A violent crash during Saturday's qualifying session for the Indianapolis 500 had resulted in several fractures for Sebastian Bourdais. A small correction of oversteer sent him straight into the wall, badly damaging his car that immediately burst in flames as well.
Please discuss here all your remarks and pose your questions about all racing series, except Formula One. Both technical and other questions about GP2, Touring cars, IRL, LMS, ...
Interesting concept, but it’ll be tough to balance downforce and stability without wings. Still, seeing someone try would be refreshing in today’s aero-dominated racing.
With 1200hp and without wings providing downforce and so stability wouldn’t it just become very unstable at high speeds, 200mph plus? Similar to a late 1960s wingless Indycar? Also didn’t Pat Symonds and his team evaluate wingless designs for the 2022 F1 regs? I seem to remember him saying that the wings (particularly the rear wing) actually helped to mitigate dirty air effects on following cars to an extent by deflecting it upwards. Wingless designs just poured turbulent air onto the following car. Once they added a large rear wing to deflect the turbulent air upwards then a large front wing was required to balance it. I do wonder if aesthetics played a part in the final decision though, Symonds did mention that also.
I’d like to see this concept created in a PC simulator.
Next season shaping up! I think there are some interesting moves, but nothing technical new, right?
The interesting moves:
- Herta out, Power at Andretti. I never thought, that Andretti is super well equipped with drivers and the combination father son did not do all good. Power will be a new benchmark. Big loss for Penske.
- Schumacher in RLL. Super interesting. We saw from Schumacher, that he always needed a season to get comfy, so nothing big this season, at least not at the beginning. But from his F2 and F3 dominance I would expect him to be a contender at the end and towards 27. Big question is if RLL is competitive, this even looks like a payed seat to me, so no idea if the car is anywhere near a Ganassi/Penske/McLaren car...or that he will change to one of them if he impresses at RLL.
- Ryan Hunter-Reay in the McLaren for the Indy500. Very strong car, will be nice to watch how he does.
