Indy 500 counts for F1 Championship points

[jpf]

So, if they allowed F1 cars to run at Indy (didn't they allow that in the late 50's/early 60's), how would a McClaren do against the field?

[10 Pence Short]

I would imagine the oval designed cars would be a lot faster in a straight line and around the corners, and as soon as another car touched the F1, it would more or less fall to pieces.

[rude-boy]

jpf said:

So, if they allowed F1 cars to run at Indy (didn't they allow that in the late 50's/early 60's), how would a McClaren do against the field?

Badly.

Unless you spent a lot (in F1 terms, not even real world terms) of money.

Then it would be faster than anything else out there to the point it would be banned. Then they would have to build a car to the regs of teh Indy cars and so there'd be no point.

Indy was a part of the F1 calendar on 2 occassions i think from memory but even then the cars used were one off specials based on that season's car.

[johnph]

I had to explain this to someone on another forum a few weeks ago.

F1 cars are not designed to smack into walls at ~200mph like IRL cars are, notice the amount of side protection on an IRL car:



Compare that to the side protection on an F1 car:



And of you don't need any more convincing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuPqymPlPdA

That said i wuld like to see F1 driver compete at Indy and Le Mans. LM would be possible by shuffling te schedule a little, however they would have to severly cut the ~4 week build up to Indy to accommodate F1 drivers.

[rude-boy]

johnph said:

That said i wuld like to see F1 driver compete at Indy and Le Mans. LM would be possible by shuffling te schedule a little, however they would have to severly cut the ~4 week build up to Indy to accommodate F1 drivers.

Apart from the contract difficulties and so on as well I too would love to see this.

I really hope that JV gives it (is given) another go in '08. I'd also love to see Schumi the Better out there but doubt that he would ever do it, I certainly can't remember him saying he'd give it a wirl one day.

Back on topic, you highlight one of the most fundimental points of why F1 cars can't really be alowed onto full ovals, safety.

IIRC Indy cars also have a metal 'spine' built into the chassis to help them deform and dsipate the energy of the incident better than F1 cars, although this is from hazy memory.

[Eric Mc]

For the years 1950 to 1961 the Indy 500 counted as a round of the World Drivers Championship - strange when you consider that none of the cars running at Indy were built to F1 (or even F2 which was the WDC formula in 1952 and 1953).

Indy Cars have always been built much more robustly than F1 cars because of the nature of the race and the circuit they were designed for.

Edited by Eric Mc on Wednesday 14th November 15:10

[HiRich]

I think it might be quite close, on outright speed at least

2007 qualifying times for the 500 were of the order of 220-225mph, and I believe a good lap is close to flat out. This is within the capability of a contemporary F1 car. I recall 225 being seen at the old Hockenheim, and BAR ran towards 250 for their Bonneville PR stunt. Trim the car out (within F1 regulations), up the gearing to exploit max speed, and it could go either way. I would be confident that even a trimmed out F1 car would have more than competitive amounts of downforce and grip in the turns.

I only know of one occasion where an F1 car has run an oval. In the '80s Stefan Johansson was doing ad filming in a McLaren-TAG Porsche turbo. Short runs up the straight, and the car was in high downforce trim & gearing - possibly straight from Monaco. It is said that on one run "he forgot to stop". The rumour was that someone got a time, and it would have got him on the grid for the most recent CART race.

[johnph]

One way of working it would be that F1 teams buy/rent the Dallara IRL chassis and drop their 2.4l f1 engine into it. I can't for the life of me find any hp outputs for the spec IRL Honda engine but i know that F1 cars produce ~750hp. Some kind of restriction would have to be placed to equalise the hp output while the F1 powered cars would have to be ballasted to compensate for their lighter engine.

Thoughts?

[rude-boy]

johnph said:

One way of working it would be that F1 teams buy/rent the Dallara IRL chassis and drop their 2.4l f1 engine into it. I can't for the life of me find any hp outputs for the spec IRL Honda engine but i know that F1 cars produce ~750hp. Some kind of restriction would have to be placed to equalise the hp output while the F1 powered cars would have to be ballasted to compensate for their lighter engine.

Thoughts?

Fun but again an ulimately pointless exercise.

Not trying to throw spaners in the works but the bottom line is that what you wish to engineer just isn't going to happen in this day and age.

EDIT TO ADD

you also need to remember that the engine is a stressed member and from it hangs the gearbox, rear suspension, rear wing, etc and i would expect you would have other packaging wissues with cooling gubins etc. Trying to mate one from, say, a Sauber BMW to a Dallara wouldn't be the work of a minute (although by no means beyond the wit of man) and as for the set up of the car's areo i'm sure the geeks would have their melons well and truely twisted!

Edited by rude-boy on Wednesday 14th November 15:51

[jpf]

I would prefer a F1 car right off the transport. Only adjustments allowed would be to the wing.

I would also like to see an Indy car run at Monaco--only adjustment allwoed to the wing as well.

[andyps]

rude-boy said:

I really hope that JV gives it (is given) another go in '08. I'd also love to see Schumi the Better out there but doubt that he would ever do it, I certainly can't remember him saying he'd give it a wirl one day.

Unfortunately it is unlikely that JV will be there in 08 as his new race contract in NASCAR will probably not give him the time, but he has said he wants to go back so maybe some time in the future we will see him there to add LeMans to his list of the "big ones" along with the Indy 500 and F1 championship.

Schumi raced LeMans in his Mercedes days but whe he was in F1 he said he wouldn't race there as it is too dangerous - one of the reasons I don't rate him as a driver as highly as his record shows, in my view a true racer would want to do it for the challenge regardless of the danger (which is way less than people have faced in the past). I suspect for the same reason we will never see him race on a true oval such as Indy.

[johnph]

rude-boy said:

johnph said:

One way of working it would be that F1 teams buy/rent the Dallara IRL chassis and drop their 2.4l f1 engine into it. I can't for the life of me find any hp outputs for the spec IRL Honda engine but i know that F1 cars produce ~750hp. Some kind of restriction would have to be placed to equalise the hp output while the F1 powered cars would have to be ballasted to compensate for their lighter engine.

Thoughts?

Fun but again an ulimately pointless exercise.

Not trying to throw spaners in the works but the bottom line is that what you wish to engineer just isn't going to happen in this day and age.

EDIT TO ADD

you also need to remember that the engine is a stressed member and from it hangs the gearbox, rear suspension, rear wing, etc and i would expect you would have other packaging wissues with cooling gubins etc. Trying to mate one from, say, a Sauber BMW to a Dallara wouldn't be the work of a minute (although by no means beyond the wit of man) and as for the set up of the car's areo i'm sure the geeks would have their melons well and truely twisted!

Edited by rude-boy on Wednesday 14th November 15:51

Some good points - probably best to buy the F1 drivers rides with various teams (they usually field extra cars to make up the numbers) that already exist. In that situ it wouldn't be plausible as a points round of the F1 WDC.

[mattikake]

jpf said:

So, if they allowed F1 cars to run at Indy (didn't they allow that in the late 50's/early 60's), how would a McClaren do against the field?

I reckon it would cream the field. An F1 car has far superior power:weight and far more advanced aerodynamics.

F1 cars already go round the final turn of Indy as if it were an extension of the straight, yet Indy cars are on the limit here, but of course are running low downforce. Difficult to say without a test. But it should just be a matter of using tyres that will last as long as IndyCars and a longer gearbox to use the speed. Would an F1 car even need to back off for the turns?

Would the F1 car have to run on Ethanol?

[onomatopoeia]

johnph said:

One way of working it would be that F1 teams buy/rent the Dallara IRL chassis and drop their 2.4l f1 engine into it.

Doesn't the IRL have a rule which says the engines must use pushrods? ISTR when someone produced an engine with very short pushrods it got banned a few seasons back.

[BigBen]

onomatopoeia said:

johnph said:

One way of working it would be that F1 teams buy/rent the Dallara IRL chassis and drop their 2.4l f1 engine into it.

Doesn't the IRL have a rule which says the engines must use pushrods? ISTR when someone produced an engine with very short pushrods it got banned a few seasons back.

Thought it was the other way round that you could not use pushrods but a anomaly in the rules allowed them at Indianapolis only, one manufacturer (Merc iirc) took advantage of this with a one off Indy only engine and whooped everyone.

Ben

[jpf]

How about allowing the first 4 teams by points free qualifying for Indy? Points paid if they come in the top 8 overall. If a team decides to not go the next team up gets to go.

Flip side would be allowing the top 4 Indy finishers slots in the Monaco GP.

I wish there was a way to fit ChampCar in the equation.

It would be nice to see how the open wheelers would race in their respective premier events--F1 vs. Indy vs. ChampCar. Would generate some buzz I am sure--and have a bigger field competing, too.

[jpf]

Wouldn't something like this create buzz? Doesn't open wheel racing need buzz? It seems closed wheel racing is mroe exciting/interesting than open wheel racing. Maybe the relatvely inexpensive model of Indy/ChampCar would leak over to F1 so that the racing budgets could actually become affordable again; maybe the F1 cars wouldn't be durable enough to go 500 miles--but would be faster over the first 250 miles (not withstanding the 2 race rule).
Open wheel racing needs more buzz than McClaren going to court over fuel temperatures...

[DWP]

TVR moneypit said:

jpf said:

I would prefer a F1 car right off the transport. Only adjustments allowed would be to the wing.

I would also like to see an Indy car run at Monaco--only adjustment allwoed to the wing as well.

But then the issue would be brakes. Dont CART / IRL run steel discs to F1's carbon?

Problems with the gears, they would have to be very different ratios.

[LocoBlade]

Reversing the scenario for Monaco, an IRL car weighs significantly more than an F1 car with far less inrerent aero downforce, so around a street circuit (or any non oval) it wouldn't stand a chance against an F1 car.

Champ cars are probably more suited to road courses than Indy cars, but their laptime around Brands Indy is no quicker than a front running EuroBoss car, which are which are 10+ year old F1 cars driven by non professional drivers.

[jpf]

Knowing how tight Monaco is, I would think driver skill would be paramount...

Those oval drivers would have a major adjustment to Monaco.