IndyCar’s next engine formula will make its debut in 2021. The definitive date has been set after an option to move the introduction forward one season to 2020 passed without being triggered.
RACER has learned the option for a 2020 debut, which was agreed upon by Chevy and Honda, would have been put in motion if a third engine supplier had signed on earlier this year.
With the deadline having recently expired, the Verizon IndyCar Series, its current engine partners – and any new manufacturers that might arrive in the near future – will plan towards 2021 for outfitting the field with motors that conform to a new set of regulations. A tentative revealing of the 2021 engine rules could take place in May at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
While little is known about the finer details of the next-generation powerplants, the same general concept of small-displacement internal combustion engines using turbochargers as the sole power adders is expected to be confirmed.
The use of hybrid-electric technology is not part of the plan, as Chevy Racing boss Mark Kent recently told RACER, and it’s believed the same twin-turbo V6 formula, with modifications to the current 2.2-liter capacity limit, will be retained. Rumors of a switch to CART-style turbo V8 engines appear to be unfounded.
Of particular interest with the forthcoming rules is how IndyCar will allow its manufacturers increase today’s estimated maximum horsepower figure of 750 to something at or above the 900hp IndyCar competition president Jay Frye is openly seeking.
The Verizon IndyCar Series and its team owners will gather this summer and vote on whether a replacement for the Dallara DW12 chassis will happen in 2021 or 2022. RACER has learned the existing plan to roll out a new car to start the 2021 season has been paused as the possibility of extending the DW12's lifespan through 2021 is evaluated.
Beyond selecting 2021 or 2022 to bring a new chassis online, the group is also expected to decide on whether the new car will be produced by a single constructor like Dallara, or if multiple chassis manufacturers will be welcomed into the series.
On the topic of dates, it's believed the costs associated with moving to the new 2021 engine have reopened the subject of whether keeping the DW12 through 2021 would ease the financial burden on the paddock. With IndyCar asking Chevy, Honda, and any new engine suppliers to hit a target of 900hp – a 20 percent hike from the 750hp or so in play this season – an increase in the annual lease pricing could also be part of the 2021 engine package.
To ensure both installation options exist, IndyCar's engine manufacturers have been told the 2021 motors must use the same exact chassis mounting locations found on the current 2.2-liter powerplants. If the series keeps the DW12 for 2021, the new motors would plug into the old chassis without modifications. And if a new chassis is employed in 2021, part of its design requirements will be to carry over the DW12's engine attachment points.
With this approach, the 2012-2020 engines and 2021 engines will easily fit in the DW12 and whatever the new chassis is called.
Another interesting twist could involve the reintroduction of multiple chassis suppliers to IndyCar. Of the other possibilities in play, if IndyCar finds itself with the same two engine manufacturers when the new chassis formula is finalized, the odds of sticking with a spec supplier are said to be high.
If a third manufacturer joins Chevy and Honda beforehand, inviting multiple chassis suppliers to participate in the 2021/2022 production plan could be embraced. It's understood the approach taken by the FIA World Endurance Championship with its LMP2 formula in 2017 has also piqued IndyCar's interest.
With the WEC's new P2 formula, multiple chassis suppliers were nominated to build cars using strict design guidelines established by the series. Of the four chosen firms, Dallara and a pair of French companies – Ligier and ORECA – have found success and sold quite a few cars that look slightly different and possess unique performance traits.
Whether the WEC P2 design and construction model would be adopted by IndyCar is unknown, but an interest in using more than one chassis supplier if three engine manufacturers are involved is good news for those who are keen to see the spec chassis formula disappear.
IndyCar competition president Jay Frye professed his pleasure with Monday’s test of the series’ windscreen at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden conducted multiple runs in his No. 1 Chevy, and despite overcoming a couple of issues, his best lap of 224mph as 6 p.m. approached would suggest the reigning champion adjusted to the challenge.
“It was a good day, and we can learn from everything that Josef told us to make improvements the next time we test the windscreen, which will be on a road course,” Frye told RACER. “Probably the biggest thing we learned was about helmet visors and how those affect the driver’s view in interacting with the windscreen.”
Newgarden started his run with a darker, smoked visor in place, and struggled to see through the windscreen as the sun started falling behind the grandstands on the front straight. A move to a clear visor was a significant improvement, but the Tennessean still had a few complaints about being unable to see clearly through the windscreen at every angle while tracking through the corners.
A final change which removed all of the tearoffs from the windscreen was tried just as Newgarden was sent out for his final run where the 224mph lap was set.
Newgarden faced one other issue which cropped up on his first lap. With the windscreen diverting air over the top lip of the Opticor canopy material, an eddying effect is created that swirls backwards behind the driver’s helmet.
The series incorporated a NACA duct at the trailing edge of the shock cover that feeds a hose leading into the cockpit to apply pressure to the front of the helmet, and as the Penske driver noted, the angle of the hose was slightly off, which meant his helmet initially was being pushed forward and down as the eddying won the tug of war. Quick adjustments overcame the issue and allowed Newgarden to resume his testing.
“We went to the bigger NACA duct, which helped but the angle was off inside the car so that was addressed, and we’ve had a lot of helmet manufacturers wanting to get plugged in to what we’re doing, and I think that’s where a lot of progress is going to be made,” Frye added.
“Now we’re getting a better feel for what type of visors are best for working with the windscreen, and that’s where we’ll have more development going as we do more testing.”
On Tuesday, Frye also confirmed the windscreens will not be introduced for competition in 2018. The first opportunity for full-time use would come in 2019.
Nakon teskog udesa i povrede Pjetra Fitipaldija tokom WEC vikenda na Spa, iz ekipe DCR javljaju da ce ga na VN Idijanapolisa menjati Zak Klaman de Melo, koji i inace deli bolid #19 sa Fitipaldijem.
Za nastup na Indi 500 se i dalje trazi adekvatna zamena.
Fittipaldi starts injury recovery, aims for Mid-Ohio IndyCar return
By David Malsher
Published on Wednesday May 9th 2018
Pietro Fittipaldi will leave hospital in Belgium this week to head to Indianapolis to be treated by IndyCar's leading doctors, as he targets a late-July comeback at Mid-Ohio.
Fittipaldi suffered a compound fracture of the left leg and a broken right ankle in a high-speed crash at Spa's Eau Rouge last week when competing in the World Endurance Championship season-opener with the DragonSpeed LMP1 team.
The grandson of two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Emerson is sharing the second Dale Coyne Racing Indycar with Indy Lights graduate Zachary Claman de Melo, and a replacement for Fittipaldi during his layoff has yet to be confirmed.
The ride-share means that he will only miss the Indy road course race, the Indy 500 and the Texas oval, providing he can make his comeback at Mid-Ohio.
Fittipaldi's recovery will now be overseen by doctor Terry Trammell, IndyCar's safety consultant, and former CART doctor Steve Olvey.
"I'm better now, I've had a really big scare, but I've recovered a lot and this Friday I'm going to Indianapolis, where I'll be with Indy doctors Terry Trammell and Steve Olvey," said Fittipaldi.
"They have already taken care of Nelson Piquet, Tony Kanaan, my grandfather, Dario Franchitti, etc.
"The doctors in the United States have seen the photos from my surgery and the x-rays, so they think my recovery will be faster than we were predicting before.
"My goal is to be driving a car in eight weeks and if possible compete in Mid-Ohio [July 29]."
Fittipaldi explained he was driving at over 150mph when he lost control of the car.
"The car just shut off the entire hydraulic system from the steering wheel and it got hard, so I could not turn," he said.
"I was above 250km/h [155mph] and tried to brake, but unfortunately, it wasn't possible to slow down and the car went straight on into the wall."
The Verizon IndyCar Series’ new car-mounted digital displays will not be used for the month of May.
Teams have been instructed to remove the SPAA05 panels from the roll hoop fairings and the associated loom and control box from each entry for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and Indy 500 due to widespread issues that were experienced with the panel hardware during recent Speedway tests.
The Holland-based SPAA05 firm is expected to address the problems and, provided a suitable solution is found, return the panels to IndyCar for possible use at next month’s street race in Detroit.
With a shallow indent built into the roll hoop fairings to make the panels semi-flush, teams have been told to fill the indent with a flat piece of material—most likely carbon fiber—and to add the car’s number to the panel.
Image by Joe Skibinski/IMS Photo
When functioning properly, IndyCar used the new panels to display a variety of stored images, car numbers, the duration of a pit stop and other interesting items for fans to follow.
In preseason testing, some teams, including Team Penske, ran without the electronic panels and used static numbers of their own design to achieve IndyCar’s mandate.
- U ostalim vestima, Klaman de Melo potvrdjen za VN Indijanapolisa kao zamena za povredjenog Fitipaldija u DCR #19 bolidu (jos se ceka ko ce da ga menja za Indi 500). Takodje, Alfonso Celis nekadasnji test vozac Fors Indije u F1 vozice za Junkos Rejsing na Elkart Lejku (trka se vozi 24. juna). On ce se tako pridruziti Kajlu Kajzeru i Reneu Binderu u bolidu #32 cime ce broj trka za Junkos u njihovoj debitantskoj sezoni da poraste na 11.
Will Power saw off a late challenge from Robert Wickens to claim pole for tomorrow’s IndyCar Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
Wickens was sitting at the top of the timesheets in the final couple of minutes before Power reeled off a 1m09.8182 on scuffed reds to bump him to the outside of the front row. Wickens had just enough time to summon a response, but ultimately fell just 0.08s short. It’s Power’s 51st career pole.
“We did have to dig deep,” the Team Penske driver admitted. “That was everything I had. We made a downforce adjustment after the first round when we saw how fast the other guys were and got pretty close, and then on used tires the car was really good. I’m stoked.”
Wickens was disappointed at falling short, and put much of the blame on himself.
“I’m a bit gutted with P2,” he admitted. “Great for a front row, but when you lead the whole quali, you want to finish the job. It wasn’t the tidiest lap on the used reds there; wasn’t that smooth from me. I’m just happy to be back in the Fast Six because the last time I did it was at St Pete. Tomorrow’s a new can of worms so let’s go and play.”
His performance was the cherry on top of a successful afternoon for the Schmidt team, with James Hinchcliffe joining him in the Fast Six and putting the No.5 car fourth on tomorrow’s starting grid. Struggles during second practice had prompted Hinchcliffe to borrow Wickens’ set-up ahead of qualifying – a reversal of a similar exchange between the pair at Long Beach – and this, he insisted, was what made the difference.
“It was a bad day to have a bad day with the compressed schedule, and we had a really bad practice,” he said. “Lucky we’ve got a solid teammate in Robbie and we were really leaning on him. Just really proud of the whole team.”
Sandwiched in between the two SPM cars was Sebastien Bourdais, who will start from third but believes the car was capable of better.
“I didn’t [maximize the reds],” he shrugged. “The only really good run was in Q1. I made a mess of Q2; barely made it [through], then in Q3 I had a good run but made a small mistake on that last lap and that cost us dearly. Good job to the boys for giving me a car good enough for pole, but I didn’t quite extract everything out of it.”
Jordan King served up one of the big surprises of the day, not just by planting his ECR car fifth on the grid, but through the manner in which he did it. Brake problems relegated him to pit lane for all but the final two minutes of the first segment, and after some quick repair work, he made it out of pit lane on a set of reds with just enough left on the clock for one flying lap, and used it to comfortably book himself a place in segment two.
Reigning series champion Josef Newgarden rounded out the Fast Six, leaving a lot of other big names facing the prospect of a Saturday spent passing their way up to the front. Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud was among them, although the Frenchman was encouraged by what he hopes was the first hint of a breakthrough in his comfort level with the 2018 aero.
“I have struggled with this car a lot, with the feeling of it,” he said. “The team brought me what I needed this weekend but I’d lost so much confidence in my ability… [But now] I’m very positive for the rest of the season. I think we’ve found what I need, and that gives me a smile.”
Things were less smiley in the Andretti garage. Alexander Rossi was the team’s strongest qualifier, but he said that eighth was rather less than he’d hoped for.
“I think we just missed it, which is disappointing,” he said. “We were in the top three for both sessions. We expected a lot more, so we’ll have to figure it out. You can pass pretty easily here so I’m not worried about that, but it’s just disappointing.”
At one point Rossi looked in danger of not even transferring into the second round when teammate Marco Andretti started putting a lap together in the final moments of the first segment while Rossi was sitting on the bubble, but he ended up securing passage through by a scant 0.1s.
“I needed to do what we just did,” Andretti said. “I don’t want to start 14th in these races, but to know that we were just outside the top six hurts. You go through your head and think of things you could have done, but… I think we just practiced better than we qualified.”
He’ll be in familiar company on the seventh row, with teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay starting alongside in P13.
“Been struggling with the balance all day,” said Hunter-Reay. “Unfortunately we just missed out. The two cars in front of us were 0.02s quicker. It is what it is; we’ll have to come through tomorrow.”
Perhaps the biggest shock was Ganassi, with Ed Jones and Scott Dixon lining up 15th and 18th, respectively. The problem, Dixon said, was a cocktail of handling problems compounded by the warm temperatures.
“This morning in the cooler conditions the car wasn’t too bad so we took a pretty big swing at it,” he said. “Ed and I have the same thing, the car just doesn’t have any speed. It feels like it’s on top of the [track] surface. We took a big swing at it but we’re not even close to where we should be. Even at the test here we struggled to make the front tires work, and today with the heat seems to make it a little bit worse for us than for others.”
Equally disappointed was Graham Rahal, who will line up alongside Dixon in 17th after making a mistake on his best lap in the opening phase.
“I’m really upset,” he said. “We continuously make our jobs harder than we have to. I’m really mad. We locked the right front so bad that I never stood a chance. Probably should have come into pitlane and tried to swap them out. We haven’t had great pace, but certainly we’re a lot better than that.”
Elsewhere, Helio Castroneves will start the first half of his month of May cameo in P10.
“We did a lot of adjustments in one session and took a chance, but unfortunately it wasn’t the right direction,” he said. “Starting in the top 10 is not that bad – we’ve started ninth and finished on the podium here before.”
