New Chassis Opinion Pole

[Chris R]

so what is the chassis surprise according to AR1??

[dataman1]

so what is the chassis surprise according to AR1??

They are reporting rumors in Indy and within the Paddock at Watkins Glen that the new chassis will not come from a single manufacturer. ....more to follow as they hear it.

[Chris R]

That would be great if true. Given the accuracy of rumors though, I'll wait for the official announcement.

I am not sure I'd even put much stock in the official announcement at the moment... It would absolutely be great news but I would be skeptical until all the chassis showed up on the grid.....

[Jag_Warrior]

You Really Got Me thinking about this post. I mean, I am no Superman, so I am having a hard time seeing your point. It finally came to me - The new cars are going to be made of Celluoid instead of carbon fibre. Yes, they be really Low Budget and in my opinion indycar will be Living on a Thin Line but hopefully the lower costs will cause many teams to Come Dancing at the big race on Sunday Afternoon.... Ultimately such a move could be a real Destroyer but if Randy pulls it off he could become a Well Respected Man and save indycar racing for everyone

Is that what you mean when you are talking about the Kinks???

sorry couldn't resist - I was trying all night to figure how to get "Dallara" out of a kink's song!!

Great post! I like that!

Well, one thing's for sure... you're Not Like Everybody Else. You're Not Like Everybody Else! And maybe Father Christmas will bring the IRL a new chassis in December. Hopefully so, cause right now it looks like a Waterloo Sunset. We didn't realize that back in the 80's and 90's we had a Sunny Afternoon, huh?

[Jonesi]

There's barely enough money to make #3 work. Choices #1 & 2 will cost much more (mid 8 figures) and nobody to step up and spend it. They'll be lucky to get a 2nd engine mftr to commit. Three years from now I think there's +80% chance it's still 1 motor, 1 chassis.

[Jag_Warrior]

To make it really simple, I think they should ask Kevin Kalkhoven what he would do. Then just do the exact opposite.

[Mark in Oshawa]

I will say one. If you cant do that, then shut the doors. No serious fan of racing ever wants to see a Spec series and call it the top of the food chain. Spec series are for minor rungs of the ladder....

[anthonyvop]

I will say one. If you cant do that, then shut the doors. No serious fan of racing ever wants to see a Spec series and call it the top of the food chain. Spec series are for minor rungs of the ladder....

I disagree that no serious fan of racing wants to see a spec series. I enjoy many spec series from GP2 to Spec Miata.

I do agree that a top series cannot be taken seriously if "spec"

No top International or National series is Spec.
F-1
WRC
WTCC
BTCC
DTM
LeMans
V8 Supercars...ect.

Even NASCAR, while is mostly a Spec series, they go to great effort to prevent that from becoming common knowledge.

[px400r]

I will say one. If you cant do that, then shut the doors. No serious fan of racing ever wants to see a Spec series and call it the top of the food chain. Spec series are for minor rungs of the ladder....

I wouldn't go that far. CART for long stretches was a defacto spec chassis series. Not dictated by rules mind you, but by on track competition.
I remember when everone basically ran March-Cosworths in the mid to late eighties (including Penske until he convinced Chevy to fund the Ilmor Indy). Then came the mid to late nineties when Reynard was the dominant chassis- and again Penske dropped building their own cars altogether.

You can have 10 or more different makes on the grid and still have a boring product. F1 clearly showed how that can be.

[Jag_Warrior]

I appreciate your point, px400r. But as you said, it was on track competition that determined one chassis' dominance (and popularity) over another. It was not a mandate from the series. If there had been a mandate on what to run by CART, we'd have never seen the innovation of the "Reynske" or the Swift or the Fernandez(?) "Frankenstein" car. And even when it was March, Lola or Reynard that was the most competitive, the teams basically just used the base chassis. Unlike today, they could still heavily modify the base chassis and make it their own.

None of us have to shell out the dollars it would take to buy a chassis. But at the same time, as fans, we at least want to believe that a guy who has the knowledge to build a better mousetrap, or improve on a good mousetrap and make it better, can do so. If all they're doing is assembling kit cars, and like most ladder series, they can't deviate from the original design AT ALL, many of us have a hard time seeing that as top tier racing. It might be good racing. I'd rather watch GP2 than some F1 races, especially a few years ago when the F1 shows weren't always so good. When it's mandated spec, you do get a better idea of what one driver can do versus the others, because the cars are roughly equal. In F1, the only way to compare drivers (really) is to compare teammates to one another. But I don't care about that so much. I'm as fascinated by the innovations brought to the track by the McLaren, Red Bull or Ferrari organizations as I am about how good the drivers are. I guess the trick is finding the balance so that you don't consistently have someone like Danica being able to put a lap on Lewis Hamilton... ya know, should he ever lose his F1 ride (and his mind) and come to the IRL.

My only reservation about the IRL going away from the spec formula is that so much of the field depends on ride buyers, and doesn't have the resources to run anything other than a (cheap/inexpensive) spec chassis; they don't have the funds to develop it. But by the same token, if the league has not much more than broke teams funded by ride buyers, it's not really top tier anyway, huh? As the song goes, "if you ain't got no money, take your broke azz home!"