TBK-Light.com

Hyundai are a massive conglomerate dealing in anything from cars to finance and aerospace, so its prob one of their other industries.

Just wanted to show the colors of the sponsor to show what the livery could look like.

Robin Miller was on Wind Tunnel Sunday night & there was apparently some talk of drivers boycotting Texas if there was pack racing.

He went on to say that in the test at Texas Kannan & Briscoe said that as things currently stand were going to see pack racing there. He also said he thinks this years race will probably be the last time we see an Indycar on a 1.5 mile high banked track.

Future schedules will likely be 20 races with flatter ovals like Milwaukee, New Hampshire & larger ovals like Fontana.


Dallara will also change the wheel guards for Indy/Fontana to reduce drag:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97725

And the same thing couldn't happen at Fontana? New Hampshire? Richmond?
(I pick those tracks because the same thing has happened at them already, just nobody got killed).

Time for some of these guys to retire if all they're thinking about now is how dangerous it is.

It's not like all those tracks have three grooves. In Texas they mostly go 2 wide max, sometimes a daring maneuver gets them 3 wide. Vegas was 3 wide all the time in those 13 laps.

Guess you missed the bit where I said cars had already got up into the fences at those tracks.

Fontana - ok Dario didn't hit the fence, but by more luck + wind direction than anything else.
New Hampshire - Back when it was the IRL someone flipped out of turn 2 and rode along the fence for a bit.
Richmond - Castroneves (I think) destroyed the start gantry and some fencing in a tyre test there a few years ago.

Let's not forget every major accident at Indy in the past 10 years, a single groove track where they rarely go through the corners side by side, let alone 3 wide.

My point is, those types of accidents can, do and will happen anywhere - I saw a Formula Ford clear 10 meter high debris fence, an Ambulance, a PUB, a wall and land in the paddock at Donnington a many years ago, they are focusing too much on the cookie cutters and blaming the tracks rather than the real reasons, who was it that said when you start obsessing about how dangerous racing is it's time to retire?

They don't want to not race at Texas because they could get up into the fence, They don't want to race at Texas because they don't want to do the pack racing, The drivers don't like it & don't want to do it.

Robil Miller said drivers were promised post Vegas that there would be no more pack racing yet the Texas test suggest's there will be.

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... ott-rumors




Rubens will be confirmed at KV in a press conference tomorrow:
http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... ar-series/

That's my whole point, pack racing doesn't exclusively produce flying cars, Tony has a short memory about that it seems.

I don't understand why during all this years they couldn't come up with something that had a similar effect like handford device.

Indycar could have chosen Lola or Swift but they chose Dallara. Sure, CART had some close calls during the '90 but those guys knew how to build cars. The Handford device might have made the racing artificial or whatever, but at least the drivers could pass themselves.

Big difference between a series where those type of crashes are rare and a series that specifically mandates pack racing that makes that type of crash highly likely and a rules package which accentuates the flying problem.

The pack racing and flying car phenomenon has gone on for far too long and it took Wheldon's death for them to wake up and realise things don't have to be this way.

Indycar promised the new car would fix these problems but it seems the extent of their knowledge is slapping wheel guards on the rear wheels and crossing their fingers that they get lucky again.

Good on the drivers for standing up to them, sadly far too late but better late than never.

Indycar: either sort out your pack racing deathtraps or stay off high banked ovals.

Robin Miller is the Smartest guys covering racing. I love his insights and comments. Thanks for posting the video mclaren2008.

Indycar said the design of the new car would go some way to addressing the launch off the back of another car (or flying by themselves when they spin), and hopefully overall be a safer car. I don't ever remember Indycar saying it would eliminate pack racing, or promising it would stop the cars taking off, there's a big difference.

Again though, you're all missing my point, eliminating pack racing, and at an extreme stopping racing on the 1.5mile ovals, is not going to magically stop the cars flying.

It's not. But it's also going to make it a HELL of a lot less likely if you don't put the cars in a position to fly as often thanks to large multicar crashes.

Your point seems to be a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders "oh well, all racing cars fly" instead of realising Indycars fly more than others due to aerodynamic package rules and negative rake run by the engineers to combat this. The pack racing, which is also a side effect of the huge amount of downforce the teams are forced to run because the rulemakers think that's the formula the fans want, only exaggerates this but it can happen on its own too

The new car isn't the revolution needed to prevent this happening, sadly.

Well we're just have to agree to disagree on the bits we disagree on, the pack racing doesn't help matters I'll give you that, but it's not the reason they fly on the cookie cutters (neither really is the setup or aero package of the car, they fly because of the speed, the laws of physics and their weight, but that's a completely different argument LOL).

It's more a case of cause and effect, atm they seem convinced the cause of the cars flying is the pack racing, which really is only a small part of it (am I repeating myself? I'll stop now hehe).

And yes, you're right, my view is based on the fact Motor Racing is Dangerous, if you want to eliminate that danger, stop racing completely, there's no other option.

I think you are thinking of Michigan FYI to me that was definitely an "IRL pack racing" type of wreck, in that the same aero setup that causes the pack racing also makes these cars fly a lot easier. Or maybe you are thinking of Dario's Kentucky goof?

The IRL's had several bad wrecks in the fence last decade -- Kenny Brack, Ryan Briscoe, Davey Hamilton -- during pack race events, before the Las Vegas debacle where three or four cars flew into the fence. (Also count Pablo Perez in Indy Lights for that matter) Outside of the pack racing, you have Mike Conway's accident at Indy, Mario Andretti as well at Indy, Tony Renna during testing at Indy. So maybe 10 cars heavily into fence during IRL's history. That doesn't count of course the fun flipping these cars seem to do the rest of the time, which produces incidents like Dario's two flips.

If you go back to the CART days, of higher horsepower and less downforce, and no "pack racing" (or, if it was "pack racing", it was of the Hanford Device type) you seemed to have much less of this. Jeff Krosnoff and Stan Fox? Seems to be the main ones I can remember. (Alessandro Zampedi's crash, too, sort of counts.)

The pack racing itself *per se* may not be why the cars fly in the fence so easily, but the formula which is producing the pack racing clearly provides some issues. Obviously a car can fly without this formula, including into the fence. But the formula certainly gives the cars greater opportunity to catch air. Pack racing's going to give the cars more wheel-to-wheel time, which means the likelihood of a wheel-to-wheel accident is higher.

I too think it would be better for the cookie cutter banked 1.5s to be gone. They are for NASCAR. CART proved at Texas that, with too much horsepower, these become physically impossible to drive for formula cars (G-force issues). The one thing this series needs is a HP boost, with a reduction in downforce. As long as a cookie-cutter remains on the circuit, it may be tough for them to do this.

Pack racing makes cars flying more easily, therefore, they try to reduce such type of racing. I don't see there's even a need to argue about it. Plus, pack racing (IRL type) is awfully boring.

I do agree they must do something about the pack racing, it's stacking the odds against the drivers, taking risks for the sake of it etc. I just don't buy this "if we eliminate pack racing we'll never see another car in the fence" belief some of the drivers seem to have.

All the basic problems can be sorted pretty easily, take downforce off, give them more HP, make the cars heavier, mandate a maximum ride height etc. It's just so frustrating to see them ignoring these issues and focusing solely on the 1.5 milers and pack racing as the route cause of the problem.

The shape of the car also plays a huge role in these problems, back in the early IRL days and CART days, about the only area than produced the downforce was the wings, now the entire car is shaped like an inverted aeroplane wing.