Opinion: Putting the "Open" Back in "Open Wheel"

I don't think that I'm the only person to be excited about the ICONIC committee's decision to bring turbocharged 2.4 liter V6 engines to the IZOD IndyCar Series in 2012. The new engine will be a lot smaller and lighter than the current Honda powerplant, will maintain up to 700 horsepower, and will return turbos to major American open-wheel racing for the first time since Champ Car's demise. It should also allow other engine manufacturers, potentially including one of the Volkswagen Group's brands and a Lotus-Cosworth collaboration, to join the party. All of this is excellent news.

Now the ICONIC committee turns to chassis selection, where five industry leaders are currently fighting for the single contract to produce IndyCar chassis. Three of the companies - Dallara, Lola, and Swift - have built chassis before. BAT Engineering is comprised of three men who dominated the sport in the 1980s. Delta Wing is the pet project of some of the series' biggest owners.

The problem here is that three or fourth worthy chassis designers are going to go home, while one secures a contract, keeping IndyCar in its spec-design age. But why?

When CART reached its latest peak in the mid-to-late 1990s, when entry lists were full, big names were all around, and the IRL hadn't yet lured the top teams back to Indianapolis, there were three chassis manufacturers (and Roger Penske's in-house design) battling for supremacy, as there were four engine manufacturers competing to build the best engines. The competition may have driven up costs a bit, but that's what added to the prestige of the series - you had to beat everybody else on the track, not in the bidding.

Opening up chassis production to at least two manufacturers would increase competition, and hearken back to better days in the sport, before the nasty political split had scorched much of the open-wheel earth. The series could set a cost cap on chassis development and production in order to protect its owners from the potential of escalating costs, and perhaps adjust that cap on a yearly basis, as stick-and-ball sports do with player salary caps. If nothing else, multiple chassis would make the races far more visually interesting, in a way that multiple engine companies cannot.

Allowing multiple chassis contracts will also help bring the sport's biggest and best track back to the prominence and prestige it once held. Indianapolis used to be a proving ground for new road technologies, and a breeding ground for open-wheel innovation. Think of some of the cars used in the past 40 years, and how much change has occurred, both in aerodynamics and underneath the engine cowling. The changes have been massive, and part of it came from the less restrictive rules at Indianapolis.

Remember that during the CART era of the 1980s and 90s, the Indianapolis 500 was a USAC-sanctioned race in which CART decided to award points to its teams. Because the race was not run under CART sanctioning, and thus under Indianapolis 500-specific rules, teams had the ability to experiment a little more freely with their cars. Some of the most dominating performances in all of motorsport have come due to this provision.

In 1994, Team Penske, with drivers Al Unser Jr., Paul Tracy, and Emerson Fittipaldi, had one of the most dominating combinations in open-wheel history: the Penske PC-23 chassis and Ilmor-Mercedes Indy V8 engine. This combination allowed Penske to rip off a seven-race winning streak at one points in the 16-race season, and allowed the team to take 12 victories overall. Everybody knew that coming into Indy that year, the team to beat was going to be Team Penske, especially coming off of their win the previous year with Fittipaldi.

But Penske outdid themselves at Indy, bringing along a secretly-built 209 cid pushrod Mercedes engine, the 500I. Penske utilized rules provisions that allowed pushrod engines like John Menard's Buick V6 an extra 650 cubic centimeters and 4.9 psi of boost. For those of us who aren't engineers, it meant that the engine could produce 1000 horsepower, significantly more than Penske's competitors. The team went on to dominate the race.

Randy Bernard, CEO of IndyCar, has said that he wants to bring innovation back to the series. Bernard has also proven himself willing to make some huge decisions - awarding split oval and road course championships, attempting to implement bonuses next year of $10 million for series champions and $20 million for winning both Indy and NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, and so on.

What about opening up the field at Indianapolis to innovation once again?

In its heyday long ago, the Indianapolis 500 was so highly regarded that it counted in Formula 1 world championship points. That won't happen again, but the race can still go a long way towards attracting racing powerhouses from across the globe by opening up its engine formula and allowing multiple chassis manufacturers to build Indy racers.

In other words, by encouraging innovation and the competition of technologies, with the assumed goal of bringing what's learned on the racetrack back to the streets, Indianapolis can recapture the prestige it used to have, years and years ago. Because let's be honest: Indianapolis still matters, but it just isn't the same.

The key difference in racing nowadays, compared to years ago, is that what's running on the track nowadays has little or no correlation to the cars that we drive on the streets. Sure, IndyCar does a lot with ethanol, but how many of us currently have ethanol-based cars? And what does an eight-year-old Dallara chassis have to do with the aerodynamics of the vehicles that any of us drive?

The reason why sports car racing flourishes in its niche is because the developments made at Le Mans have street relevance. When Peugeot and Audi battle at Circuit de la Sarthe, they're not just racing for glory. They're in it because what they learn at the track will make their performance vehicles on the road that much better. The American Le Mans Series does a fantastic job, with its embrace of multiple fuels and the Michelin Green Challenge, which awards a championship to the most efficient team over the course of the year.

By loosening restrictions on competitors in the Indianapolis 500, the sport's most prestigious race, IndyCar can push its own "green" initiative even further, by encouraging participants to develop the fastest and most efficient cars they possibly can. Only cars that meet certain standards for efficiency can attempt to qualify; as usual, the fastest 33 race. Exclusive supplier contracts be damned - let them apply to every other race of the season but Indy, because years of spec 500s is beginning to grow old.

If Chip Ganassi and Bobby Rahal want to bring the BMW motors they run in sports car racing to Indy, by all means let them. See if Duncan Dayton's Highcroft Racing can run as well with Honda at Indianapolis as they do at Sebring and Laguna Seca. Manufacturers currently on the outside looking in would have a reason to care about Indy again, and so would fair-weather motorsports fans.

It'd be the biggest and best race in the world, if only we opened it up.

Dissecting the New Two-Title Format

With the announcement of a new two championship format in the IZOD IndyCar Series, awarding prizes to the best oval driver as well as the best road/street course driver, I have taken the liberty to go through all open wheel racing in America since the creation of CART in 1979. I've run the numbers to determine who would have won these championships in the past, and some of the results are pretty interesting.

The data includes all CART seasons from 1979 to 2003, the Champ Car World Series from 2004 to 2007, and the IZOD IndyCar Series from 1996 to today. From 1996 to 2004 in IndyCar, no road course races were held. In 2007 in Champ Car, no oval races were held. In these cases, the overall series champion is listed as the winner in the series' specific discipline.

In a majority of seasons since CART's advent in 1979, one of the two titlists would go on to win the overall title as well. The exceptions in CART were 1985, 1988, 1990, 1996, and 2000, with a teammate of the title winner taking at least one title in each year except for 1998. The only exception in the IRL came in 2006, and that year, oval champion Dan Wheldon actually tied Sam Hornish Jr. for the overall title in points, but lost the tiebreaker on two fewer wins.

In only a few cases has a driver gone on to claim both titles. In CART, Rick Mears did it in 1981 and 1982, while Al Unser Jr. did it in 1994. Sebastien Bourdais did so in Champ Car in 2005 and 2006, but those seasons featured oval schedules of two and one, respectively. So far no driver has won both titles in the IRL.

Mears asserted himself as the most versatile driver in CART's early years by winning oval titles in 1979, 1981, and 1982, alongside road course championships from 1980 to 1982, inclusive. He also won the oval championship in 1989, the year of his last Indianapolis 500 victory, giving him a grand total of seven titles, the highest total of any driver. Bourdais is tied for second with six, the same amount as Al Unser Jr. has, though it is important to note again the insubstantial nature of Champ Car's oval offerings.

Michael Andretti won five titles in six years for Newman/Haas Racing, scoring the 1987 and 1988 oval crowns, as well as the 1990 through 1992 road course crowns. He won four more championships as an owner, including the 2004, 2005, and 2007 oval titles in the IRL, and the IRL's 2005 road course crown. In each of those seasons, Andretti's oval-winning driver would take the overall IRL title.

The closest foil for Andretti as a driver would be Scott Dixon, who has five championships over the past seven years. Dixon won all of his five titles in the IRL, securing the 2003, 2008, and 2009 oval crowns and the 2006 and 2007 road course honors. Not only does Dixon consistently pace the field at one discipline almost every year, but he also moves from domination of one discipline to the other, much as Andretti did in the prime of his career. They even won at a similar clip: Andretti 24 times in six seasons for an average of four a year, Dixon 21 times in seven for an average of three. The main difference is that Dixon was first a road course star and became an oval ace, while Andretti stepped up his game at right turns after mastering lefts only.

An early indicator of Dixon's prowess came in the 2002 CART season, the last for that sanctioning body (or its later Champ Car incarnation) with more than two ovals on the schedule. Under CART's points system, which only afforded the top 12 drivers any points, it was difficult at best to score points in every race under a given discipline. Only three drivers managed to score points in all five oval events that year: oval champion Bruno Junqueira, runner-up Dario Franchitti, and Dixon. It is this kind of consistency that has driven Dixon to multiple IRL titles.

For the most part, three teams have dominated the schedules since 1979. Team Penske holds the lead for the most overall crowns with 19, including nine oval championships (though none since 1997) and 10 road course crowns, usually coming towards the turn of each decade. Newman/Haas Racing and Chip Ganassi Racing are tied for second with 13 total championships apiece. Newman/Haas has three on ovals (tying two cars in 2005) and 10 on road courses. Ganassi's balance is much more even, with seven oval crowns and six on road courses. Ganassi has more titles since 2000, however, by a tally of nine to eight.Al

Fifth IndyCar Chassis Prototype Released

Bruce Ashmore, Alan Mertens, and Tim Wardrop, three of the top engineers in major American open wheel racing over the past two decades, have formed BAT Engineering with the goal of supplying chassis to the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series.

The three have set up a blog with a press release detailing their plans and core concepts relevant to the car. They have also posted a simple computerized rendering of the chassis. The official IndyCar page on Facebook contains a photo album with more renderings.

The combined accomplishments of the three engineers are enough to fill most trophy cases. Ashmore had a hand in 11 of the 12 CART championships won between 1990 and 2001, either as chief designer of Lola (1990-1993) or president of Reynard (1995-2001). Mertens won five Indianapolis 500s from 1983 to 1987 as designer of March's IndyCar, and also designed the 1992 Indianapolis 500-winning car with Galles Racing as part of a collaboration called Galmer. Wardrop engineered the 1997 and 2000 Indy 500 wins of Arie Luyendyk and Juan Montoya, respectively, and set up Luyendyk's 1996 record-setting car.

One advantage that the design team has is the location of Ashmore's company in Gasoline Alley. IndyCar officials have expressed a preference for a car manufactured in America, preferably in the Indianapolis area. Galmer has a shop in Albuquerque, NM, which could make for an excellent secondary base.

IndyCar.com Undergoes Overhaul

IndyCar.com, the official website of the Indy Racing League, is currently offline for a major redesign and overhaul.

When users visit the site, they are greeted by a splash page for the IZOD IndyCar Series that says "Coming Soon: The new IndyCar.com website will be rolling out of the paddock shortly."

The new website is being built by RacerSites.com, which specializes in designing websites for race drivers and teams. Their homepage features a revolving portfolio of their work, showcasing some of the best websites in the motorsports world. Among the drivers and teams with IndyCar connections featured on their front page are Vision Racing, three-time IndyCar Series champion Sam Hornish Jr., and Graham Rahal.

Other IndyCar-related sites in their portfolio belong to Chip Ganassi Racing, Panther Racing, Team Penske, new Firestone Indy Lights team Wayne Taylor Racing, and Al Unser Jr., a two-time open wheel champion with 34 career wins to his name.

The redesign of the website coincides with the implementation of a new IndyCar Race Control engine, which underwent bug testing this past week as the IndyCar Series had its season-opening test session. The timing and scoring tracker should be fully functional and error-free in time for the start of the season in two weeks' time.