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Originally Posted by Paradise City
Well, I don't believe the mantra, encouraged by some chasis-makers, that you can't have a cheap multi-chasis formula.
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You can have a cheap multi-chassis formula, but only if it's lower-scale. Even international Formula 3 which has hundreds of customers is a spec chassis at the top end now. There's nothing stopping anyone from making a base F3 chassis, but no does because no one is going to be spending that amount of money just to be ensured you're losing. If you're going to spend $750k for an F3 program, aren't you going to demand you're in the best car? That's true even in sportscars kind of. If you want to win Le Mans and are only going to field a car if you think you can win, why would ever buy something like a Lola?
You see multiple chassis in something like USAC for example where you can have 5 or 6 in a 20-car race, but that's a lower technical requirement to build a car than an Indycar and far less cost as well (plus a larger potential customer base). If you want more people building cars, you cheapen the cost required to build the car and "dumb down" the technology while increasing their customers. I don't know of many companies in the world that can make a profit building a high-quality chassis capable of winning races only having 4 or 5 customers unless they're just doing racing because it's a heavy marketing vehicle: Audi at Le Mans, F1 teams, but Random Indycar Chassis Builder is not going to get the money or publicity those do. We live in a world where mass production rules the day because it is cheaper to make 1000 of a product than to make 10 because you can amortize costs required for production (overhead, employees, tooling, testing) over a larger number of items.
I actually considered this at one point building an aerokit. I'm a regular guy, I'm not rich, but I'm an engineer, and I've done a bit of racecar design before for a guy before. So after I pour my life savings into this and work hard with my own limitations, someone like Dennis Reinbold or Kevin Kalkhoven is going to come take a chance on my chassis that may be a complete failure? Which does not only hurt me, but hurts them in the future getting capable drivers and sponsors which if they don't have either the team could cease to exist? This is what is happening with the Lotus engine in Indycar right now.
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It's not to knock Bernard but I never bought into the sassy corporate logic about Indycar needing a 'non-racing guy' as CEO.
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They needed someone that wasn't connected to anyone in the series, be it Indycar leadership or any of the owners.
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Someone who knows the stakeholders, has a business brain and has the constitution to tough it out with them was what needed.
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Bernard's been the best guy in charge of a major open wheel racing series in the U.S. since prior to the USAC-CART split in 1979. And it's really not even much of a debate on that point. CART's CEOs were notoriously out of depth (Heitzler et al), bought off to influence only a couple owners (Andrew Craig et al), or just outright failures (Paul Gentilozzi et al), and for the IRL pre-Bernard you have Tony George.