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| (3-31-05) I've been
hangin' out at the IndyCar inspection station lookin' at
"naked" IndyCars to see what I can learn. I found out a long
time ago that when the cars go through tech, that there isn't a thing
they can hide, so I often lurk there with my handy digital camera. I
know what I can get away with too, so when the air box is open for all
the world to see the injection system and "air horns," you
better not shoot any pictures. Still, once in a while a crewmember will
get upset and stand in front of me or cover something, but not often,
and with a digital, it's easy to delete shots of someone's backside if
that happens. I was alerted to the possibility that some of the teams
might make some innovative changes to the exhaust systems for road
racing. So far everything looks "standard," but I have someone
that will review these pictures and tell me if I missed anything. The
first pictures are of both sides of the Honda engine. |
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Now for the same view
of the Toyota; The Toyota collectors are longer, and they appear take a
"reverse" position to what Honda does. The short Honda
"pipes" seem to be of a larger diameter coming out of the
engine and are reduced going into the collector. On the Toyota engine
shown below, the longer "pipes" appear to be of a smaller
diameter and get larger as they get to the collector. Now I think we
know which engine has the most power, what's Toyota up to here? Since
they never ran either Chevy through tech yet, I'll keep watchin' and
post those shots tomorrow. |
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| Ilmor delivers. We all
know how the Honda deal works, AGR gets their engines from
"HPD," the rest of the teams get theirs from Ilmor. That was
often mentioned as the reason Greg Ray struggled, but last year RLR, SAF
and Fernandez ALL won, apparently using Ilmor produced Honda engines.
Well, as I said, today Ilmor made a delivery, and I was there. |
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| In spite of the wins by
Ilmor-made Honda's, if you had your choice of box number 1&2 on the
left, or boxes 3&4 on the right, which ones would you choose? That
is provided all four were full and fresh. One other thing, the Ilmor
engines were earmarked for D&R, RLR and SAF, the HPD crates had only
an engine serial number. |
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| It's still "Racers
Christmas ," and this call is a no-brainer, pick the two on the
right, stuff them in your Dallara's and go chase some Honda's, good
hunting. |
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| Perhaps you have your
mind set on a gamble, you remember IndyCar circa 2002, and wish to
rekindle old memories. Choose a box like the one on the left, get a
driver with the same name as the guy listed next to "attn to" (it
says Jeff Gordon/Panther Racing) and
go racin'! Nah, I don't think it meant THAT Jeff Gordon, but it is a "SPEEDWAY"
label. |
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| What were they thinkin'?
First AGR Racing did this, taking TK's car through tech inspection and
getting all the stickers. |
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| Then they took the car
back to the pits and took it all apart and changed the engine. |
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| Perhaps they saw all the
fun their teammates shown below were having and felt left out. |
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Anyway,
while all this work was going on, this team had a better idea,
do nothing, not even clean up the car, you don't suppose that is
why they run so poorly do you? Note the Wheldon/AGR car and crew
in the background, hard at it. I can assure you that the
Fernandez and RLR teams, off camera, had all their cars apart as
well. Now the Penske cars were set to go, ready as usual, do you
think AJ might be ready too?
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