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Whoa...Power

They are going pretty much by their own, no sense in risking much, as they'll only use the boost for qualy tomorrow

I'm a total dumbass with twitter so i cant find it now, but it posted that Power's top straight speed was clocked at 238.6. I know it's not for an entire lap, but come on it's still quick as hell. Breaking the record would be cool but then what?!? In another 20 years from now we'd bitch and complain and expect them to then go for a 250mph lap? Speeds, for safety sake, have to top out somewhere and for this sport it just happened to a while back. Even if they broke it this year it would, most likely, have only been by a mile an hour or so and 2 things would have happened. 1. We would have to, for at least the next 20 years again, have to stare at one of these dallara's as the fastest car to ever run at indy and 2. There would still be complaining about how the series went out of their way to break the record by tweaking rules or engines (guarantee, first thing said if someone did break it tmrw, would be "if they could have extra boost for qual too back in 96, that lap would have been even faster as well) or just some sort of bitching about how Arie's was more legit and a real time and the cars were better looking and how the.....blah blah blah. Focus needs to be on why, for the 100th Indy 500, the field is only being filled because drivers are paying for rides basically and because a team operating on what they have scraped together from their piggy banks has bolted a car together. (Honestly, I like Lazier, but lets face it. Those are the facts.) I mean seriously, just qualifying (even last) was a huge thing in the past and now how often do they interview or even show Lazier's car? Not trying to start something but in my opinion there's bigger things to worry about lap speeds being LESS than a second different than 2 entire decades ago. If you read this whole little rant than thanks :P

[tweet]https://twitter.com/IndyCar/status/733765073307459584[/tweet]

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Gael

Just found this great video with the radio broadcast and video put over it, check from 4min on, the full field of cars one by one, so many different designs. And that #1 car pic of AJ looks like Peter Perfect from the cartoon.

I saw a documentary once where they basically said racing cars (of this type) would never really exceed 240mph consistently for any oength of time because at that speed two things happen, they essentially hit terminal velocity (meaning the extra power needed to go faster means adding weight which in turn means the cars will be slower) and the reaction times needed to control the car in anything other than a straight line are impossible to achieve.

I moved up to the second teir in turn 1 for a while yesterday. I was interested to see a couple HPD guys perched up there in the front row. They had a radar gun pointed straight down the frontstretch, which hooked into both of their laptops, upon which they each had their cellphones leaning with even more live data displaying.

I thought about asking them what they were monitoring (other than top speed) but I figured they didn't need that distraction (they were on the job after all).

What's HPD

Honda

As much as I want record speeds back, and am one of the few who think you can tell the difference between 230 and 240, I agree with Mr. Senna above. I'm sure the guys who saw uncle Bobby, Sneva, Big Al and Co. flirt with and pass 200 in all different kinds of cars thought the same thing we do when the March's and Eagles were replaced by the Lola's and Reynards.

Fans in general are fickle. We want different kinds of cars and engines but also want close racing (which the DW12) produces. How many times did the CART style cars produce close racing? Seems to me that more often than not the winner steamed away to big lead and a relatively unchallenged win (Hanford races not withstanding.) Is it just the look of the cars that we all miss so much or did I miss something while watching all those late 90's CART races?

Honda Performance Development.

Also consider, while not track records, the fastest pole winning speeds are :
233.718 - 1996
232.482 - 1992
231.725 - 2003
231.604 - 1995
231.342 - 2002
231.067 - 2014

So this year can be only the 7th in 100 years to have a pole mph over 230. I don't know that it will climb that high up the list, maybe 5th fastest ever is attainable.

Wow i've never seen commercials on ESPN3. They are treating it like a regular tv channel.

To put it politely, yes.
The cars looked better, raced better and didn't have a boat load of downforce mandated by race control to ensure exciting racing.
So, although it's relative in a series that uses the safety car so much, the results were a hell of a lot more "pure"

We all know why the split happened and it had little if anything to do with the entertainment level of the races, which were among the best in the world at that time and were gaining a following to rival f1, which in it's grooved tyres, refueling, high downforce and move towards driver aids, wasn't exactly tearing up the race tracks, excitement wise.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Anyone have an espn3 stream, looks like anyone who is not in the US is being short changed by them hogging the stream that was great on youtube all week

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

IMS has extended track time to 7pm edt.

IMS turns on their own stream since ESPN3 must be on lunch break.. just a cam view of the flags waving. This is why ESPN sucks.

Max Chilton crashes hard off T2

And crash for Max Chilton.

There are many "wes" out there.

Back in the 1990s I feel they were legitimately pushing more technological limits. And that added some element of surprise (for a start, the cars broke a lot more than they do now). The racing wasn't as close, no, but it made the close battles a bit more special when they happened. The actual driving itself also looked more interesting with all the horsepower those cars had.

Although Gil De Ferran holds the closed course qualifying record for a sanctioned race event, the unofficial closed course speed record seems to have been set all the way back in 1987... 257.123 mph by AJ Foyt with a turbo-charged Oldsmobile Quad 4, March Indycar chassis, and a special aerodynamic shell, at the nearly 8 mile oval at the Firestone Test Track. I think even 1990s CART had to hold back on pure speed a little (see: pop-off valves, Hanford devices), and even then, they were too fast to safely race at Texas.

So I understand why racing is a bit more "managed" now. Different times, really -- it's probably possible to make much quicker cars right now, but ala CART @ Texas when you start running into human body limitations (like G-Force issues at Texas), you have to stop somewhere. It's the same in a lot of other racing series, and unfortunately is part of why racing overall is in decline, I think.

Oh yeah, the good ol' CART at Texas in early 00's. The drivers blacked out during the cornering in practice and only came back on to it on the straigths. The only time cancelling the race made sense. As no one wanted to see fighter plane pilots to black out and crash and call it a race. Imagine if they had pushed the envelope for the race...

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."