IndyCar going in the right direction?

[Rob]

I'm pretty sure Baltimore has been dropped. Houston is my least favourite. St Petersburg sucks as well but it's bearable because of the excitement of it being the first race of the season.

Ever watch Edmonton? That was an old Champ Car venue, I think. Bumpy as hell but I loved it. lol. Sadistic I guess.

 

[TheHemps]

Ever watch Edmonton? That was an old Champ Car venue, I think. Bumpy as hell but I loved it. lol. Sadistic I guess.

I like Long Beach, Toronto, Belle Isle.

I agree we need street circuits. Just better ones.

 

[Rob]

I like Long Beach, Toronto, Belle Isle.

I agree we need street circuits. Just better ones.

After last year, you will not have to worry about Baltimore again.

I have never heard of this "NOLA" circuit, but a road course in the middle of the sticks has to be good!

 

[Nelson Ullinskey]

Streets of Calgary anyone? Is Calgary, Canada IndyCar's next new stop?

 

[Connor Caple]

Is there a Sim that has IndyCar available as an option?

I usually watch Indycar anyway, but it just occurred to me that I can't remember seeing them in a sim.

 

[Rob]

Chevy unveiled the new aero kits today. Here is the article:
From: http://www.indycar.com/News/2015/02/2-17-Chevrolet-unveils-aero-kits

Chevrolet renderings of road/street aero kit

By Dave Lewandowski
Published: Feb 17, 2015

Chevrolet is prepared for the next bold step in manufacturer competition with the introduction of aerodynamic bodywork kits to the Verizon IndyCar Series, according to Jim Campbell, GM’s U.S. vice president of performance vehicles and motorsports.

Campbell was joined by Chevrolet Racing director Mark Kent and Chris Berube, Chevrolet Racing's IndyCar program manager, in unveiling renderings of its road/street course and short oval aerodynamic package during the Verizon IndyCar Series media day at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. A speedway configuration will be introduced ahead of its competitive debut in May at the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval.

“This is an important milestone in Chevrolet’s involvement in IndyCar racing,” Campbell said. “We focused on developing an aerodynamic package that delivers an optimal balance of downforce and drag, along with integrated engine performance. It’s a total performance package.”

The Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg marks INDYCAR’s introduction to chassis competition in the Verizon IndyCar Series based upon aerodynamic bodywork components designed, manufactured and supplied by Chevrolet and Honda. Cars will be differentiated by their shape on the 1.8-mile temporary street course. References to the cars will incorporate the name of the corresponding manufacturer.

The road/street course and short oval configuration’s changes over the 2014 Dallara IR-12 package are easily identified by major components, including:

* Front wing that features new pedestal-mounted “front uppers” toward the outer edges.
* New sculpted “wheel wedges” in front of the rear tires.
* An engine cover and sidepods that have more compact shapes, achieved through a revised turbocharger and exhaust system layout.
* New larger rear bumper pods.
* A multi-element upper rear wing, along with louvered end plates.

“This new aero kit provides Chevrolet drivers the capability to enter and exit corners faster, while maintaining high speeds on the straights,” Berube said.

Development of the 120-plus parts consisted of nine key phases:

* Baseline analysis of the Dallara IR-12 aerodynamics.
* Establishing clear design goals for the new aero kit, which included making the most of downforce, drag and engine performance.
* Developing design concepts using computer-aided design.
* Analyzing structural properties, using finite element analysis.
* Simulated aerodynamic properties using computational fluid dynamics.
* Produced test parts using rapid prototyping processes, such as 3D printing.
* Conducting testing of a 50 percent scale model in a rolling road wind tunnel.
* Conducting testing of a full-scale race car in a rolling road wind tunnel.
* Conducting track testing of prototype aero kit on select racetracks, including Homestead-Miami Speedway, Circuit of The Americas (Austin, Texas), Texas Motor Speedway and Phoenix International Raceway.

“We took a clean-sheet approach to the aero kit, delivering an optimized and efficient design that should really give our Chevrolet teams an edge,” Berube said.

The manufacturer on-track testing window opened Oct. 6 and closed Jan. 18 -- the same date as homologation of components. Chevrolet and Honda teams are due to received the full-scale road/street course and oval aero kits March 1. Team on-track and wind tunnel testing is allowed starting March 13. Promoter Day testing is scheduled for March 16-17 at Barber Motorsports Park.

"When we decided to come back into the series leading into 2012, we really worked with INDYCAR on a few priorities," Campbell said. "We love the engine formula in this series, smaller displacement engines, direct injection, boosting, turbo charging, use of smaller V6 powerful engines, then use of a biofuel. We came with a 2.2-liter twin-turbo direct-injector V6. That was one of the key reasons we came back in the series and why we still love the series. It relates to what we sell in the showrooms that delivers that great combination of power, fuel economy and durability.



"Secondly, we were looking to bring world-class racing to the City of Detroit with Belle Isle. We appreciate the support of INDYCAR to make that happen. We'll be kicking off our fourth season. "Finally, we wanted to come back in IndyCar because we had the opportunity to develop aero kits. It was our opportunity to differentiate our look, drive innovation, look for ways to improve performance and speed, lap times. That's exactly what we've been doing."

The speedway aero kits are to be delivered to teams April 1. Honda Performance Development is tentatively scheduled to unveil its road/street course and short oval aero kit March 15 at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.

A comparison of the 2015 road/street and short oval configuration and the Dallara IR-12 is below in photo gallery.

View the 2015 Chevrolet Aero Kit renderings below:

 

[Rob]

Penske's new IndyCar driver lineup bears watching as banter begins​

Curt Cavin, curt.cavin@indystar.com 10:44 a.m. EST February 26, 2015

(Photo: Michelle Pemberton/The Star)

No team has more to build from than Team Penske, which added Simon Pagenaud to a lineup of reigning series champion Will Power, Helio Castroneves and Juan Pablo Montoya.

The subplot is the interplay between Power and Pagenaud, rivals who butted heads last season when Pagenaud drove for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. But pay attention to Power and Montoya, too.

During a recent visit to Indianapolis, Montoya questioned how much information Power shared as last season's title fight developed. The exchange that followed was playful, but it had some bite.
Power to Montoya: "Do you think I became more secretive as the year went on?"

Montoya: "Yes."

Power: "I didn't change anything."

Montoya: "Yeah, right."

Power, laughing: "What do you mean? I was secretive from the beginning."

Montoya to the reporter: "He does act really dumb."

Power went on to say he was "as open as I could be," and the team's structure requires openness. Montoya said he shares because "if you do a better job of driving than me, you deserve it."

 

[David O'Reilly]

Is there a Sim that has IndyCar available as an option?

I usually watch Indycar anyway, but it just occurred to me that I can't remember seeing them in a sim.

Yes R Factor 2, stock content.
At the moment the cars are a touch too fast, but they are fun and fairly easy to drive compared the the other high end open wheelers in RF2 such as the F ISI and FR 3.5.
They ceate good online multiplayer.

 

[Rob]

IndyCar aero kits promise more than just new look
Jeff Olson, Special for USA TODAY Sports 7:51 p.m. EST March 6, 2015​

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. -- Defending Indianapolis 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay calls the design and implementation of aero kits a Mount Everest for engineers at Honda Performance Development. There's probably more truth than hyperbole in that statement.

Honda is set to unveil its aero kits -- assemblies of aerodynamic winglets, planes and flaps that attach to the standard Dallara chassis -- at a reception Monday night in Culver City, Calif. The unveiling, held less than three weeks after Chevrolet showed off its aero kits and less than three weeks before the start of the 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series season, is loaded with deadline-driven anxiety, urgency and hope.

It also comes with a sense of peak-scaling pride.

"It's really a huge uphill battle because of several factors," Stephen Eriksen, HPD vice president and chief operating officer told USA TODAY Sports on Friday at HPD headquarters. "One of those is that you know there's so much performance potential, so you're frantic to make sure you get as much of that performance potential as possible in the constraints of the time available."

But what do the aero kits -- in the works since 2012 -- mean in terms of performance and appearance? And what, if any, benefit will they have to a form of racing that's struggling to maintain an audience?

Fans will discover more Monday night, even more in a test session March 16-17 at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala., and then get a thorough demonstration during the IndyCar season opener March 27-29 at St. Petersburg, Fla., where IndyCar officials say lap speeds with the aero kits are expected to be as much as 2 seconds faster than last year.

"To go through this as a driver has been interesting, but for engineers, it's been Mount Everest," Hunter-Reay told USA TODAY Sports by phone. "Not only did they have a set goal, but it's also a moving target. … There are so many parts of it. It's a monumental undertaking. I've been biting my fingers trying to figure out what we get and when."

Andretti Autosport, Hunter-Reay's team, has one complete Honda aero kit in its Indianapolis shop, meeting IndyCar's March 1 deadline to deliver the kits. By the Barber test, Andretti Autosport and the four other IndyCar teams associated with Honda are expected to have more kits.

Meanwhile, Chevrolet teams have begun to receive their kits and are in the process of assembling them.

The kits come in two forms -- one for superspeedways and another for road/street courses and short ovals. Delivery of the kits has taken longer than originally expected -- the canceled season opener in Brasilia, Brazil, would have been this Sunday -- because of the complexity of the kits and IndyCar's emphasis on safety of the new parts and pieces.

"Time will tell if we've got the best kit out there," Eriksen said, "but I can look back on what we've done and honestly say we did everything we could've done. I mean everything."

Fans will notice two distinct kits from Honda and Chevy, drivers say, easily identifiable by shape and configuration of their different aerodynamic elements. Chevy's kit, which was unveiled Feb. 17 during IndyCar media day in Indianapolis, was met with skepticism on social media, but drivers who have tested Chevy prototypes said the increase in performance is noticeable, the look immediately recognizable.

"The cars will look quite different from last year," Simon Pagenaud told USA TODAY Sports by phone. "They have more grip and more downforce, and they're faster faster on the straights. …They look more sophisticated. The biggest advantage for fans is that they'll recognize the two cars immediately. We're not all driving the same identical car anymore."

Pagenaud and Penske teammates Helio Castroneves, Will Power and Juan Pablo Montoya have tested the Chevy prototype at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. They reported heavier downforce, increased grip and better handling.

"When I drove it, you could be more aggressive with the race car," Pagenaud said. "You could carry more speed going into the corners. It's very enjoyable to drive. This is a new era for IndyCar, and I'm excited about it."

HPD has kept its kit designs tightly guarded and won't release images until the sheet is pulled back on the car Monday night during a cocktail reception at a trendy restaurant.

"What you'll see when you look at both cars is that we're very different from our competitor," Eriksen said. "It's different because we've tailored it specifically to be matched to our engine. The characteristics of our engine lend themselves to better aerodynamics. We took advantage of that fact in making this kit."

The new look is only a small portion of the entire undertaking, Hunter-Reay said. It's a sudden change from one-car-fits-all to a distinct, complicated vehicle that offers something for everyone.

"It took a lot of smart people to put all of this together," Hunter-Reay said. "I was enthused about it from the get-go because I could be in a position to help build what is a completely different racecar than what we've seen in the past."​

 

[Rob]

Now with Foyt, Hawksworth heads into 2nd IndyCar season
By GENARO C. ARMAS
AP Sports Writer
March 4, 2015

MILWAUKEE — The line formed to the right to talk to Jack Hawksworth.

So much has changed for the 24-year-old IndyCar driver in such a short time. Last season, he didn't even have a ride until March.

Now he's attending conventions and auto shows after joining A.J. Foyt Racing in the fall to drive the team's second car. It is quite the follow-up to a promising rookie campaign.

"The amazing thing is, to think at this time last year, I wasn't even going to be racing," Hawksworth said before a recent appearance at the Milwaukee Auto Show. "And now I'm sitting here and I'm about to go into my second season at IndyCar with A.J. Foyt Racing."

Nearby, the IndyCar series trophy sat on display on a table while attendees milled around a race car. For now, it might be the closest that the Englishman gets to the championship, though with five top-10 finishes last year, Hawksworth may not be that far away from being a top contender.

Racing for Bryan Herta Autosport, Hawksworth finished a season-high third in the second Houston race and was named the series' Tony Renna Rising Star.

Foyt noticed. ABC Supply Co., the team's longtime primary sponsor, agreed in October to back two cars in 2015 and 2016. For Foyt, the hope is that adding a second car will help the team become more competitive.

"When you take these guys running three or four cars, they get three to four times the information you get with one car. It really hurts the one car," Foyt said. "I won't ever run more than two ... I think a two-car team — that's what we want."

Takuma Sato returns for Foyt driving the No. 14 car. Hawksworth will drive the No. 41 car.

"We're calling 'em the young guns," Foyt said about Hawksworth's team. "He's really young, the engineers are all real young. ... I think they can be pretty tough. We just have to wait and see, you know?"

Hawksworth is itching to test with the team for the first time in New Orleans on March 14. He's showing just the kind of work ethic that Foyt would like to see from young drivers.

Understandably, Hawksworth was a little nervous at first to meet one of the sport's elder statesmen. Foyt retired from the driver's seat in 1993 — two years after Hawksworth was born.

Hawksworth moved to Cypress, Texas, 15 minutes from the race shop in Waller, after signing with Foyt. He said Foyt and his family embraced him and has taken to Foyt's sense of humor.

"He's just a racer. I guess that's what I liked about him," Hawksworth said. "He's down to earth, loves his sport."

The expectations, Hawksworth said, are "hugely different." Hawksworth is with a better-financed team. He's looking to get better on oval tracks, with the first step seeing how his Honda-powered car adjusts to aero kits to be tested next week.

The Foyt team has "prepared in a completely different way with the two cars, twice as much data, twice as much personnel, if not more," Hawksworth said. "We've done a lot of preparation over the winter. Last winter (for me), it was kind of thrown together at the last minute."

The team owner and new driver share another link — each person had to deal with a heart issue last year.

Foyt, 80, had triple-bypass surgery on Nov. 12, two weeks after signing Hawksworth. Post-surgery complications forced him to stay in the hospital for nearly a month.

That was followed by a two-week stay in December for what was called non-life threatening complications. Foyt said he is well enough at least to spend three to four hours every other day in the shop, with the long-term goal to get back to the Indianapolis 500.

"I'm gaining every day, still a longs ways away, but at least I'm gainin'," Foyt said.

Hawksworth bruised his heart after a nasty crash during a practice run last July at Pocono. He was released from the hospital four days later, and there have been no aftereffects from what turned out to be a minor injury.

"I don't think it changed the way I look at racing at all," Hawksworth said. "If you race ovals, you either deal with it or you don't. I just put it behind me."

The season begins March 29 in St. Petersburg, Florida.

 

[Nelson Ullinskey]

I'm so excited about the Honda Aero-Kit reveal tonight!! I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve

 

[Rob]

IndyCar: Honda unveils inspired aero kit design ​

Monday, 09 March 2015
By Marshall Pruett/Images: HPD

If the first glimpse of a 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series aero kit left you somehat uninspired, the second aero kit unveiling – this time from Honda – makes a stronger and more evocative visual statement.

Created by Honda Performance Development and its partner Wirth Research, the company's road course/short oval aero kit bears a resemblance to a modern Formula 1 car in key areas. If Chevy's aero kit looks like the familiar Dallara DW12 chassis with a variety of bits and pieces added to it, Honda's aero kit has transformed the car into something far more dramatic – a notable departure from the DW12 underpinnings.

As the byproduct of thousands of hours of design and virtual testing, not to mention the maximum six days of track testing permitted by IndyCar, HPD vice president Steve Eriksen says Honda's aero kit has involved massive effort by all parties involved in the project.

"One of the first steps is computer aided design, to create the shapes that you're going to evaluate," he said. "There's actually a step a little bit before this in some cases which is testing out some theories in the driving simulator. So we actually had a number of cases where we tried some things in a simulator by changing forces in simulation on the car and seeing how it worked. Then once you say, 'OK, that's interesting, I don't know how to make that kind of force in the car but let's start designing parts and figure out how to do it.'

"Once you have the CFD data you have some idea of how much the aero components are going to be loaded. Then you to do what's called finite element analysis which is an analysis of the strength or relative strength of various parts of the component that you're looking at. You can also do an analysis of how much the part is going to flex under aero load. Because parts are not infinitely stiff they will flex on aero load and you can look at in FEA and understand that.

"We were allowed six days total of testing your prototype components. We could select what tracks to go to, and we had [Andretti Autosport's] Marco Andretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Carlos Munoz handle the track testing for us."

The kit revealed today will be used for most of the races on the 2015 IndyCar calendar, and some of the components must carry over to the low-downforce/low-drag Speedway kits that will appear for the first time during the 99th running of the Indy 500 in May. As Eriksen notes, despite the explosion of wings and downforce on Honda's road course/short oval kit, the brand's entire focus for its aero kit was done with one event in mind.

"Areas open for development are specified with what they call legality boxes," he explained. "It is literally a volume around a particular part of the car, and some of those include sidepods; engine cover; rear wheel guards; front and rear wing main planes; and end plates. The Speedway front wing main plane and the Indy 500 unique rear wing main plane. That particular item that we are allowed to develop has only one purpose and that is the Indy 500. We focus on the Indy 500 as our number one goal. Everything else, once you establish what is best for the Indy 500, then other things come along after that."

Initial aero kit costs are set at $75,000 in 2015, and with updates to the kit allowed for 2016, those new pieces are limited to a maximum of $15,000. To prohibit the use of painfully expensive materials, a minimum weight of 55 pounds for the road course/short oval kit, minus optional pieces, has been established. Downforce figures have been kept private, but rumors of an additional 600 pounds of downforce – or more – have been mentioned in association with the Honda RC/SO. Without the late reduction in overall aero kit downforce mandated by IndyCar, the 2015 bodywork could have brought an increase of at least 1500 pounds of downforce over the stock Dallara kit.

Delving into Honda's bodywork, the "RC/SO" (Chevy uses the same RC/SO designation for their kit) features a front wing package that is by far the most complex aerodynamic system ever fitted to an Indy car. Using the base Dallara front wing element as the starting point, Honda loaded each side of the nose with three exceptionally long and tall cascade elements. The cascade array serves as a downforce-producing deflector that significantly blocks the face of each front tire, and in another notable departure from the Chevy kit, the inside of those cascade elements lack an endplate. The five exposed element tips allow Honda's front wing package to generate vortices, which help to concentrate the air flowing off of them while generating additional downforce.

Where the Chevy kit uses a single element that stands tall on a post mounted on the outer edge of the front mainplane, Honda has taken a more aggressive approach by fitting a tall outer and inner endplate that features five wing elements that sit in front of each tire. That system also acts like a ramp to divert air over the tires.

Altogether, and based on what Honda is willing to show the public (and Chevy) a week prior to its official debut at Barber Motorsports Park, 17 wing elements are packed onto the front of the car. With some of the additional aero kit options teams are allowed to use, and with an understanding that both manufacturers have likely kept some components hidden until their cars hit the track at Barber next Monday, more elements and other components could be seen.

Beneath the cascade elements, two strakes can be seen, and a Gurney flap is also present on the outer edges of the top elements to extract air from beneath the wing array. That Gurney is almost capped by a fence on those upper elements. Moving down to the front wing endplates, a gap is maintained between the inner portion of the endplate and the top cascade elements that bend down and attach to the main plane to further accelerate and extract air headed out and around the front tires.

Honda's front wing package could cause fans to stop and spend 30 minutes trying to sort out how all of the curves and shapes work together in an integrated manner to produce staggering amounts of downforce.

Moving back to the sidepods, Honda has also taken a different approach to their design than Chevy. Chevy separated their sidepods from the rear wheel ramps, giving air a chance to flow around the sides and between the gearbox and rear wheels, Honda has gone with full-length sidepods that extend out to the rear tires. In place of the familiar ramps that send air over the top of the drag-producing tires, Honda has taken an opportunity to achieve the same effect with a pair of wing elements, adding more downforce to the aero kit. In place of Chevy's flow conditioner that sits atop each sidepod, Honda uses a set of smaller ramps can be found on the side of the sidepods, and they appear to pull air from the opening in the floor and divert it up toward the bigger ramps. Chevy's use of a wide, rectangular radiator inlet profile is different than the more closed and rounded inlet on Honda's kit, and at the back of the sidepods, exit ducting of some sorts is shown beneath the big tire ramp elements. A channel can also be seen on top of the sidepods adjacent to the rear tire ramps that allows air to be drawn down into the flow.

Honda's engine cover uses the overhead air intake to feed its twin-turbo V6 engine, meaning both manufacturers have opted for this solution, yet the similarities end there. Chevy's engine cover makes an immediate downhill run after the roll hoop, while Honda's heads straight back a considerable distance before angling downwards. Honda has also added a narrow fin to the spine of its engine cover to provide yaw stability – a similar, albeit compact version of the fin found on LMP1 and LMP2 sports cars.

The final section of Honda's aero kit features a downforce-dripping take on the rear wheel guards and rear wing. Using the stock Dallara mainplane per the aero kit rules, Honda has added two elements and massive endplates to the back of the car, and at least in these renderings, the endplates are not vented like the Chevy kit. The rear wheel guards also show a different line of thinking as the Honda's are relatively flat on top and sport two dihedral wing elements – effectively extending the width of the rear wing. The Chevy, in their renderings, use one element, and the wheel guards are more rounded.

Honda has gone about its treatment of air flowing through the wheel guards in a different manner as well, with slots and rectangular openings made at the rear of the units.

Combined, more than 100 individual pieces comprise Honda's aero kit. The changes are so significant the nose of each Honda Indy car now carries the official red "H" badge.

Honda's success at the Indy 500 since the new turbocharged era of IndyCar racing began in 2012 has been impressive. Two of the three 500s have been won by the brand, but in the season-long IndyCar Manufacturers' championship, Chevy has claimed the title three years running.

Although their 2.2-liter engines have been incredibly close on power, torque, and driveability, Chevy has had an edge in the win column and with reliability since 2012. It makes the new frontier with aero kits the most obvious place for Honda to find an edge, and based on what we've seen from their renderings, Chevy could have a serious fight on their hands to hold onto the Manufacturers' crown.

 

[Rob]

Stunning. Just stunning. Makes me want to cry.

And all at a cost of $17,000, tested over 7 days, and just...beautiful. This is what I have been waiting for. The start of real innovation in aero and engine, with beautiful cars (kind of reminds you of the old F1 cars), and a series that's already got the track and driver diversity (not to mention one of the crowns in the triple) to become a world leader.

I like the simplicity of the Chevy up front, but I have to admit, Honda stole the show. They actually made those ugly rear bumpers look almost like things of beauty. And the low and wide rear wing looks like a proper open wheel car, unlike those masts in F1. This is fantastic.

 

[Rob]

By indycar.com staff
Published: May 23, 2013
http://www.indycar.com/News/2013/05/5-23-INDYCAR-opens-way-for-innovation-in-speed-safety

INDYCAR will explore increased technical innovation in its cars and continue its longstanding effort to enhance safety in open-wheel racing, Hulman & Co. CEO Mark Miles and incoming INDYCAR President of Operations and Competition Derrick Walker announced May 23.

Walker, who joins the sanctioning body after conclusion of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race on May 26, will be responsible for identifying specific technology improvements and guiding their implementation, with the goal of managed increases in speed.

"In the short term, we'll look for incremental changes to our cars through components such as aerodynamics, horsepower and tires," Walker said. "In a way, we're going back to the future. Indy cars have always been about innovation and speed, and our goal is to open the door for that again. We'll start with our current car platform and give our teams and suppliers more ability to affect how they race. We always have to be mindful of costs, but that doesn't mean we can't manage improvements to create more exciting racing and at the same time do it safely."

Walker said the technical staff at INDYCAR, teams and suppliers -- with support from members of the newly formed Competition Committee -- will be engaged. Walker said the first substantive announcement, likely about aero kits, will be made soon.

"We've achieved a great car platform, so now we can move forward to explore what's next," Miles said. "By managing improvements in certain components, speeds will gradually increase, and we could break the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track record (237.498 mph by Arie Luyendyk in qualifications in 1996) by our 100th running in 2016."

Potential safety innovations could include new types of track fencing to protect drivers and fans, more precautionary steps on pit lane and continued cockpit safety enhancements.

"We already race the fastest closed-circuit cars in the world, and we continue to strive for further innovation that ultimately results in increased speed and safety," said 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay, who will start seventh in the Indy 500 in the No. 1 DHL car for Andretti Autosport. "This is an opportunity for us to go back to our roots.

"Indy car is all about the progression of speed and pushing the performance barrier, and I strongly feel that this needs to be a big part of the future of our sport."

In March, INDYCAR announced the formation of an advisory Competition Committee to formalize communications among industry stakeholders on competition and technical matters. The committee, which met earlier in the day, will advise INDYCAR on competition-related matters such as rules, technical specifications and safety initiatives.

 

[Rob]

IndyCar Preview Summary. Racer.com:

 

[Rob]

Racer.com

 

[Rob]

From Racer Magazine regarding Carlin Racing, a *huge* player in European developmental motorsports, now joining forces with Indy Lights....

 

[Rob]

pg 2

 

[Rob]

The secret racing test tunnel no one wants to talk about
Lost in rural Pennsylvania, hidden from prying eyes, there is a tunnel.

​

SOME 300 FEET BELOW MY perch, a road disappeared into the side of a mountain. I made my way down the heavily wooded, steep slope, sliding as often as walking. My shoes filled with dirt that was still moist from the spring thaw.

And then I was at the bottom, standing on an old roadway with weeds sprouting through the cracked pavement. I was staring at a new, shiny silver, domed structure that ran along the road for about 300 yards and ended at a decaying tunnel entrance. A stack of slick racing tires stood nearby, the final clue that I had found the place that symbolizes all that is fantastic about motorsports. Now I just had to figure out how to tell the story.

ASK ANYONE WHY RACING MATTERS and, inevitably, someone pipes up that motorsports produces new technology that eventually makes street cars better. While that might have been true 50 years ago, it's all too easy to poke holes in the statement today. Modern racing cars are so tightly regulated—to control costs and competition—there are few development challenges left for the creative engineering mind.

Racers, however, are a resourceful lot, and the most obsessed would gladly saw off a toe for a tenth-of-a-second advantage. They struggle and experiment and do move the needle forward, but in such minute steps, there's little to crow about except in some dense engineering paper. Since those improvements are usually invisible to the casual observer and no team would voluntarily disclose a secret advantage, we never hear about them.

Yet we all love the stories of the maverick inventor or innovator who gains an edge through genius and hard work. Remember Penske's acid-dipped Trans Am Camaro or the STP Turbine car that nearly won Indy? What about the 1997 McLaren MP4-12 "fiddle brake," a second brake pedal used on F1 cars to slow the inside rear wheel and help the car corner faster? It was banned in 1998. Those tales become part of motorsports lore.

I pictured a bunch of lunatics tuning and tinkering with race cars in a secret underground test facility.



In the winter of 2007, I got a once-in-a-decade tip about one such racing edge. While touring a scale-model wind tunnel in Indianapolis and listening to my guide explain the exorbitant efforts engineers expend to ensure the tunnel simulates the real world—they use precise, Ferrari-priced race-car models and rolling roads, among other measures—I asked why they didn't measure downforce and drag by driving real cars down a real road. I knew the answer—changing weather conditions would affect the results—but I wanted to hear him say it.

"What you need," said my guide (anonymous by request), "is a car tunnel. One about a mile long, and flat. Since it's underground, the air conditions remain relatively constant. That would provide solid, repeatable data." I chuckled. Who had the money to build such a facility? And where? "What if," he continued, "someone found an abandoned tunnel and repurposed it?" That was all the impetus I needed. I went home and started digging, unraveling a chain of events that began over 100 years ago.

"YEAH, I DROVE IN THE TUNNEL. In fact, I crashed in it," former IndyCar driver Darren Manning said last fall. If he had been standing next to me and not on the phone, I would have kissed him. After years of searching for information on the mystery tunnel, Manning was the first person I'd found who agreed to speak on the record about it.

Some backstory is required: That tip I got in Indy was no red herring. In the late 19th century, steel baron Andrew Carnegie and second-generation railroad tycoon William H. Vanderbilt joined to build a new rail line in Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. Work started in 1883; the route crossing the Allegheny Mountains required nine tunnels and was nearly complete when skittish investors pulled out. Construction stopped in 1885, and the tunnels were abandoned until the Thirties, when some well-meaning bureaucrats repurposed the route and its tunnels to build America's first superhighway, the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Opened in 1940, the highway proved so popular that by the early Sixties, the two-lane tunnels were choke points on the four-lane motorway. By 1968, three of the tunnels were bypassed and again left to the elements.

Locals surely spelunked the abandoned tunnels, and their exploits eventually wound up on the Internet. I found one blogger who mentioned that the Laurel Hill Tunnel, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh, looked to be in use. For what, the blogger didn't know, but he posted pictures of race tires stacked near the tunnel entrance.

Two of of America's greatest racing enterprises have major ties to Pennsylvania. Roger Penske attended Lehigh University in Bethlehem, and Chip Ganassi's racing operations are partially headquartered in Pittsburgh. It didn't take a genius to finger Ganassi as the likely owner of the Laurel tunnel. He grew up in Pittsburgh and his father, Floyd, was a very successful businessman.

My curiosity had turned to a fever. As much as I love motor racing, I equally cherish sharing with others why racing is—beyond the track—such a fascinating pursuit. Here, I imagined, I had the makings of a tale that even those who care little for racing could appreciate. I pictured a bunch of lunatics tuning and tinkering with race cars in a secret underground test facility. In my warped head, the tunnel was the automotive version of Area 51, the airfield in southern Nevada where the government allegedly tests captured UFOs.
Obsessed? Maybe, but as filmmaker John Waters once said, "Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." So in the spring of 2007, I turned off the Pennsylvania Turnpike at the Somerset exit, headed west on Route 31, parked my car at the edge of the woods, and took a walk.

"IF YOU GET A FERRARI," Ganassi said, standing in his RV at Mid-Ohio, "you can drive it in the tunnel." There it was, my golden ticket, the one I'd been trying to land for five years. Although I had found the tunnel during my 2007 hike, my repeated requests to Ganassi's PR staff to do a story had been denied. I made countless pitches: Set an underground speed record. Use the tunnel to test a new Corvette. The Ganassi guys were wonderfully nuts—surely they'd bite. Also, I wanted to know: How does one buy or lease a tunnel? What's it cost? How do they conduct the testing? What information does it provide? Clearly, Ganassi was onto something. His IndyCar team won four straight championships from 2008 to 2011.

Also, the tunnel had become an open secret in the racing community. In late 2007, a few months after my walk, Racecar Engineering ran a huge story on Laurel Hill. When I saw it, I was crestfallen and enraged because Ganassi's folks said the place was off-limits, but then I read the piece and realized the author was working off the same thin information I was. He hadn't gotten in. There was still a story to tell. In the meantime, snippets about the tunnel appeared in other magazines. At one point, Ganassi even admitted its existence. Surely, I naively figured, he'd relax and let me in, since I must have been the first journalist to ask. In that RV at Mid-Ohio, I took my shot.

Here's the thing you might have guessed about Ganassi: The guy's a genius. That day in the RV, before I had a chance to bring up the tunnel, he described a plan for an open-source racing series, where any garage tinkerer could take a shot at designing parts for Indy cars. He thought, and I agreed, that his plan could return racing to the technological frontier without skyrocketing costs. We ran a piece about it a few months later [November 2012]. Ganassi, who holds a finance degree from Duquesne University, built his team over a quarter century. Racing is his sole business, winning is his obsession, and to guys like me, he's a hero, even more than the drivers who pilot his cars.

I secured that Ferrari, but by then, another mention of the tunnel appeared in yet another magazine. Ganassi grew fearful of publicity, and my idea was nixed yet again. As frustrated as I was, I could see his point. Racing history is full of new ideas that get banned in the interest of greater competition. If he crowed about his private tunnel, that might be the nudge the sanctioning bodies needed to ban it.

Then, last spring, in a magazine profile, Ganassi offhandedly mentioned Laurel Hill: "It's not a secret tunnel. It's a private tunnel." It seemed every motor sports journalist except me had found a way to write about the place. Playing by the rules, I had failed. Two weeks after reading that story, I drove back to Pennsylvania.

AS IF ON CUE, my phone battery died just as I reached the complete darkness of the tunnel's midpoint. I couldn't see a thing, but I could hear a slight whooshing sound in the distance growing louder. Something was coming. I scrambled to the wall just in time to see a faint light appear. A lone cyclist pedaled past, missing me by inches.

If Ganassi wouldn't let me in the tunnel, I figured I should at least explore a surrogate. Two of Vanderbilt's original portals, which were sold to the Southern Alleghenies Conservancy for $1 in 2001, are regularly explored by vandals, hikers, and the occasional brave cyclist. The Rays Hill Tunnel is about a mile long, some 20 feet tall, and about two and a half lanes wide. Roughly one-third of the way in, the temperature had dropped 20 degrees and the humid summer air had congealed into a thick fog.

Back at the overgrown entrance, I marveled at the massive 12-foot ventilation fans that still spun on their shafts and the three-story offices set into solid rock. It's difficult to assess exactly how much was spent to build each tunnel between the Vanderbilt/Carnegie operation and the PA Turnpike, but the figure is likely in the hundreds of millions.

I have no idea what Ganassi paid for the Laurel Hill Tunnel or if he even owns it. Repeated requests to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) for that information resulted in responses like "Why do you need to know?" or "We'll get back to you." They never did. Instead, every time I called the PTC, the follow-up call came from John Olguin, Ganassi's PR man, who urged me to leave this story alone.

Odd, right? Why does the PTC have a bat phone to Ganassi? And why is the tunnel such a big secret? There's a Wikipedia page on the Laurel Hill Tunnel that mentions Ganassi's use, and a two-minute Internet search revealed that Ganassi even has a patent on the idea. In 2006, Ganassi and Ben Bowlby (who later developed the DeltaWing race car, which Ganassi helped finance), were awarded U.S. patent number 7,131,319 B2, "Method and apparatus for testing a moving vehicle," which explains how one might measure aerodynamic forces while driving a car through a tunnel.

The PTC, however, wasn't alone in its silence. Over in Somerset, the closest town to Ganassi's tunnel, I found that almost everyone knew about it, but free talk was impossible to come by. Knowledge of my presence spread through town; by late afternoon, when I arrived at Stoy Excavating, the company that I'd been told constructed the tunnel, the secretary asked me if I was that reporter asking about the tunnel. Yeah, it's a small town.

The fire chief who supposedly works at the tunnel never returned my calls. I stopped at the Jefferson Township maintenance building and met four county workers. All of them knew about the tunnel, and one claimed his son installed the phone lines. They were willing to talk but had little to share beyond a suggestion to see the site of the Quecreek Mine rescue while I was in the area. (I did. It's cool.)

And then at the hotel breakfast bar the next morning, a patron, yet another person who wishes to remain anonymous, told me to call Darren Manning.

"ONE OF THE UPRIGHTS FAILED," Manning continued, when we talked last fall. "I climbed 12 feet up the wall and slid down on my side. I nearly did the full loop on the thing." That was in 2004, the year Manning signed with Ganassi's Indy team and likely the first year the tunnel was in operation.

Domed enclosure ensures that the team can park race-car haulers inside, hidden from view.

"Have you ever seen the TV show Battlestar Galactica, when those spaceships were shot from a tube?" Manning asked. "That's what testing in the tunnel was like." He described a simple procedure: Driving west through the tunnel, he'd accelerate the car to 140 mph and coast as long as he could before stopping. Then, a turntable would spin the car around and he'd head east, but this time, he had to maintain precisely 130 mph until braking for the end.

Manning's test car was outfitted with onboard data and telemetry systems and special clutches in the rear uprights that decoupled the wheels from the driveshafts, presumably to reduce mechanical drag. When one of them failed, the rear tire locked, sending Manning into the wall.

"I'd been in the car for, like, seven hours, bored senseless," he said, "and not really expecting a crash. Then all of a sudden, the f**king car's doing an S-bend at 140 mph and I started climbing the wall."

Generally, to combat boredom during tunnel tests, Manning played a Game Boy. Other testing challenges, however, had no real solutions. "The problem," he said, "is that it's basically 52 degrees in there, and sometimes there's moisture on the pavement. You've got stone-cold tires that don't want to hook up. Plus there were pull-back springs on the brakes, so I had to pump them like mad."

A decade ago, this stack of tires was the lone clue that a racing team had taken over Vanderbilt's forlorn tunnel.​

In the tunnel's early days, the team tested nearly around the clock. "It's a test driver's nightmare," Manning said, "because you could run all night, and sometimes we did." The team was so eager for the data that the morning after the Indy 500, Manning found himself in the team van, heading to the tunnel.

All this effort must have had a payoff. According to Manning, in addition to the standard aerodynamic information, the tunnel provided data that's all but impossible to obtain in a scale-model tunnel. High on the list are the effects of deforming bodywork. At speed, the wings and engine covers naturally flex, but by how much? How do those bits interact? And is there a way to maximize that movement and make it an advantage? "You have to remember," he said, "that the cars are all extremely close. Five pounds less drag or 20 pounds more downforce has a huge cumulative effect over the course of a race. Those piddly little things add up."

Other noncompeting teams used the tunnel. Manning said that Toyota's now-defunct F1 team used it, Ganassi ran his NASCAR stock cars and IMSA sports cars in it, and there probably were other clients we'll never know about.

INDYCAR AND NASCAR ARE, sadly, neutering the tunnel. For 2015, both sanctioning bodies further reduced the time in which teams are allowed to test. IndyCar limits on-track and full-size wind-tunnel testing to 14 days, and NASCAR outright banned running a car for testing outside its scheduled test events. Chalk this up to another victory for parity over ingenuity.

Over in England, however, the tunnel idea has taken root. A company called Aero Research Partners recently announced that it would convert a 1.7-mile unused railway tunnel for vehicle testing. The facility may be available for rental sometime in the next couple of years.

I might not have learned everything I wanted to know about the tunnel, but the itch has—for the time being—been scratched enough. Maybe I'll still manage to get inside it someday during a testing session, with a notebook and a photographer. Or, more likely, I'll just have to visit the Brits.

Norman Mailer once said, "Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer." I can't say I agree. Racers like Ganassi obsessively chase speed and in the process show us the creative power of the human mind. And that's always a tale worth telling.

http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/features/a24696/racings-secret-hideout-ganassi-tunnel/

 

[johnnymat]

From Racer Magazine regarding Carlin Racing, a *huge* player in European developmental motorsports, now joining forces with Indy Lights....

Interesting story ; I must have missed this. Glad to see Indy Lights might be on it's way back. Thanks for posting.