Lotus drops two teams. I'm hopeful that Chevy and Honda are now in a position to pick them up. We're going to lose that cool-looking Lotus black-and-gold livery though. Best looking car on the grid.
IndyCar has given Honda permission to use a different compressor cover in order to brings its single turbo engine to parity with the Chevy twin turbo engine. Chevy's protesting. To be heard Thursday. I understand why some folks would oppose helping Honda. But in the interests of a competitive season, it seems like a reasonable thing to grant. The result in Long Beach conforms that the current Honda configuration just won't cut it. What does a compressor cover do?
well, i don't know what the compressor cover does, but i'm guessing the proposed model allows for more air volume. there's my swag for the day. indycar will have to come up with a formula that allows limited development if they want to keep this interesting. x number of approved engine changes, y chassis modifications, etc. if they want to keep things competitive, meaningful and interesting they're going to have to allow a certain amount of in-season development and testing while controlling it in such a way as to minimize the cost impact.
Looks like Honda gets to alter their turbos. Hope this makes for more competitive racing and not more Penske/Chevy domination. If Lotus could ever get their engine running close to the others, we might have a decent series. Given that it's the first year for cars and engines, I don't mind a few competition adjustments to keep things interesting.
Nor me. Whatever it takes to make things interesting. Not sure Lotus are at the point where they even know what they need to change. They're still trying to make their unit reliable. (I sometimes have that problem, too.)
So, three races in and the new car takes flight at relatively low speed on a street course and what is the "brain trust" at 16th & Georgetown Rd. focusing their attention on? They are scouring the Twitterverse for insults. And fining a long time leeeg loyalist. Yeah, the sport is obviously in good hands. http://www.indystar.com/article/201...gers?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|IndyStar.com|s
It looks like that adjustment to the Honda turbo has produced parity. Very even in the first 6 rows of qualifying. Power is just dominant right now. He drove away from everyone on every restart. Franchitti qualified second but all of his restarts were either bad or awful. Decent race without being great. Power's unchallenged dominance took some of the life out of it. Looks like the teams are feeling richer: the drivers are starting to wreck parts again. And so, on to Indy. Let's see if Honda 's single turbo is an edge there. Should be interesting. I look forward to it.
Waaaa. Any car with aerodynamic downforce has the potential to take flight if air gets under it. How much more $ would the fine have been if this were F1?
Nah, not unless you have time you don't know what to do with. Nothing really notable except for a few restarts late in the race and a renewed willingness to destroy expensive bodywork. Turn 1, as usual, produced the trouble.
it's not bad, just nothing too overwhelming. lots of yellow begetting yellow. a couple of decent passes. if you're a sato fan then it's not a bad race. i don't get the impression that the indycar engineers have a great grasp on the whole 2 or 3 stop strategy for some reason. might be the limitations on the fuel cell.
New cars hit the track at Indy on Sunday. I'm looking forward to it. I wonder what kind of TV coverage it will get?
I'd read that some folks were worried about getting the new car over 220mph at Indy. It had been slow and they were concerned about the PR impact. The situation's still not ideal -- the Lotus is really poor -- but 14 cars have now gone 220 or better since practice started on Sunday. Marco Andretti has done a 223. Poor old Simona. Best lap is 210. I wonder how much that dog of a Lotus engine is hurting her career prospects?
I'll be surprised if more than 2-3 cars exceed 220 in qualifying. So far all the top times have been aided by a tow. We may even see a sub 200 33rd qualifier (some former F1 guy). Count me as unimpressed and disappointed. Both cars and engines should have had a full season of testing prior to being thrown into the deep end.
I see that they're going to increase the boost. Was that planned all along, or is it a response to how well the new car has handled the current level of boost?
It was planned. But I suspect it is likely they were running low boost so fewer engine problems will occur and fewer crashes. They have a parts supply problem and want to try to ensure 33 cars are in the race.
One Honda and 8 Chevy's in the top nine. They're running around 225 mph. I wish that they'd keep the boost at it's current level. What's happened to Dario Franchitti? He qualified 16th. Some of the things he said after DW died makes me wonder if his heart's really in it. Edit: Brisco just raised the bar above 226. His top speed was 233
So much for Honda building an Indy-specific engine. They haven't been fast all week. 10-96, thanks. Makes perfect sense. lewis, interesting theory about Dario. He's been bad even on safe street courses. Sure is a steep drop in form.
