IndyCar Series, Go Uri! Opciones

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Luego de varios años de desavenencias que provocaron la división de el más importante campeonato de monoplazas estadounidense, finalmente se llegó a un acuerdo para fusionar este año la Champ Car a la Indy Racing League (IRL), acuerdo en el que sin duda se beneficiaran los aficionados a estos bólidos.


Los dirigentes de las series de automovilismo de monoplazas estadounidenses Indy Racing League (IRL) y Champ Car anunciaron un acuerdo para fusionar ambos circuitos con vistas a la temporada 2008, 12 años después de haberse separado.


Video: Rueda de prensa de la unificación 27/02/08

El acuerdo se encamina a incorporar tres carreras de la Champ Car al itinerario original de la IRL, que contaba con 16 pruebas, con los grandes premios de Long Beach en California, Surfers Paradise en Australia y Edmonton en Canadá. El resto del calendario de Champ Car fue cancelado. A comienzos de la década de 1990, la serie CART, que luego cambió de nombre a Champ Car, era un destino habitual para pilotos europeos y sudamericanos, y tenía gran respaldo de los aficionados.

La CART fue fundada en noviembre de 1978 por Roger Penske, Pat Patrick, Dan Gurney y otra serie de dueños de escuderías.

La IRL comenzó a operar en 1996, con intención de dar espacio a los jóvenes pilotos estadounidenses, y CART tomó su propio rumbo hasta que se declaró en bancarrota en enero de 2004.

George realizó la mejor oferta por las acciones de CART, pero un juez se las otorgó a Kalkhoven, Forsythe y Paul Gentilozzi porque el comprador había mostrado intenciones de clausurar la serie, lo que hubiera dejado a muchas personas desempleadas.



Monoplaza.

Los coches de las series IndyCar son monoplazas de al menos 1525 libras de peso y 192 pulgadas de longitud, con chasis monocasco y construidos con fibra de carbono y composite. Son coches con cambio de 6 velocidades secuanciales por palanca (no por levas) y sin dirección asistida.
Los equipos pueden elegir entre 2 modelos de distintos fabricantes, bien sean los italianos Dallara o los americanos Panoz.





El Motor de 3.5 litros V8 turboalimentados desarrollados por Honda (y construidos por Ilmor Engineering, compañía constructora de los motores Mercedes-Benz en F1 hasta 2005), capaces de transmitir más de 650 CV usando como combustible Etanol-Metanol.







Los neumáticos son gomas son slick, con una grosor de la goma como el deaproximadamente 2.5 milímetros de espesor. Las dimensiones son 25.8 las delanteras pudiendo llegar hasta las 28 en las ruedas traseras. Los anchos: 28 centímetros alante y 38 atrás.

Cada piloto dispone segun el tipo de circuitode 8 sets para Urbano/permanente y 7 sets para Ovales. En Indy 500 dispone de 35 sets.



Street Tire / Race Tire



Hay dos tipos de Frenos dependiendo de si corren en un óvalo o en un circuito urbano. En el caso del óvalo, los frenos son de carbono con cuatro pistones, y son más bien pequeños. En el caso del circuito urbano, los discos son de acero, más grandes y de 6 pistones.









IndyCar Series. Puntuación.

1st - 50
2nd - 40
3rd - 35
4th - 32
5th - 30
6th - 28
7th - 26
8th - 24
9th - 22
10th - 20
11th - 19
12th - 18
13th - 17
14th - 16
15th - 15
16th - 14
17th - 13
18th>24th - 12
25th>33th - 10


Se otorgan 3 puntos extras a aquel piloto que consiga el mayor número de vueltas en cabeza durante la carrera.


Repostajes.



Las paradas en boxes son también obligatorias en las IndyCar Series. Sin embargo, no se podrán realizar cuando la condición de la pista esté en "peligro", es decir, haya banderas amarillas y un coche de seguridad en el circuito, salvo que el dirigente de la carrera de la orden de "Pits Open". Todo aquel que haga una parada en esta situación será penalizado.

En una parada de boxes podemos encontrar a 11 mecánicos. 4 se encargarán de sustituir las ruedas, 2 de ayudarles, uno sujetará el "chupete" o cartel de indicación de estado, 1 del respostaje junto a su ayudante y 1 mecánico se encargará de elevar el coche.
El último, quizás el más curioso, es el que hace de "apagafuegos". Tras un respotaje, una vez retirada la manguera, él inyectará un chorro de agua sobre la boca del depósito para aplacar las posibles llamas. Recordemos que el metanol se apaga con agua y su llama es completamente invisible (de ahí que se realice siempre este procedimiento, tanto si hay llama o no).


El Volante

1. OVERTAKE BUTTON: Changes the fuel map to 100 percent rich for a set amount of time, allowing the engine to produce the extra power needed to complete a pass or hold off another driver.

2. PI DASH: Displays warning lights and information the driver needs during the race. That information includes lap times, oil, water and gearbox temperatures and fuel mileage.

3. RPM SHIFT LIGHTS: LED lights that go from green to red and indicate engine RPM. When the red lights are on the driver shifts gears.

4. PIT LANE SPEED LIMITER: Used on pit lane by the driver to activate the engine control program limiting the cars speed to the pit lane speed limit, which is usually 60 miles per hour.

5. PULL-TO-TALK (BEHIND THE CARBON): Activates the microphone in the drivers helmet so he can communicate over the radio.

6. RESET: Used during the race. During a pit stop the driver pushes this button to reset the fuel reading on his display.

7. FUEL MAP SWITCH: Allows the driver to adjust the fuel mapping of the engine to increase fuel mileage or to increase power. There are a number of settings available including full rich, where the engine produces maximum power but uses more fuel. There is also a lean setting which uses less fuel but produces less power. During caution periods the drivers will switch to the leanest mixture to increase fuel economy.

8. DASH SCROLL: Allows the driver to scroll through the different pages available on the dash board, including the race page, qualifying page and practice page.

9. WEIGHT JACKER: Adjusts the cross weight on the car from left to right. The weight jacker allows the driver to make fine-tuning adjustments as the car begins to handle differently during the race.

10. DRINK (BEHIND THE CARBON): Allows the driver to get a drink of water during the race. It activates a pump connected to a water bottle on the car which pumps water through a hose installed in the drivers helmet.

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INDY 500: Rookie Quality and Quantity at ROP





It's the largest rookie crop since 1997 but there's as much quality as there is quantity in Gasoline Alley, and it showed Sunday afternoon. A dozen drivers let's label them first-timers instead of rookies completed 642 error-free laps at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on an opening day that saw 10 of them breeze through their four-phase driving test.

The daunting oval that's shaped the landscape of American motorsports for nearly 100 years offered no surprises or horror stories on a mild, sunny day.

"Surprisingly, I wasn't nervous at all," said 19-year-old Graham Rahal after taking only 34 laps to complete his test with a top lap of 218 mph. "I think if you get yourself all worked up about it, you get really nervous and then you makes mistakes.

"Obviously, it's great to get this ROP out of the way and I guess I didn't expect to go as fast as we did right away. But I'm a rookie so I don't know what to expect."

Teammates Will Power and Oriol Servia, who logged almost 100 laps apiece and topped 220 mph for the KV Racing entries, had different


"Man, it's a scary place at first and going into the corners off those long straightaways it's really fast," said Power, the recent winner at Long Beach who posted the fastest lap at 220.694 mph. "I kept thinking, how do you get around this place flat?

"I was thrilled we were finally able to get to that point (flat out) near the end of the day but getting those next five-six mph is probably going to be the challenge. You've just got to be smart and you don't want this place to bite you."

It's actually Servia's second time at IMS. He tried to make the show at the last minute in 2002 and was running quick enough but broke a fuel pump.

"It's definitely going to be fun having the whole month to work with the car and try to get competitive," said the 32-year-old veteran from Spain. "I've been racing over here for 10 years and never had a real shot at Indy so I'm very excited. This place is all about getting into a rhythm and today was a good way to start. But this is like no other oval you ever see."


E.J. Viso was warned about Indy's tricky turns but had no trouble adapting in his HVM Racing Dallara-Honda.

"I heard from some other drivers how difficult and scary the track is but I didn't think it was too bad," said Viso, who was second fastest at 220.445 mph. "For sure, the speeds are higher and it's quite a long lap but it's nice we get so much time to prepare.

"It's going to be much better than my first two ovals because it seemed like we got very little practice."

The last time Justin Wilson ran Indy, Turn 1 was actually the last corner of the United States Grand Prix, where he finshed eighth in 2003.

"This definitely feels like the proper way around this track and I wondered what it would feel like when I was here inF1," said Wilson, who ran just over 218 mph for Newman/Haas/Lanigan. "Someone said it was like four quick corners on a road course and that's kinda how I found it. Unlike some ovals, the car goes where you point it and I rather like that. It was fun to drive today."

Alex Lloyd, the defending IPS champion who Chip Ganassi has farmed out to Rahal Letterman this month, quickly reached 219 mph as did Hideki Mutoh and Ryan Hunter-Reay.

Jamie Camara and Jay Howard were the other drivers completing all four phases of their test, while Enrique Bernoldi and Mario Moraes expect to get theirs finished Monday.