- Friday, 7 December 2007
- Sam Collins
Is the Indy 500 now just another dull spec race with little of interest to engineers?
The Indy 500 is without doubt one of the great races but I think it has lost at least one of the elements that created its high status.
There were only 34 drivers on the entry list this year – and all of them were driving either a Panoz or a G-Force chassis powered by a Honda, Toyota or Chevy engine.
From technical point of view it is less than exciting.
Wouldn't it perhaps be better for the organisers to open up the rules of the 500 to accept any entry that is capable of qualifying, keep the IRL spec cars in but allow entries from adapted Champ Car, F1 and F3000 cars, anything that is fast enough and safe enough basically. It could perhaps recapture the 'spirit' of Indy that is perhaps missing these days.
It could perhaps make the battle to qualify something spectacular once again, and you could see some fairly outlandish creations trying to get into the 33, just like they used to. One of the cars that has always fascinated me is the Don Lee special, it raced to 16th in the 1947 Indy 500 with Duke Naylon at the wheel, not spectacular I know but very interesting when you consider that it was in fact a pre war Mercedes Benz grand prix car. Could a similar thing happen now?, could a EuroBOSS runner use an old Arrows or Minardi and adapt the aerodynamics and fit a bigger engine and go and race at the brickyard? Possibly not but it would be fun to watch them try to qualify.
Which used to a be one of the most interesting parts of Indy (and is so well depicted in the Paul Newman film Winning)
What about Champ Cars? They already run on ovals and potentially they could run quite well against the IRL cars. Of course the ongoing politics of that situation could prevent this from ever happening.
Older IRL cars could compete too – the 1997 pole was set at 218mph, the 2005 pole was only 9mph faster and a bit of work could see an older car make up that ground.
Motorsport is becoming increasingly bland and a bit of variety would not hurt anyone.
I'm not suggesting that the whole Indy racing League change – just the 500. Imagine the build up to Labour day with 60 cars attempting to qualify, some very different indeed. A Rory Byrne Ferrari trying to get a 220mph lap round Indy and trying to get one over on the hometown boys.
It would mean that this magazine would be full of Indy 500 content whereas now it barely registers, so come one Indy let some innovation in, bring back the specials
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