Full open engineering is not on the cards but things are not as bad as they could be
The announcement of a new Dallara Indycar was something we all dreaded in the office, right now Indycar is just an glorified and less popular version of GP2. It is a dull spec series with no real engineering or innovation going. What we really feared was a slightly rebodied version of what we already have, whilst Dallara does not make bad cars – we are all bloody bored of what is just another spec series.
However the ICONIC group has made a very sensible choice, whilst the holy grail of fully open engineering has not been achieved what we do have is completely free bodywork and fairly open engine rules within capacity and cofiguration limits. This could now make the Indy 500 and event worth significant mention in the pages of Racecar Engineering. It opens the door to marques like Lola and Alfa Romeo and that could be great for the series.
The people who will be really smiling however are the wind tunnels, Windshear, Penske, Swift, Dome, Lola, Aerolab, Toyota Motorsport, Ganassi, Aerodyn and RUAG will all be smiling as a line of teams and manufacturers form a neat line at the door working to develop thier own bodies.
However detailed regulations could render this irrelevant, with the same tub and front suspension pickups it could just be and expensive way for a lot of people to reach the same solution. We wait to see what freedoms there will be on transmissions, dampers, brakes and tyres. Hopefully all these will be free making open aero development worthwhile. If they are not – then there will be little point in doing anything other than buying a ready made Dallara adapted to whatever engine you pick.
