The big buzz heading into 2011 has been MINI and Prodrive collaborating for a WRC program. Two fantastic names in the lore of the WRC coming together to mount a challenge against the giants Ford and Citroen. Originally scheduled to miss the first four rounds of the next years championship, some words dropped by Technical Director David Lapworth on autosport.com may see the new team up its original 2011 commitment. “We’ve got a good idea of where we’re going,” said Lapworth. “It’s going to be a minimum of six rallies,…
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IndyCar – Cross-Pollination Is a Good Thing!
Highcroft Racing, the team that has won back-to-back titles in the ALMS LMP2 class and still seeks an LMP2 class win at Le Mans, will be coming to the IZOD IndyCar Series in 2011! This first year, they will be competing at select events only in preparation for launching a full-season effort in 2012 when the new chassis and engine come to the series. This is fantastic news, if you ask me. Its exciting enough that we’re getting another quality team coming to IndyCar Racing, but seeing that team come…
Read MoreRally – Loeb set to Retire After Next Year
The age of Seb 2.0 may be upon us after next season. Citroen number one and most successful rally driver of all time Sebastian Loeb is set to walk away from rally after next season. It has not been a secret that Loeb’s time in the WRC was coming to an end soon, and it looks as though 2011 will be it for the French ace. To be honest, what is there left for him to do? He has already smashed every record in the book and done so with…
Read MoreOpEd – How important are aesthetics anyway?
Discussion of the DeltaWing concept has arisen once again, and also once again at the instigation of Gordon Kirby who wrote an article Rediscovering racing’s true self, and Peter De Lorenzo via his article IndyCar’s death warrant. In these articles, Kirby and De Lorenzo dote on the DeltaWing and its superior engineering concepts. When one talks with a typical race fan about the DeltaWing, however, what one hears most often is something along the lines of, “It’s a brilliant engineering exercise, but …well… it’s ugly isn’t it.” Is the look…
Read MoreIndyCar – RM’s Article, Chicken Little, and Open Rebellion
Wednesday evening, Speed’s Robin Miller released an article hinting strongly that the team owners were on the verge of outright and open rebellion against the 2012 car. I read the article and had to pause to think about the veracity of the claims made within the article, or at the very least the commitment of the team owners mentioned to stick to their stated convictions. Here’s the meat of the allegations as told by Eric Bachelart. “The league decided to do a new car and never consulted the teams and…
Read MoreIndyCar – Welcome Back, Mr. Cotman
This past weekend, the Indy Racing League officially hired Tony Cotman to be the league’s technical director in charge of developing all of the rules and regulations pertaining to the construction and operation of the new chassis and engine packages for 2012. It’s certainly not a new role for him. He was Vice-President of Operations of the Champ Car World Series where he oversaw the development and production of the extremely competitive and cost-effective Panoz DP-01 chassis. Can he do the same thing here in the Indy Racing League? Probably,…
Read MoreRally – Saab to Join WRC??
Now that MINI has joined the small list of WRC manufacturers, there is rumor of another team that is not Toyota possibly joining as well. SAAB has expressed a strong interest in the WRC and may be willing to join with one of their vehicles. I will admit that this particular announcement has caught me off guard. If we think back to just a couple months ago, SAAB was in serious trouble and about to go out of existence. Now, it seems that everything is in line for a potential…
Read MoreIndyCar – Lotus Jumps on for 2012
The first manufacturer has jumped into the 2012 body kit fray. Lotus which had indicated that they would think about creating a kit for the series has confirmed that they will develop a kit for purchase when the new rules come into affect. Lotus brass cited this as a continued evolution of the brands involvement in the sport. The team has given a large amount of financial backing to KV Racing Technologies and even put their name and logo on the car piloted by Takumo Sato. This now means that a…
Read MoreOpEd – Selling 2012 IndyCar aero kits, can it really be profitable?
Ever since the Indy Racing League’s much anticipated announcement sketching out the strategy for the 2012 IndyCar chassis last Wednesday, the IndyCar community has been split. …again. …still. …whatever. There have been many that claim that the recipe of having a spec rolling chassis from Dallara and open development of the aerodynamic elements of the body work by teams and third-party manufacturers would lead to great innovation and involvement. Then there are those that think this is the worst type of policy that could have been proposed giving Dallara a…
Read MoreIndyCar – Facts and Opinion About the 2012 Chassis
Introduction Wednesday, Indy Racing League announced the decision by the ICONIC committee regarding the direction for the 2012 chassis. We posted an initial reaction to this announcement yesterday, and Shaun and I debated the pros and cons of the future chassis proposal in Podcast Episode 47. Today, I’d like to look at the proposal in a bit more detail and first I’ll present the facts and details that are clearly known and highlight areas that are yet to be fully fleshed out. Following the clear facts, I’d like to dive…
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