Time to try something else to slow cars?

[Dave S]

Tracy stated that during his fast lap he was doing 248 at the end of the back straight! He also said it's time to slow the cars down some. Are they using the Hanford devise this weekend? It's not a solution though, due to the horrible turbulance they create. I'm not sure how I feel about the restrictor plates in disscusion now either. I just know I don't want to see CART go to the normally asperated engines ala IRL. I just can't get excited about the sound of the things. What do you all think should be done?

[Liz]

Hire more slow pilotes? Perhaps the problem is that our guys are TOO GOOD! Now's the time to drag up all those American blokes who can't get drives - nobody allowed to race on the SuperSpeedway unless he is MORE than 107% slower than Montoya's best lap of the day.

Personally I don't want them slowed down. I want them to go faster.

[Crash Test]

"I want them to go faster"
-They can make them go faster, but they can't improve the safety at the same rate. If they were making such massive gains in safety, shoot, go for it, no problems. But the problem is that the human body is still the softest part of the race car, and which is coincidently the most valuable. Who cares if the engine blows up, people care when the drivers get blown up. Now unless these race drivers have envolved to a stage where they can absorb hits at 250mph, then thats good for them.

I just thought that motorsport would have learnt a little lesson over the past 12 months...

[Heeltoe6]

CART has to stop dreaming about unification and go to the 1.8L turbo

[Liz]

CART has got to stop spending so much time worrying. Motor sport is not going to be made "safe" no matter what they do, and as long as the pilotes are happy with it the way it is, I say leave it the heck alone. If THEY are making complaints about how fast it's getting, then it's time to listen, as their lives are the ones on the line. Not unlike what happened in F1, when safety was nobody's concern until the pilotes started making it an issue.

People in this day and age spend entirely too much time worrying about which of their daily activities is going to kill them first. I wish people would think half as much about LIVING as they do about DYING.

[Jay]

Tracy eclipsed 238 for average speed today in the morning practice.

One thing that should be noted about these times is that they are in practice and therefore do not count as records. Lap records may only be set in quali or race. The drivers rarely set records in the race, so it would be done in quali, where they do not have the opportunity to pick up a tow. I wonder if these speeds will be just as high when the drivers do not have a tow to work with.

On the speed note, if you hit a wall, the energy that must be dissipated is equal to the mass of the car times the velocity squared. That means that for every kph faster that the car is travelling, the energy increases exponentially.

However despite the exponential increases, if you hit the wall head on at only 200 mph versus 220, you're still going to be in little pieces, and unlikely to walkaway.

That is why I say get rid of the superspeedways! They are an unnecessary risk, and now that the teams have figured out the hanford device, the racing will not be exciting anymore.

[Crash Test]

Liz: Remember back to last year, we lost 2 drivers...i think im fairly certain in saying that everyone agrees that was terrible. the faster they go, the more chance there us that some thing will go wrong, the less chance the driver will have time to react.

Yes we have lost drivers at slow speeds lately, but if you can make it safe at the fast end of the scale, it should hopefully be safer at the slow end of the scale.

[Liz]

Yes, I agree that it is terrible when people get killed. But in fact I was nearly hit by a flying tire as I walked to church on Easter Sunday morning - and I have not stopped going to church or started agitating for the road to be closed.

The only thing that happens when you pass laws to slow the cars down is that the teams go to work to find ways to evade those laws, as Tracy's lap record of today proves. The only way you are going to slow those cars down for good is to forbid anyone to drive them, park them in a museum, and be done with it.

[Crash Test]

Well i guess a bit of the difference between a Champ car crashing and being skittled by a tire outside church is that is inevitable that there are going to be crashes.

They could slow the cars down to an acceptable level, change the engines, do what ever, why not drop Franklin/Franklin R/Franklin Ratlif a line

[Jay]

According to Paul Tracy there will not be much passing during the race. If it turns out to be a train, then I think they should make changes for closer racing.

But, as I said it would be better if they just got rid of it altogether.

[floid2000]

I'm with you Liz.. If the drivers are happy with the speeds I'm all for going faster.

[Heeltoe6]

"According to Paul Tracy there will not be much passing during the race."

This must have been one of the few times Paul Tracy was wrong

[enzo]

Personally, I'm not in favo of either reducing power, or of reducing grip via downforce reductions.

A really simple way to slow the cars & not affect the grip much would be to "spoil" the sleekness of the bodywork by requiring small appendages that create localised turbulance at the body surface. This approach would not have the same effect as the Handford Device, which just has the effect of ruining the rear wing effectiveness & creating a lot of turbulance behind the car. Done properly, the car would still have the same grip, but it would just go slower due to the excess drag.

I'd hate to see the cars reduced to the level of the IRL cars.

[Dave S]

as long as the pilotes are happy with it the way it is, I say leave it the heck alone.

Well that seems to be the point Liz. Tracy at least isn't happy with the speeds. I'm curious about how the other pilotes feel. Has anyone come across any other comments, aside from Rahal's stated goal to slow the cars down by 200 HP? I realize that you can't go overboard unless you want to be the IRL, & that would turn me completely off of CART. I guess the trick is to atain the most safety that you can without detracting from what made it interesting to start with. I also agree that CART should remain the fastest closed circuit series in the world.

[Jared]

Why not put the larger, road course-style wings on, like the Indy Lights do? It would add a ton of downforce and slow the cars down a good 20 mph. It would also make the race better, IMO. It wouldn't be an Indy Lights-style race, as the cars are not as equal, but would improve the spectacle even more than the Handford Device has. The only drawback I can see is that the added drag would be hell on an engine for 500 miles.

[Jared]

And Liz, what do you mean about speeding those Americans up? One nearly won the whole race, and another stormed through the field once, without a weight jacker, and ended up scoring more points in his one race with the team than the more celebrated European-trained rent-a-rider.

It's not that the Americans are slow. They just don't have the funding behind them like Euro, S. American and Canadian drivers do.

[Crash Test]

"It would also make the race better, IMO."
-Really? Which race did you watch on the weekend?

[Jared]

Actually, I watched the CART race, the NASCAR race, the ALMS race, among others. I KNOW the CART race was great, it was the best race of the year and perhaps one of the best races ever. All I'm saying is that my proposal might make the racing BETTER.

[Crash Test]

"All I'm saying is that my proposal might make the racing BETTER."

-Gees, do we want it any better?? There was so much going on as it was...

How about MY proposal: Ban it from raining on race weekends