The “NASCAR” IRL for 2004

1/4/04/........ Lots of changes have taken place within the IRL since the ending of the 2003 season. I remember writing a couple of months ago about a possible design flaw that allows the Indy cars to take to the air when moving sideways at high speeds. I also remember writing about the speeds of the Indy cars being so much higher than those of the stock car variety of racer.

It's always been hard for me to understand why anyone would want to slow a race car down. NASCAR has been working on this aspect of racing for years now, and the IRL has joined in this train of thought. Instead of moving ahead with the technologies that are available and those that have yet to be developed or invented, the IRL has decided to keep their cars down to a minimum speed which will prove to be slower than speeds reached during the 2003 season.

Beginning this coming May with the Indy 500, the IRL engine size will be cut from 3.5 liters to 3.0 liters. This move is planned to cut horsepower by roughly 10% and is hoped to curtail speeds by at least 10 miles per hour.

This move seems to be a little strange to me since the season will be starting up on February 29th at Homestead-Miami. There will be two more races before the engine change, one at Phoenix on March 21st and the other at Japan on April 17th. I don't understand why the league is opting for a major change once the season is under way, as opposed to starting out the entire season with the new engine specifications already in place.

The IRL has taken other measures in the past to cut speeds, moving away from turbochargers to normally aspirated engines after Arie Luyendyk's 1996 Indy 500 pole speed of 236.986 miles per hour. This past season, Helio Castroneves qualified at Indy with a speed of 231.725 miles per hour, a step heading back to the higher speeds that were abandoned after the 1996 season.

I remember when the NASCAR powers that be were trying to find ways to limit speed with the stock cars. They claimed that reducing the cubic inches of the engines wouldn't help to reduce speeds. They claimed a couple of years ago that engine builders would be able to find ways to garner nearly the same amount of horsepower and speed from the lower cubic inch engines. It remains to be seen if this will be the case with the Indy cars as well.

Go To Page: 1 2