Quote:
Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith
CART never raced at Iowa, so making a comparison with this weekend's race is very difficult. The shortest oval on the CART calendar was Nazareth, from from 1987 to 2001. It was 0.946 miles / 1.522 km, compared to Iowa at 0.894 miles - 1.408 km and the track layout is quite different.
As for field sizes, take 1996, '98 and 2001 all good years, the field was 26, 26 and 25 cars respectively.
To say CART teams would buy last year's chassis, a junk engine and go "racing.", is somewhat of a sweeping and inaccurate statement. It's actually more applicable to Champ Car and IRL teams, as chassis and engine development was non existent.
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Multiple CART, as in the old USAC sanctioned series running Indy cars or Champ cars depending on your nomenclature preference, teams at the back of the field would buy previous teams cars and race. There were a mix of older cars and old F1 cars over the years so no it's not a general statement. It's a statement of facts from the past. It was generally field fillers and small teams but many of the cars of the 80s and early 90s were developed all season making last year's car obsolete and cars weren't saved back then. Move on and build a new one, sell the old one if someone wanted it and you could always find old Buick and Offy options to race.
I was not comparing the field AT Iowa to what would have run at Iowa in the past but car count to car count outside of a major race. Everything but the 500 would have been happy with a consistent 20-25 teams with a good dozen options to win with a great setup call. So to think 22 is a paltry field is just not accurate for what racing every was, never mind modern racing.