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What's wrong with the mid/late 90s Champ Cars? I remember reading in Autosport how one F1 journalist said that CART had the better racing than F1. He described many close races and passing, compared to the F1 parade. He pointed out technical highlights like underbody tunnels, simpler front/rear wings, wider track, slicks, and no electronic aids.
I wonder how a car would turn out if the same chassis rules from before were kept and the designers evolved their designs within those rules.
Michigan-2000 - one of the best oval races ever, actually it happened exactly about 9 years ago :) ; find it and watch it (if havn't done it yet )
I think chassis wise, that is the 97-03 IRL car Civic...Quote:
Originally Posted by Civic
It was definitely a Reynard that he was referring to. Mark Blundell's Motorola car was used as the article's photo. Blundell's close win over de Ferran and some of Zanardi's passes were mentioned in the article. Supposedly those Champ Cars at the time weren't really bothered following in the wake of another Champ Car unlike the Grand Prix cars of the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hoop-98
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dJvOZ6_KicQuote:
Originally Posted by fan-veteran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v51T0SUbq8M
By the late 90s CART too was having major problems
1-mile short tracks in particular. I remember 1 race at Nazareth when they experimented with the superspeedway wings and it didn't work, cars with no downforce spun off at turn 3 trying to make a pass.
Also tried out the Handford device on road courses and they weren't very effective.
I don't know about the grand am cars, but something like the Peugeot lemans prototypes running fenderless and topless sounds like an evening at the moulin rouge.Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyvop
What I find most frustrating is we have chassis designs that are both safe and provided incredible racing that were abandoned by CART teams every year in the 1990's. Just get Lola to start cranking out 93 Lolas again.
Because of the intense competition between the chassis suppliers, particularly Penske since they built their own cars in their heyday they were the cars to beat becauase they brought updates every other race.Quote:
Originally Posted by nigelred5
Going back to LMPs as an example, Audi brought out the R10 and then the R15 in quick succession compared to the R8 because of competition betweem Peugeot.
Yeah, remember the great competetion that resulted in the constant updates and new chassis every year. I guess what I was trying to say is pick even just one of them and USE IT! The racing was far better in almost every aspect in that era, even amongst the same cars. Pick one of the years when the Reynard and Lola were closest in performance and build new ones. I think they simply need to leave the teams alone to develop what they want. I'll even admit that in an effort to bring fairness to the new teams, the racing has suffered to an extent since the ex-champcar teams were brought in. Especially on the ovals where the league changes have totally screwed the very racing that used to be their hallmark. The oval racing this year has just plain sucked and a return to ovals after the mergification was what I looked forward to the most.
I never found that frustrating, in fact I miss those days, when the cars at least looked *slightly* different year on year, OK admittedly not by much but still at least we didn't have the same car for 3 years in a row or whatever (isn't it 7 years now with the current IndyCars?).Quote:
Originally Posted by nigelred5
And more importantly, the cars looked different from other cars competing in the same race!!