SANITY ?

mlittle · Post by **mlittle** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:43 pm

Adding one additional link to the three in the last post....................

IndyCar nearing Champ Car "amalmagation"

However, there are unconfirmed reports that some in the ChampCar community are still opposed to an end to the Split.........

GhoGho · Post by **GhoGho** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:47 am

All of this is going to hurt a few people, Cosworth for one and the guys down the road in Braselton making the Panoz chassis

For the rest of us as fans of open wheel,

mlittle · Post by **mlittle** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:12 am

GhoGho wrote:All of this is going to hurt a few people, Cosworth for one and the guys down the road in Braselton making the Panoz chassis

For the rest of us as fans of open wheel,

How true, GhoGho.........

Cosworth will definitely feel it in the wallet as they will essentially have a couple of dozen XFE-3 turbo engines that'll sit around and gather dust; ditto for the people at Panoz who worked to build the DP-01(however.....rumor has it, GhoGho, that when the IndyCar Series adopts the next set of chassis specs, they'll either drop the Dallara and bring in the Panoz OR have both Dallara and Panoz involved.

BTW, there is a press conference tentatively scheduled for 11am Friday to announce the merger of the two series, GhoGho.........below's the autoracing1.com news item confirming the merger:

Merger to be announced Friday, Champ Car to be no more

GhoGho · Post by **GhoGho** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 1:56 am

Maybe getting ahead of things a bit here, but more than one chassis and engine supplier would probably be good for the series, more like it used to be.

Jim Watt · Post by **Jim Watt** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 10:55 am

greetings American Open-Wheelers:

I've been very quiet during all this chatter because everyone I know here in Indy keeps telling me to 'wait till morning.' This started about Valentines' day and has continued till tonight (Thurs Feb 21), so I can't help but think something is definitely up.

As usual it's more about money than racing. But there can't be racing without money, so what else is new?

Anyway. However things shake out, suddenly Tony George's Museum at Indianapolis is going to be flooded with suddenly worthless (in racing terms) hardware of one sort or another.

Being a bit of an anarchist, I don't see why Mr. George doesn't just post some regulations allowing for cars of various sizes and displacements to be admitted (with various kinds of 'equalizers' such as fuel injection limiters, etc) to the IRL and 500 as of, say, March 15.

What would happen would be a huge surge in interest as proponents of "both sides" in the split showed up at sixteenth street to duel with one another.

In very short order, some machines would be dispatched. It would be a concept so foreign to racing (Open Wheel, Stock Car, Outlaw, you name it) as to require explanation to fans.

"What we're doing, see" Robin Miller would be explaining, "is having something called 'Qualifying.' Under this system, the fastest cars line up at the front and the slower ones in the back. Then you drop the flag and race."

I don't know if the fans would be able to accept anything so transparent. So, I don't know, 'primitive.' I mean you could end up with moving chicanes on the track. Drivers would have to actually RACE one another on the track and not rely on pit stops and 'safety periods' to move up.

It might even be exciting. And dangerous.

Like racing. Used to be.

For one thing, a viable and no holds barred open wheel series in the U.S. would send real chills through the spine of Bernie E.!!

Here's hoping we have a real INDY 500 again!

Jim Watt