Luczo Dragon Racing released a statement today revealing that LDR and de Ferran Motorsports will join forces for the 2010 season. This is great news for the former Indianapolis 500 champion’s suddenly ailing team. Last year, Gil announced that 2009 would be his last year in the cockpit of a racecar and he was going to focus on being a team principal fielding both an ALMS prototype effort and a two-car effort in the IZOD IndyCar Series. As the season ended, and we got deeper into the off-season, it became…
Read MoreCategory: INDYCAR
The latest news from the IndyCar Series, Indy Lights, Pro Mazda, and USF2000!
IndyCar – The Lola Project Revisited
Today, Lola followed their initial press release which revealed their intent to bid for the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series chassis contract with a second, more fulsome press release including sketches of their proposed chassis. It must be said that the outward appearance of the chassis is rather uninspired and stale. There’s nothing genuinely new, innovative or modern about the looks of the chassis. Lola does bring some very interesting concepts with their bid that could lower costs, and bridge the equipment gap between the IZOD IndyCar Series and the Firestone…
Read MoreOpEd – Beauty Pageant or Racing Series?
The interwebs have been all a buzz over the release of the chassis concepts for the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series from Dallara, Swift, and especially the much anticipated Delta Wing. There’s been much commentary offered for and against all of the designs, but none has received more discussion and more scorn than the extremely radical concept car from Delta Wing, LLC that was revealed last Wednesday at the Chicago Auto Show. We’ve gone over various aspects of the proposed concepts here, as have many others, and there are certainly a…
Read MoreIndyCar – Detla Wing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!
The official unveiling took place this afternoon at the Chicago Auto Show and now we officially have the Delta Wing concept car to ogle, ponder, ruminate upon and maybe mock a bit. The Bad and the Ugly Our universal opinion here amongst the Paddock staff is that this thing looks a bit too far fetched, to the point of being downright unattractive. Delta Wing’s press release calls this an “open wheel” car, to which they may be referring to the tire contact patch sized gap in the top of the chassis where…
Read MoreIndyCar – The Delta Wing Project
Yesterday, some photos were leaked of a version of the Delta Wing chassis designed by Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s Ben Bowlby. Mr. Bowlby is certainly not new to chassis design having spent a very successful stint with Lola creating very fast chassis with a wide setup window. The photos we saw yesterday posted ever so briefly at 16thandGeorgetown.com, were in a word hideous! The most common statement amongst the IndyCar fan community was, “How the heck is that thing supposed to turn?” This is in reference to the front wheels…
Read MoreIndyCar – Delta Wing Under the Red Tarp
Tomorrow afternoon at the Chicago Auto Show a red tarp will be removed from the Delta Wing IndyCar concept model. For now, we will just have to settle with this teaser photo from the Chicago Auto Show blog. This is part of Bridgestones booth. While it may not be much to look at, that red tarp seems to have spooked the establishment at 16th and Georgetown. For months now we have been hearing information trickle out about this design. What we know largely has been from planned leaks through Robin…
Read MoreIndyCar – The Swift Project
Just after Lola released their minimal thoughts on the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series chassis, Swift Engineering released a deluge of information regarding their project including several renderings of three different variations of their design. The exciting aspect of the Swift release is the level of technological innovation the company is bringing to the table. If Swift is able to accomplish even half of what they propose in their press release from today, then IndyCar is in for one hell of a ride! American race car company, Swift Engineering, Inc. is…
Read MoreIndyCar – The Lola Project
Today, both Lola and Swift announced their design concepts for the 2012 IZOD IndyCar chassis. First, lets examine the Lola statements. We’ll look at the Swift statements and concepts in the next article. Lola released no design concept rednerings with their announcement today, but stated that they might be publicly available as soon as the end of the week. Lola is certainly no stranger to IndyCar racing, having been a regular manufacturer during the CART era, and they have had lots of on-track success to back them up. However, their…
Read MoreIndyCar – KV Rumored to Expand to Two Cars With Sato
Word from Grande Premio of Brazil is that former Super Aguri Formula 1 driver Takuma Sato has signed with KV Racing Technologies. While its not too surprising to hear that Sato has come over to IndyCar racing, it IS a bit of a surprise that he signed with KV. Here at OP, we were pretty much convinced that if he were to make it to the series, it would be with Gil de Ferran’s team. The article also goes on to say that Sato is the second driver for KV…
Read MoreIndyCar – The Dallara Project
Perhaps in response to all of the DeltaWing buzz, and in an effort to take some of the thunder away from the DeltaWing reveal on February 10th, Dallara has revealed images of three concepts for the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series chassis. The three concepts center around three different design philosophies: one a traditional evolutionary design, one a conservative but evolutionary design, and one more radical evolutionary design. Let’s examine each one separately in light of the recently revealed, but not surprising, new chassis objectives: Safe, Raceable, Cost-Effective, American Made Less…
Read More