Questions about the IRL

[racerx11]

I'm relatively new to open wheel racing and am not sure about some of the rules. How many cars can start a race? Doesn't the IRL have something like a spec engine rule and aren't the bodies and chasis all pretty much the same? If this is true, then money should not be a big issue.

 

[PenskeGirl]

Money is a factor in all other aspects.... Better engineers, more crew members, back up cars, extra car parts, garage set up, etc. Perfect example... at the Richmond race last yr, George Mack wrecked his ONLY car during qualifying. His crew which consists of only a handful of people, worked ALL night long to get the car ready to race again. Sadly, he wrecked fairly early during the race and was done for the day. On the flip side of that was when Helio wrecked in that race. Helio was the first one to wreck that day, it was the 8th lap. The car was taken to the garage area where the large number of crew members took parts off of the back up car, fixed the primary car, and had Helio back on the track with 50 laps left to go and Helio was still in the points contention after that race. Things like that are where money plays a HUGE factor. Testing and traveling also cost a great deal of money. It's more noticeable when you're actually at the race. My first race was a CART race where everyone had money. I didn't notice any difference, but when I started going to the IRL races, it was quite noticeable that Penske had practically unlimited funds whereas alot of the teams were barely scraping by. Hope this helps

 

[PettyBenson]

the IRL also has 3 diffrent engine manufactures Chevy, Honda, and Toyota. I belive the engines are beefed up stock engines( if that makes since)
The IRL also has 3 chassis manufactures, Dallara, Panoz G-Force and Falcon. The all are new desings this year and Falcon is a brand new chassis. They all look simialr from a distance but once you get closer to them you can tell the diffrence.

last year it was fairly cheap to run a car(if 1million is cheap) this year its going to cost more since each team has to buy all new cars and all new engines so for a small team will easily spend 1 maybe 2 million and a big team will spend easily 4-5 million. Its still cheaper than CUP.