Cart to dump pit windows for good!

[Jay]

Cart press release:

INDIANAPOLIS (April 24, 2003) – Less than one week after the Franchise Board of the CART Champ Car World Series voted to add more flexibility to its rule-making process, the owners and management of the series combined Monday to ratify a number of positive rule enhancements that will carry the open-wheel series through the remainder of 2003 and well beyond.

The Franchise Board accepted CART Champ Car management proposals for changes designed to enhance competition, which will go into effect with the May 31 Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford event at Milwaukee, and includes a measure that eliminates the mandatory pit window rule that was enacted last season. The rule, which stated that cars must pit within a specific number of laps, was put into place in 2002 in order to eliminate fuel-economy racing – a factor that was in large part resolved by the addition of new ECU systems in the Ford-Cosworth XFE engines. CART Champ Car management maintains the ability to use the pit-window rule on oval tracks of over 1.5 miles in length – a mandate that helped promote tight racing on the larger ovals in 2002.

In a move intended to provide fans the opportunity to follow thrilling races to the checkered flag, late-race restarts will have a different look beginning in Milwaukee. A ‘move-over’ rule will go into effect during the last 10 laps of a race, giving the Chief Steward the ability to send all lapped cars to the end of the restart line, giving the lead cars the chance to battle each other without having to negotiate lapped traffic.

The Franchise Board also showed its support of management initiatives in a number of new rules that will be phased in over the next three seasons – rules that should go a long way toward ensuring the continued success of the series by allowing teams to get more use from their sponsorship dollars. Many of the new rules were targeted at reducing the expenses incurred by teams on race weekends and addressed concerns over team rosters and the maintenance of race-ready spare cars.

“The changes voted on today allow Champ Car teams to better maximize their operations without detracting from the technical aspects of the car or taking away from the exciting racing,” said CART Champ Car Vice-President of Operations John Lopes. “We were able to identify budgetary areas where teams could make better use of their resources, and these moves will go a long way toward ensuring what should be an exciting future for the series.”

The teams will also designate a primary car, which will go through technical inspection Thursday afternoon, and will not be allowed to run a spare car unless the primary car is damaged beyond repair, as determined by the Champ Car Stewards. If the car is damaged before qualifying, the spare car may be used without penalty. If the spare car is needed at any time after qualifying is completed, the car will start the race at the rear of the field, regardless of where the team qualified. The spare cars, will be available for the fans in the paddock to view them, a hallmark of Champ Car’s fans-first approach. The spare car rule will go into effect beginning with the event in Milwaukee.

In addressing 2004, CART Champ Car will take a page from other major sports such as the NFL and the NHL and fix the number of personnel that teams can carry on their rosters. Teams will file a roster of 15 working crew members per car to take to events, not to include marketing and public-relations personnel. In addition, Champ Car will freeze all aerodynamic specifications and components as of May 20, 2003, locking those specifications in for 2003 and 2004.

This move also eliminates chassis update kits but allows management to study any necessary moves toward creating parity among the competing chassis manufacturers, enhancing value for the sponsors, teams and fans. The rules for 2004 will also eliminate the third shock and mandates the use of a mechanical differential only. For 2005, Champ Car management got the green light from the Board to review and study the next generation of engines and chassis, including adaptations to gearboxes, data-logging systems, mechanical differentials and braking systems, and will be giving its recommendations to the Franchise Board in the near future.

[racefanatic]

YES!!!!!!!! That's the best news I've heard all day! The spare car thing sounds Like an IRL rule though...

[Kicking-back]

Originally posted by racefanatic
YES!!!!!!!! That's the best news I've heard all day! The spare car thing sounds Like an IRL rule though...

They have the spare car rule in F1 also

[Lee Janotta]

Yay.

[Flatspot]

All good moves!

[Muzza]

Originally posted by Jay
Cart press release:
In addressing 2004, CART Champ Car will take a page from other major sports such as the NFL and the NHL and fix the number of personnel that teams can carry on their rosters. Teams will file a roster of 15 working crew members per car to take to events, not to include marketing and public-relations personnel. In addition, Champ Car will freeze all aerodynamic specifications and components as of May 20, 2003, locking those specifications in for 2003 and 2004.

I sense that this measure is being implemented not only to reduce operating costs of teams already in the championship, but specifically to make CART yet more attractive to F-3000 scuderie.

F-3000 is dying and Pook wants to grab as much of it as possible.

Cost-cutting and competitivity-increase measures introduced by Max Mosley to the Formula 1 rulebook are going to make more attractive (or less painful..) to F3000 teams to make the jump to the so-called pinnacle of motorsport, hence CART management has to raise its game if it wants to lure F-3000 refugees to cross the pond.

[Crash Test]

Remember why they brought in the pit window rules? A car that started near the back would pit at every opportunity in the opening stages, and have a big economy run at the end, winning without passing any cars on the track. Then again, the new rules bring contrived races... so I suppose we are better off having some back markers taking home the silverware

[Snrub]

Remember when they use to line up the cars in the correct order before going green again? That really sucked, they spent half the race playing traffic cop.

Freezing aero componenets kind of sucks. It's not right that teams are stuck with an inferrior Reynard chasis. You could probably argue that Lola would still develop faster. IMO Pook needs to allow Reynard to make some changes to bring them closer to Lola. Obviously that's hard to do because it wouldn't be fair to say "guess what now Reynards are faster than Lolas." Take it too far and things aren't fair.

[StuiE]

Yep, all the new rules sound good to me, hopefully it will give us some better racing

I thought that Reynard was allowed some sort of update package for mid-season or something?

[Russfeld]

If they're dropping the fuel window entirely, why the bizarre rules at Brands? Either keep it the way it is until you drop them, or drop them early.

[Jay]

They're not dropping it completely actually. They may still have it for some oval events such as Germany, Fontana and Milwaukee. That said, I think they view Rockingham as a "roval" thus they feel these rules will help competition somehow. I don't agree, but there's my attempt to explain it.

[NGS]

Yay.

[Flatspot]

Originally posted by Russfeld
If they're dropping the fuel window entirely, why the bizarre rules at Brands? Either keep it the way it is until you drop them, or drop them early.

I agree that this seems a little strange to go about things this way. Perhaps this is a test for possible use next season that is something between the mandatory pit windows of the past and no pit windows at all as they will run on the balance of the street and road courses.

As such, it would make sense to do it at Brands as none of the teams have experience on this course and are therefore less likely to corrupt the test results.

[shurikus]

just one stupid question
why these mandatory pit windows are still alive?

[gttouring]

All good moves-The team roster idea is fab- beating NASCAR to the punch. NASCAR already has every crew member wear their names on the back of their suits so this is a move to make it a team sport more or less. like "oh no mr.X lost the crew chieef job and now he is on the Mi-jack team they will certainly improve" similar to how F1 recognises team principles and technical directors...
this is good but Perhaos they should allow Falcon to adapt their chassis to allow a number 3 manufacturer

[Lee Janotta]

That stillborn crapwagon? They'd have to basically start with a clean-sheet approach. And that'd just be more money to spend, which is the absolutely last thing CART can do right now.

[gttouring]

well let falcon deal with it, i am sure they'd be happy to if they were allowed to join the series.
and let a few teams test it, or runa second car in the race.
I don't see how it'd be so tough after all just a carbon mod on the rear panels and the majority of windtunnel tests are done.

[macdaddy]

That article Jay posted to begin this thread was from last April. I think Jay was trying to point out the fact that there weren't supposed to be any pit windows at all by this stage of the season.

[shurikus]

macdaddy, but is it "Cart press release"? i couldn't found it even at cart.com

[macdaddy]

http://www.cart.com/News/Article.asp?ID=5878

[Jay]

That was before the Brands disaster, a race without pitwindows (for all practical purposes) that turned into a parade because everyone was in conservation mode.

[Russfeld]

Cleveland was a parade too