It's pretty obvious when Dave Despain says he wants to see "racing" at Indy by cars that get 50mpg that he didn't pay much attention in science class.

I'm all for innovation and I fully agree that the current Indy race for spec racers is about as dull as it gets.... but 50mpg? Come on Dave!

Here are a few facts to chew on. One of the best ways to power something like a car is by using a liquid fuel like gasoline, in spite of what the nit wits in Washington believe. It's available, it's relatively cheap, we've learned to make it pretty safe, and it packs a lot of potential power into a small package. It's no surprise that almost all cars, both street and racing vehicles are powered by gasoline. It's also no surprise that engineers have fine tuned the internal combustion engine to be pretty efficient and making a significant increase in the mpg figure we enjoy for any common vehicle is not as simple as the stroke of a politician's (or racing rule maker's) pen.

I'll bet that if you DID have a 50mpg racing rule you could lump all the electric, flywheel, hydrogen, corn cob, and chicken manure powered cars into one group and label them the losers. The winner is gonna be a little gas (or possibly diesel) powered car. And especially in an Indy type race, you won't see any hybrid car being competitive.

Consider for a moment Mother Natures rules for aerodynamics. Drag reduction, like increase engine efficiency, is not something you can achieve by the stroke of a rule maker's pen. so if you want any speed at all, you're gonna have a tiny car with little tires, but that's OK 'cause the speed is gonna be dog-slow too.

Sure, you could have a so called "race" for 50 mpg cars, but it would be a technical exercise about as exciting to the general public as the typical Solar Car Challenge we sometimes see on TV. Then there are those competitions Shell used to sponsor where some "cars" got 1000 mpg. Woop te doo! They're fine for college engineering students and the motor head that is fascinated by anything on the cutting edge of automotive technology, but as far as the public is concerned, it ain't a RACE and calling it a "race" is an injustice to real racing.

It's hard enough to fill grandstands now. How are you gonna' sell tickets to a totally boring event to watch tiny cars with bicycle tires and weed eater engines buzz around Indianapolis? It just ain't gonna happen.

Isn't a "race" the competition between 2 or more people or teams using a common set of rules? It doesn't really matter what you use as fuel as long as there is some kind of excitement, drama and the outcome is not a forgone conclusion. Also the viewers should have some sort of stake in the game, like a favorite driver, sponsor, team. And doing something that the viewer can relate to like driving a car, bicycle, motorcycle, boat or running.
Way more people tuned in to watch the 100 meter final at the Olympics than watch the Indy500 for the past 10 years.
More people watch the Tour De France. In these, there is no noise or even fuel used, but the races are compelling.
My suggestion for INDY is to have an alternate fuel race on the Saturday with similar safety and construction rules but open to any type of engine and fuel which is renewable.
Have you seen some of the exotic electric cars that are actually being built? They are gorgeous and fast. I would definitely watch a race with them involved and I bet the progress developed from the competition would be as great as from the early days of auto racing.

I think most people are taking the idea of "green" racing the wrong way. I would love to see an IndyCar that gets 10-15-30 MPG if it still runs 230 mph and I think thats what everyone wants from "green" racing. Fast cars getting great economy. Lets face it, if Honda can make an 8 cyl., 800 hp engine that gets 15-20 mpg at 230mph, what do you think they can do with a 4 cyl?

I don't want to see cars running around sipping. I agree with the comment that mandating say 15mpg would be reasonable.

As for your gasoline comment at the start of the thread, yes, gas is the cheapest way to go right now. The reason is so much money has been spent on maximizing return from every drop of raw fossil fuel for so long, that the process is pretty much optimized. When it comes to things like ethanol, bio-grease, etc, the development there is still in its infancy, and thus has a higher cost attached. If there were 750 processing sites that had been paid for and in operation for 50+ for one of these alternatives as there are for turning oil into gasoline, the cost there would come down as well....

But no. Keep your hands off my car racing. Sure, push development, but lets not turn it into tiddlers. There are already solar races, and one gallon races all over the world....

Who should be going back to school?
Indy cars haven't used gasoline since the early '60's.

Tony.

Ethanol has been around a long time before Oil City, Pa became oil city. Burns cooler than gas,cheaper than gas, down side corrosive.

Indy cars now use Methanol.

Tony.

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

Check it out GemDr

TheGemDr - 05 July 2009 11:21 AM

Indy cars now use Methanol.

They used to run methanol. Now, it's ethanol.

How about a 10 gallon tank on the car and a fuel flow rate like your local filling station (10 GPM). Same as a MPG limit....how much time do you want to spend driving and how much time in the pits refueling...

Dave's point was that once upon a time...Indy used to be the home of the inovater....where men tried new ideas to go faster. Today the Indy 500 is a spec car event...spec car, spec engines and nearly spec drivers.

Where is the Novi V8, FWD, Turbines, the Mickey Thompson Side car, Smokey Yunick and his ideas. All we get is same old, same old.