2005 Testing Begins

In the majority of racing venues like stock car, sprint car, outlaws, etc, a lot of the teams build their own chassis, and there are also the main manufacturers of chassis available for teams who don't have the financial or technical means to get into chassis building. The chassis is the frame work of the racecar. The skin/sheetmetal, wheels, driver's cage and engine all attach to it.

The chassis for the high speed electronic arrows in the upper classes of open wheel racing are a horse of a different color. Unlike stock cars, these chassis are a technical nightmare. As I stated above, there are only two builders of chassis for the IndyCars. These manufacturers have met, and set, the standards for the chassis used in IndyCar racing.

As the engine is the heart of the IndyCar racer, the chassis is considered the backbone. The Dallera IR3 chassis used on the IndyCars is built by the Italian company of the same name that has been engineering open wheel racing chassis for over 20 years. It uses a unique pullrod system of handling the stresses on the front suspension and forward aerodynamics.

The Panoz G-Force chassis is built by an American company and still uses the old pushrod system of activating front springs and shock absorbers. Most teams find the G-Force more adaptable to changes where the Dallara is more technical and has a much narrower window when it comes to making adjustments. Over adjusting a Dallera can easily be the end of a team's race day. This is going to be a big factor in 2005 when teams are going to have to make adjustments to front spoiler wings and front suspensions to allow for the aerodynamic changes found when making right and left hand turns on the road courses.

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