CART / IRL merger race @ Edmonton (07 Champ Car / 08 IndyCar)

[champcarfanatic]

Formula One...overpriced gourmet restaurant. Champcar...small, tasty local eaterie. Indycar........school cafeteria.

[Johnnarvell]

Indycar mandated mufflers in 2007.



[GoFeri]

The Honda Indy engines sound shit and they are shit. They make the IndyCars several seconds slower than the Champ Car.

[f1diva]

the reason the indycars were slower at edmonton than the champ cars is because the champcars were specifically designed for road courses, therefore had higher downforce levels. indycars are built to suit ovals and road courses to have lower downforce to compensate

[tremper47football]

actually the DP01 was meant for ovals and road courses. the indy car was meant for ovals but a few changes made them OK for road/street

[f1diva]

the dallara indycar was built primarily as an oval racer and the Panoz as a road racer. In my belief the panoz would be comparitivley slower on ovals than the dallara due to the higher downforce levels. As is the case with the dallara compared to the panoz on road courses.

[redriverman2006]

Not entirely true. But yes. The DP01 was very much a roadracer (there was a mysterious oval package rumored, but it was never seen in public). The Dallara was designed purely for ovals, its major problem however is the fact that it has not nearly enough power.

[afannell]

Which is why they're going to turbochargers in 2011.

[djbadlt]

Bob Jenkins is right about the engines do sound different in the Indycars . . . they sound like shit

[GotRiceBish]

Bob Jenkins called this Indy race in Edmonton, Alberta when Marty Reid was in ORP in Indianapolis for the Nationwide Series.

[Edgarpabelo]

Champ cars made racing more interesting

[BooBooToo]

IRL cars have engines spec'd for super speedways, and don't really have enough power for road and street circuits. At Mid-Ohio they were topping out at ~170 on really long straights.

More power. Please.

[DBoy02]

Interesting little fact - up until recently the block of the IRL engines were the same as what's used in Japanese Formula Nippon(Formula Nippon's gone down slightly in displacement recently, though). The FN cars have no rev limiter, they not also run great, they SOUND awesome as well. Amazing how much difference the IRL's rev limiter makes. I think all we need to do to make these engines better on road courses is remove that limiter.

[BooBooToo]

That is interesting. I checked the F - Nippon web site and it appears they are using the exact same rev limit as Indy: 10,300 RPM. I think that's a little strange, 10.3K, kind of an odd coincidence, eh?

Looking at those engines, I think that both of them are actually Indy V8s. Same rev limit, same cockpit fuel ratio adjustment, same engine/chassis mount... even the same cam covers. Also, the current Indy engine is 3.5, but a couple years ago it was 3.0.

I'm tellin' ya... same engine.

[DBoy02]

The current FN engine specification began in the early 2000s, before IRL went down to 3-liter from 3.5. That's when Toyota and Honda started using the Indy-block V8s and sofar as I know they've been the same ever since. This is the first time I've heard about a rev limit on the FN engines, though. It is strange that two so similar engines sound so completely different.

[BDC1001]

Ok true, but the IRL cars were 2 to 3 seconds slower than the Champcars at Edmonton last year. You can see in the video how slow the IRL cars look compared to the Champcars.

[BengtsonJ]

Great to hear Bob Jenkins on ESPN again!

[BDC1001]

Those crapwagons are SLOW!!

[gofastandwynn]

Going a lot faster than champ cars have been this year...

[ChicagoCrew]

Those crapwagons are going a lot faster than the DP01s these days . schmuck

[DBoy02]

DP-01 was still a much better car all-around. So long as you mean the Panoz DP-01, not the Dallara DP-01(Daytona Prototype).