Hi group:

As a former Corvette owner, I was very pleased to hear that the
Corvette would be the pace car for the 2006 Indy 500 Mile Race for the
third year in a row.

I do not know how the management of the Indy 500 Mile Race choose their
pace cars...maybe it determined by which car company antes up with the
most dollars? I hope not!

Be that as it may, I was disappointed to see that the ABC coverage of
the race yesterday, Sunday May 28, 2006, failed to mention the Corvette
pace car.

They did do a short feature on the driver, Lance Armstrong, which was
interesting but no mention of the Corvette pace car and no closeup
shots of the car.

Here's a link to some beautiful photos of the 2006 Corvette pace car:

http://www.indypacecars.com/2006.html

Also, the ABC coverage failed to mention the manufacturers of the
cars/engines/tires that were racing in the race or even won the race.

If you watch races on other networks, such as ESPN, they always seem to
mention this information along the top of the screen where the current
places in the race of each driver appears to scroll across the screen.

I guess in the stream of things my complaints are really irrelevant.

When you see the coverage of a rock concert on television, they don't
mention the brands of the musical instruments and amps the performers
are using during the concert.

But it seems to me that the brands of automobile products are very
important, both to the companies themselves and to the consumers. I
suppose if Chevrolet Corvette has been a sponsor of the ABC Indy 500
Mile Race things may had been different?

Chevy didn't put money into the promotion.

GM has inherited the Official Vehicle title because of the hoohaw when
Chrysler tried to use the Japanese-built Dodge Stealth(?--the big
Mitsu-built coupe) as the Pace Car.

gassyal wrote:

The race was all about Honda engines and Firestone tires. Only ones
available! Well announced on ABC.

And the fact that a few teams were running the Panoz chassis.

Top Panoz finish - Danica Patrick! :-))) You go Girl!

http://www.indycar.com/stats/boxscor...y_05282006.pdf

1 Engine Choice.
1 tire choice.

Thanks for playing! :-)

Don't know if this will make you feel better but they announced "Chevy
Corvette Pace Car" over the track's P.A. system any number of times.

Hi scottscottscott and S.J:

I assume that Chevrolet advertises on the ABC network during the year.
If so, don't you think that the ABC production company that shots the
Indy 500 would take that into account and at least "recognize" the car
during their show?

The link to the .pdf file by S.J. is very interesting and eye-opening.
It begs the following questions:

1. Are only Firestone tires used because the Firestone company gives
tires FREE to each contestant?

2. The same question (see above) for the Honda motors used in ALL the
cars. Are they also given FREE to each contestant? (In Formula 1
racing, are only Honda motors used in their cars?)

3. As to the chassis, are Dallara and Panoz the only active companies
in this field?

It seems to me that the Indy 500 is such an established institution, it
apparently is NOT important that the race cars are so close to each
other in their design. What results is a "race driver's" race (that
is, the skill of the driver) then the particular racing machine.

That being said, then why did Danica Patrick, who came in 8th place,
say when interviewed after the race by ABC, that apparently her car was
meant to be an "8th place car."

I'm not an expert by any means on auto racing but I find all this very
interesting.

Regards,
Al Gershen
Grants Pass, OR
gassyal (AT) hotmail (DOT) com

gassyal wrote:
Not if ABC asked Chevrolet for money and were turned down.

Currently only Firestone tires and Honda engines are allowed by the
Indy Racing League in its races, including the Indy 500. I don't know
the financial terms between Firestone (Bridgestone) and the
participating teams, or what the Indy Racing League receives directly
from its suppliers, such as Firestone and Honda.

IIRC, the Honda engines are "leased" to the teams for about $1 million
for the 2006 IRL season; American Honda's racing engine company
provides and maintains engines for races and IRL-approved testing;
individual team mechanics treat the engine as a sealed unit, and all
used engines are returned to Honda. Honda provided a couple of engine
leasing programs for teams that only planned to race in the Indy 500.
AFAIK, Honda and the Indy Racing League would prefer for other auto
manufacturers to supply IRL engines, but no other manufacturers were
interested in participating in the 2006 season.

The IRL allows two kinds of chassis in its races. Other manufacturers
are welcome to submit chassis designs for consideration, but must be
approved by the IRL and readily available for the IRL's maximum chassis
price.

http://www.indycar.com/tech/

Different strokes, and all that. There were cars in the Indy 500 field
that were so much slower, they may as well have been different chassis
and engine designs.

The individual cars reflect both the skill of the drivers and the
teams. All the teams are supposed to have the same parts, but some of
the cars are more than five percent slower than the top cars. This
reflects the quality of the drivers, the "setup" engineers, and the
actual mechanics who maintain the cars.

Standard racer speak for "We weren't fast enough."

Patrick used the Panoz chassis, which now is considered less desirable.
Patrick's team decided that they couldn't switch to the Dallara
chassis and learn its nuances before the race.

F1 cars and engines currently are built to a general set of rules
("Formula") instead of being very narrowly specified and supplied by a
limited number of suppliers. The major exception to this is tires,
which are supplied by a limited number of suppliers according to the F1
sanctioning body. (For well-run racing teams, tires are the biggest
unknown variable in the race, because their performance is very
sensitive to weather and road surfaces. A dominant tire in cold
weather on concrete surfaces may be tail-end Charlie in hot weather on
tarmac. Other aspects of car performance aren't nearly so sensitive to
weather.)

Before 1996, the Indy 500 operated as more of an open "Formula" event
than as a race between an explicitly limited choice of tires, engines,
and chassis.

"scottscottscott" <scottrevision (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

F1 has a new engine formula this year, 2.4 litres and 8 cylinders. The old
formula was 3.0 litres and 10 cylinders. One or two "lower budget" teams
are using the old V10 engines, but intake and rpm restricted to try to
equalize them with the new V8's. There are at least four engine builders,
Ferarri, Renault, Cosworth, and BMW.

There are two tire suppliers, Michelin and Bridgestone. As a result of the
tire fiasco at last year's US Grand Prix, there is a push among some teams
to have a single tire supplier for F1 so there could be agreement on a
solution for any future tire problems at a specific race.

As far as the chassis at Indy 500 this year, the Panoz was generally
considered substandard compared to the Dallara.

KokomoKid wrote:

Close there, kid. Only one team is using a restricted V10 because of
being grandfathered in (Minardi had no money and was approved to run the
V10's but was bought out by Red Bull so now the team is still using the
V10 in spite of having plenty of cash). Engine manufacturers are:
Ferrari, Renault, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, BMW, & Cosworth.

The push for a single tyre supplier came long before the USGP fiasco and
came from the sanctioning body, not the teams. The USGP issue only added
fuel to the fire.

Yep. If the two series don't merge next year, you could realistically
expect to see all Dallaras.
--
Forty

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and
mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” - Ernest Hemingway

forty wrote:
There probably wouldn't be Panoz chassis at the 'weekly' IRL events,
but the back of the 500 grid would be filled by Panoz chassis.

I really didn't care for the looks of the Corvette for some reason. Maybe
that's why it was overlooked?

I would be interested if Toyota brings their concept "Volta" out as a pace
car - not only for their Indy engines, but as to where they're heading with
technology. Being of Italian body design, the Volta looks very nice and
will sport more than enough power for a pace car. That would seal the deal
on the push of their hybrid design with the naysayers of hybrid technology.
Kind of a sports car on slot-car steroids.

http://www.toyota.com/vehicles/future/volta.html

B~