had lost direction already.

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selling the series as some sort of open wheel NASCAR, which is wrong on so many levels

Especially when you consider that NASCAR itself is in steep decline

I don't really get it, ask the average fan and he will tell you what he wants to see, and it's not spec series. Close racing yes, but also lots of power and little downforce. Bring the F5000s idea back, for heaven's sake!

Michael Drechsler wrote:

Spec racing and balancing is the curse of modern motorsports, or shall I say racetainment? I'm more and more desinterested TBH.

Balancing, my pet hate, along with set lap times. It results in sandbagging. Yes, the racing can be close, the Blancpain series is a good example, but how much of it is actually racing and not holding back to get as close as possible to the fixed lap time? Create a decent set of rules, close any loopholes, and such antics won't be necessary.

Another thing I can't stand is categories based on drivers. You're not fast enough, too bad, that's why you're an amateur and someone else a pro.

Alberto Ibañez wrote:

I don't really get it, ask the average fan and he will tell you what he wants to see, and it's not spec series. Close racing yes, but also lots of power and little downforce. Bring the F5000s idea back, for heaven's sake!

As long as people don't get that downforce ruins the show, it's not going anywhere. F1 is the prime example here. You want exciting races? Ditch the excessive aero and those ugly small wings popping up everywhere.

The main reason for the existence of racing at all is to improve production cars, so due to the technological advances it will never be real racing again : electronics everywhere, most drivers couldn't heel & toe to save their lives, mechanical sympathy is a term from another planet due to the reliability of cars, ...etc. Add to that the deplorable trend initiated in the late 1960s to make it a safer sport and the corporate sponsors having invaded the scene and all you get is a high-tech coffin in which our sport has been buried deeper and deeper every year since a couple of decades .

The good thing in the meantime has been the blooming of the historic racing scene which is now a fantastic thing with lots of fabulous meetings proposing some fantastic fields. I never miss an edition of the GP Historique de Monaco and in between those I catch what I can on the internet from Goodwood and other top meetings. This and our time machine of a simracing league is quite enough to satisfy me as a racing fan. I also follow Irish Road Racing and the TT, the only places where real, natural, circuits still exist on this earth !

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I also follow Irish Road Racing and the TT, the only places where real, natural, circuits still exist on this earth !

And HUGE balls are still required

Hell yes ! Irish Road Racing is not as lethal as people tend to think either, because the unforgiving nature of the circuits invites riders to caution and most of all you almost never ever see dirty tricks between them unlike what you can see on safer autodromes. That's another good thing about natural circuits : forces you to respect the road and respect your opponents . The TT does have a lot of fatalities (I think only two editions since 1946 did not have a fatality !) but most of those are of amateur riders trying way too hard. It usually takes a mechanical failure of some sort to kill a pro like the Dunlop brothers for instance.

BTCC in the uk is the best racing to watch,plenty of door banging close action imo.

Steve Parker wrote:

BTCC in the uk is the best racing to watch,plenty of door banging close action imo.

I can vouch for that I'm going to Donington next weekend.

Tony George and his IRL are probably the direct occassion for what finally became the demise of CART. But the unpredictableness and, let's call it what is, sheer incompetence of the CART-management in the early 2000's did not help.

A first big blow for CART was Penske's change from CART to IRL after the 2001-season. Penske's switch seemed to have been motivated by their main sponsor, Philip Morris, who preferred the all USA-shedule of IRL over the increasingly international shedule of CART. Also, in the 2001 Indy, which Penske already did as cross-over, the Penskes could not run in full Marlboro-livery due to US advertissement regulations. That further agravated Philip Morris.

It's offcourse easy to say, and also partially true, that exactly this is proof that corporate sponsorship ruined it. Still, being one of the first CART-team owners as of 1979, Roger Penske must not have taken this decision lightly and, I guess, would have used every chance to stay in CART. But CART-management failed to offer an alternative. Maybe the other team-owners, who co-owned CART, were not that unhappy to see a powerhouse like Penske leave? One big competitor less, right?

Still, the Philip Morris-decision holds a pretty significant message: if, as race series organiser, you want to organize an international series, say so from the get go. If a, at the basis, local series, develops into something international, you may alienate local sponsors. The teams concerned should then at least get the opportunity to find other sponsors in due time. Would it really have been that hard to postpone the increase of international races with two or three years to allow Penske, and maybe others, to sort their sponsorship-deals accordingly? And maybe get assure some decent coverage also by the media of the places were these international races were held?

Then Toyota, at the time an important engine supplier for CART, also announced that they would swith from CART to IRL. When they did, Penske was one of the first teams to use Toyota-engines in IRL. It is thus not entirely unfeasable that Penske had some influence in the decision. Still, what may also have played is that IRL at the time used 3.5l atmospheric engines, which, in development, were probably much closer to the then 3.0l atmospheric F1-engines then the 2.65l turbo charged CART-engines. And Toyota was still in F1 in those days.

What was however dramatic for CART, is how CART management handled the Toyota-threat of leaving for IRL. Initially, they were adamant that their 2.65l Turbo charged formula would remain intact till at least end 2004. No leeway, no compromise, no midway transition. Amongst the teams running Toyota-engines at the time were Chip Ganassi, Newman/Haas and Patrick Racing. The former two ending at the top of the season-tables. Again, one might wonder whether the other team-owners were that unhappy seeing Toyota leave?

But then, as the Toyota-threat became very real, suddenly, CART decided to change the engine-formula. Honda was so disgusted with that kind of instability, that they just quit as an engine-supplier.

And that left only Cosworth to supply the entire field for the 2003 CART-season. With as a result that CART lost a lot of it's appeal and went bankrupt by the end of the 2003-season

Offcourse, should Tony George not have started IRL, Roger Penske and Toyota could not have switched. But CART-management did not do a great deal to keep them onboard neither.

The worst of the story however is that, if you ask most people involved with US open-wheel racing now, in the end, it's not CART or IRL who have won or lost, open-wheel racing has lost all together. And all that open-wheel loss went to NASCAR. The presence of NASCAR as an alternative for race-fans was probably the most important reason for the dwindling interest in open-wheel racing in North America.

Now, one can say a lot of things about Bernie, but that is one of the things he always seemed to have captured very well. Let's make sure that there is no true alternative for F1. Just look at how he dealt with Group C-racing when that was becoming too popular for his taste in the late eighties.

I hear many saying now... But there are alternatives... Historic racing, touring car racing, bike racing, rally... But let's be honest, all those are pretty much incrowd series for us aficionados. Walk up to 100 people in the street and ask them what motorsport series they know: chances are pretty big that the large majority will answer F1 in Europe/Asia and Nascar in North-America.

Taking into account the costs involved with racing, that is a factor not to be neglected.

Does it mean that we can never again have a truly enjoyable racing series that would attract that same public attention and thrive on it? I may be a naive old fool, but I refuse to believe that... But that's another story.

Enough with the rant for now... Just my 5 cents.

Timo

Richard Coxon wrote:

Steve Parker wrote:

BTCC in the uk is the best racing to watch,plenty of door banging close action imo.

I can vouch for that I'm going to Donington next weekend.

Nice one,thruxton is my home circuit so will be there

Talking about the few racing disciplines which still remain "pure"...

Yes hillclimbing still has some good venues indeed, but then the cars are not appealing to me at all and I will always prefer mass-start racing to time attack things That's another good thing about Irish Road Racing : mass starts !

Been to St. Ursanne - Les Rangiers quite a few times, more than Le Mans. I probably was there for that run aswell, seen David Hauser more than once there(because this event is also part of the Luxemburgian championship for some reason).

The present also has the disadvantage of not being rose tinted.

Timo Vermeersch wrote:

Tony George and his IRL are probably the direct occassion for what finally became the demise of CART. But the unpredictableness and, let's call it what is, sheer incompetence of the CART-management in the early 2000's did not help.

 You make some good points, but one thing everyone seems to forget when they talk about CART's mismanagement was who exactly were the owners of CART that not only put that management in place, but also for the reasons they did.

 CART was owned by the TEAMS, this wasn't the NASCAR where the France family owned the sport and the teams either did what the rules said or left. With CART, if the teams didn't like what the management was doing, they found new management.

 There is this great myth that Indy "used to be about innovation" For a very brief period at the end of the 60's was when Indy was about innovation. Indy and IndyCar has ALWAYS been about stagnation and replication. 

 Does this work? Yes! Then why are we trying to change it? That's what Indy was about.

 When Frank Kurtis built the first Roadster, EVERYONE COPIED IT, when AJ Watson made some changes to it to make it faster and more stable.....EVERYONE COPIED IT. When Lotus came over with the Lotus 29, everyone scratched their heads, when Lotus came over with the Lotus 38.....EVERYONE COPIED IT!

 The only real period of innovation was from about 1967ish through 1972 and only because Granatelli brought the Turbines in and the teams were also trying to figure out how to get around the ban on wings in the early 70's, which led to the boxy, wedge shaped, "door Stop" cars.  Only when McLaren realized the loophole in the rules on wings and showed up with an "Engine Cover" that just happened to have a section that was shaped an awful lot like a rear wing did USAC finally relent. After that everyone began building the same basic car with some minor variations, just like they'd done prior.

 As for Spec racing, CART was already headed down that road before the Split happened, in 1995 there were only 2 chassis manufacturers in CART, Lola and Reynard. Penske was building it's own chassis, but it was a shitbox and only Penske and Bettenhausen ran them. Bettenhausen's was a year old car too. Now there were 3 engine suppliers, with Buick being #4 at Indy only. But Honda and Ford were pouring a shit ton of money into those programs.


 Also CART/ Champ Car was a Spec series for the last 4-5 years of it's existence.

 We would all LOVE nothing more than to have 3 or 4 engines, and at least 2 chassis'. But you've got to find someone who is willing to spend the money to do that and you are NOT going to find a company willing to spend millions developing a car that only 4 or 5 teams will buy. When the proposals for what became the DW-12 were submitted all but ONE stipulated they would only accept an exclusivity agreement and it was Lola and they went bankrupt within a year anyways. This is also why LMP2 is now a Spec class as well.

 Companies aren't as interested in racing like they used to, before the 2000's a company could throw $25 million at race sponsorship and no one would bat an eye, now if you wanna throw $1 million into a sponsorship , you have to prove there will be a significant Return on Investment and if it doesn't happen the company higher ups will drop the sponsorship regardless of contract, look at Stewart-Haas and their woes with Danica's sponsor from last year.

 The world's financial status has changed and with that change "frivolous" spending has gone out the window.

I see most of you are stuck in the past huh.
Honouring the past while living at the present is my motto.