IndyCow - Part I - The Wages Of A Failed Herd Mentality
 |
- Albert Camus -
By Rick Carlton - Motorsports Opinion
After nearly four months of media promotion, at least one global radio roundtable, and three week's worth of tick-tock "Be There Or You'll Miss The News" teasers, the Indy Racing League finally rolled out its 2012 chassis specifications. Unfortunately, rather than actually creating something new, the Indiana braintrust only managed to produce the Speedway's version of a lackluster herd mentality, when it decided to move the same old cow from its current pasture, to a fallow field next door. Can anyone say Titanic-centric?
Unfortunately, it could have been different. There were five excellent engineering firms vying for a share of the League's nextgen car development including Lola Cars, BAT, Swift Engineering, Ben Bowlding's highly-radical Delta design plus the venerable Dallara. All of them could have participated in a competitive American open-wheel resurgence, and the League could have benefited significantly on its balance sheet by encouraging a simple technical "box" that allowed any chassis manufacturer to participate, then let the "free" market do its own product sales work. Instead, however, the highly-touted ICONIC Committee, hereinafter known as the Inane, Confused, Old, Naive, Incompetent Club, reached the same old technical conclusions as its successors when the group adopted yet another single-producer chassis, developed by the current chassis manufacturer. Wow, I'm simply giddy over all innovation at work.
So what if the new car is safer? Fans don't watch auto racing based on safety. Fans watch because open-wheel racing is supposed to be dangerous, and there is a chance of serious injury or worse. If your freak is being freaked, watch softball.
So what if the Dallara is able to accommodate someone else's branded aero kitting or third-party body panels? Really? Does anyone think that a Dallara covered with, for example Ford body panels, pushing Honda power is going to be a compelling branding proposition for any of those car companies or their customers? Not hardly. And as for the potential of a new aftermarket based on the sale of accessory bits, most teams already fabricate their own sub-assemblies internally, so there's not going to be much commercial play there either.
How about the premise of "green" racing? What a load of bovine scatology. Racecars run on highly blended synthetic fuels including corn-derived Ethanol, and these fuels emit carbon along with other toxic chemical by-products. As a matter of fact fuels science confirms that cellulose-based refining produces higher levels of toxic by-products than fossil-based fuels in some cases. So, whether these products are elementally comprised of corn, BP Gulf crude or Yak pelts, in the end of the day, dangerous gasses come out the back of combustion-driven engines - that's why they call it "exhaust" after all - so get over it. If you're overly concerned about the environment join the Sea Shepard crew and fight International whaling, or simply plant a tree in the yard.
Then there's the "innovative" issue of reduced chassis weight. Really? In the promotional business this is referred to as; "If you can't fix it, feature it." Six cylinder engines create smaller chassis footprints, and this produces lower cost in terms of reduced raw materials requirements etc. So, in this last case the ICONIC decision actually comes closest to clearly illustrating the real rationale for the final technical spec - reduced cost.
In the next part we'll discuss what could have been done instead, while actually making real technical news, as opposed to the sleeping dog and pony we finally got. But for now, the bottom line is that after all the hype what we got was a safer, lighter, one-brand, 2012 Indy Lights car. If one simply wants to put a new coat on old Bossy and call the effort successful, knock yourself off. As for me - it was a waste of time.