The RACER Mailbag, January 5

Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for Marshall Pruett or any of RACER’s other writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. Due to the upper volume of questions received, we can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll wordplay as many as we can. Published questions may be edited for style or clarity.

Q: There was some Twitter discussion going on in regard to the Dallara contract extension and if it could offer an A/B chassis option to teams. (I like the idea, but sure forfeit is the issue). Someone pointed out that in 1990 March had variegated chassis for the Alfa Romeo team compared to the Porsche team. I unchangingly thought this was due to the engines, expressly Porsche as they seemed to be radical with virtually everything! Hoping you can offer some insight (and of undertow there is a unique link here, as Big Al crush the Alfa and the Porsche! I believe he was the only suburbanite to do both).

Brian Burrell

MARSHALL PRUETT: Great opening question to start the new year. As much as I long for the days of having multiple chassis suppliers, today’s IndyCar team owners aren’t receiving the same level of sponsorship funding to finger well-appointed with the risks involved with chassis options. The financing are upper unbearable to make sticking with a single chassis the popular choice.

What that ways here is if Dallara offered a Type A and a Type B chassis, you’d have a few things taking place: Team owners would ask why all the weightier ideas weren’t put into a single chassis, considering if there’s two options from the same company, both options will be lacking something.

And without that, as we’ve seen in just well-nigh every series where there are chassis options, one will stand out as the weightier all-round nomination and that’s where the unshortened field will migrate the moment it becomes clear. If it’s Type A, all those with Type Bs will be forced to take big financial hits – since there won’t be a secondhand market of buyers wanting the less competitive Type Bs. And then they’ll need to buy Type As, which will take a while to victorious and gravity them to lose increasingly races with the Type Bs.

We’ve seen it in the past as March had the upper hand, then Lola, and as Lola began to dominate CART in the late 1980s, March lost most of the market and was gone by the end of 1990. In the 1990s with consumer cars, Lola was king until Reynard arrived in 1994, and by 1996, Reynard was the car to have. Fast forward to the early 2000s, and the tides turned then as Lola made a comeback, Reynard fell to second place, and the Lola was the car to have until Champ Car went to a spec Panoz in 2007. In scrutinizingly every scenario, the most competitive and financially capable teams migrated when and forth, parking the unfavored chassis to buy whichever model established itself as the weightier of the bunch.

It’s moreover not too far removed from the 2012 season where there were three engine suppliers, and only two (Chevy and Honda) were quality options. Those who were saddled with the Lotus engines suffered dire consequences, and plane for the lucky few who got out of their contracts and moved to Chevy or Honda, most went out of merchantry or left IndyCar or were forced to merge with a worthier team to stay afloat. All considering one option was the wrong nomination and as a result, poor finishes were guaranteed and sponsors got nervous.

I protract to hope CART-era dollars return so all of the superstitious variety we had can return.

A quick latter note on the 1990 Marchs you referenced: The NTT IndyCar Series has two senior staff members in its technical/engineering department. By chance, one of them, Bill Pappas, was involved with the diamond of the 1990 March vicarious by Alfa Romeo, and the other, Tino Belli, was involved with the 1990 March that Porsche commissioned.

Q: When teams run a one-off Indy 500 project, how much funding, either from the suburbanite or by sponsorship dollars, does it take to obtain a seat for a race?

Phillip Schmitz, Dallas/Fort Worth

MP: A few years ago, I’d hear $500,00-600,000 mentioned as a fairly worldwide number. Over the last year or two, I’ve heard it tingle closer to $700,00-$750,000 as a starting point for quality teams, and know of one or two teams with Indy-winning histories who’ve pushed that buy-in number to $1 million or so.

Simply put, the days of drivers walking virtually in Gasoline Alley with half a upkeep and drawing the interest of an Indy 500 entrant to work out a deal are long gone. Right now, in the first week of January, I know of one-two seats left that are truly unshut for the highest bidder to take. With Chevy and Honda holding the keys on how many engines leases are made misogynist for the 500, we’ve had the equivalent of IndyCar eBay for quite a while.

Q: How can you say Max was a deserving champion when Hamilton had his measure all race long until Masi reverted the rules? Your bias shows and hurts your credibility.

Tom Strongman

MP: Considering the championship is settled over an unshortened season. If that’s something I’m telling you for the first time, we’ve got worthier problems to fix. If you’d bothered to read or listen to all I offered on the topic, you’d know that I’m no fan of Max and have been a big Lewis fan since his F3 days. And while that’s the specimen on a personal level, none of that matters when I’m at work.

From the first race of 2021 to the last, Max was better, and when the title-decider is a contentious one like we had, I’m not going to blindly throw my support overdue my favorite F1 suburbanite who lost, so save the bias/credibility nonsense for someone who cares. I’m not the one.