IRL or CART?

[Guest]

SpeedTech- In Road racing the cars need to be more responsive and the drivers have to be able to navigate all different shapes and sizes of corners. However in openwheeled oval racing the drivers CANNOT make a mistake. if they slip up even a little bit they are in the wall, there is no run-off aria. The advantage of "driving on the same circut all year long" is that you get very quick and you stay very quick every lap, this means that drivers cant have a bad lap because the rest of the contenders will not have a bad lap. Plus, unlike a road course there is noplace to make up time on an oval. If you get F1 Racing Magazine there is an article/advertisement in the november issue comparing the Toyota F1 car and The Penske Toyota IRL car.

Also it would be awesome to see Jeff Gordon in an F1 Car. he has made it an open fact that he would rather race F1 than NASCAR.

[Guest]

Can you explain to me how you came to the conclusion that IRL drivers are better than CART drivers? Now you have drivers who stay in one gear and only turn left with their foot on full throttle for about 90% of the race.
Tell me where the skills are in doing that?
You even stated that CART cars have got 100 HP more than IRL car, so if you think about it driving a car with more HP on a road course is harder than driving a less powered car round in circles.
Now with only one engine manufactuer in the CART series I would say all drivers are on an even playing field, so then it comes to the drivers proving themselves not the cars they are in!!!!!!

Seems like you haven't put much thought into your comments. LOL

DUMBASS!!!

I mean, tjees, look at what he is saying, CART cars have 100 HP more, well, that doesnt exactly mean that its faster or better? If you did your homework, you should know that in the f1, like more that 20 years ago, they also drove around with turbo charged engines, they had over 1200 HP, and that was like in the beginning of the 80s, compare that with the 900 HP the f1 cars have today.

You see that more HP means faster?
Ofcourse you can say, better chasis and stuff, but then put it this way, build 1 chasis, that fits both engines, lap them around, and measure lap times, and top speeds, wna bet the 900 HP one is faster

[Guest]

Firstly, Cart and IRL cars are nothing alike. They have different aerodynamics and chassis. They have different engines. Plus they are designed to race on completely different tracks (even though Cart does race on some ovals).

Secondly, Open-Wheeled Oval racing is just as difficult as road and street racing. They each take an unbelevable amount of skill to master, they may take DIFFERENT skills but they are both equally challenging.

Thirdly, The Indy 500 is and always will be "The greatest spectale in racing". It may not take as much skill to win as it did in its first few runnings, but if you win the Indy 500 wou win the Indy 500 and you will always be remembered for it.
...
Finally I think that it is Obvious Which series is better :
The Indy Racing League

Well, winning the indy 500 doesnt mean sh*t actualy, to be honest with you, most teams focus on the indy 500 than on the rest, and some teams dont even race anything else accept for 1 time a year in the indy 500.

The indy500 is just another oval race, and only bcuz it has a name and the prize money is high it jumps out of the rest.

And, it rly isnt THAT of a big deal, only for the CART and especially the IRL folks, it does, but nothing more, and nothing less.

Its the f1 that counts, thats the king class of all motorsports, always was, and always will be.

[SpeedTech]

Instead of blabbering on about something else. What finally makes you come to the conclusion that you need more skills to drive around an oval track rather than a road or race track????

YOU KNOW VERY WELL IT'S GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH HORSEPOWER.!!!!!!!

[NickT]

You are all DUMBASSES!!!

Firstly we all may occasionally do things that are a little dumb , as is the nature of humanity, but none of us are DUMBASSES =; . There is only one here and that’s the guy who talks very lightly in general terms and very heavily in profanity (just to save you looking it up, it means swearing ).

Why don't you go and get some real facts to back up your arguments and present them in a mildly adult (grown up) manner.

CART v IRL

Has to be CART, it may take a great deal of skill to master the oval, which I accept unconditionally, but CART does that and the street and road circuits to

So by default drivers, designers, engineers, tyre manufactures and everyone else in CART have a much greater and broader challenge to face. i.e. they need and have more skills than their IRL counterparts.

Two questions for you:
1. How many IRL drivers, who have not competed in CART or a similar formula, have made a successful move into Formula 1
2. Do IRL drivers know in reality how to do a late breaking overtaking manoeuvre, do they ever get the opportunity

[Guest]

I am Honestly not trying to propose that CART drivers, teans or cars are bad at all. I am simply saying that when it comes to driver skill I think that it takes more of ti to drive 6 inches away from another car at 200+ MPH (even if they do race on similar tracks all year) than it does to go around a road course a few feet away from the other cars.

To answer your questions I have no idea about the number of drivers from CART ect but I Know what youare getting at. True many(even most) of the current IRL drivers used to race in series similar to CART but many of them made a decision to change over. And while I have heard that many of them do miss Road Racing btu they prefer the challenge that the IRL presents. While the cause of this is probably to please their teams, and sponsors, the fact remains that they chose the IRL over cart.

The answer to your second question is quite funny actually. In your first question you implied that mosy (or all) IRL drivers come from Roadracing. So logically they must know how to outbrake other drivers if only because of there past experience. they also are able to use this skill on many of the smaller tracks that they race on. It may not be as easy to spot as on raod courses, but this is probably because instead of breaking from 150 mph down to 50 they break from 200mph down to 160mph.

And lastly I think that thereis one thing that we can all agree on, F1 is better than both CART and IRL combired.

[SpeedTech]

Well we all agree on one thing!!!!!

F1 RULES!!!!! now no one can argue with that now

Now with the way CART is heading, there might no longer be any open wheel street or track racing in the states. Hopefully the organizers can save CART from hitting rock bottom.

[Mclaren11]

Yes that would be very bad if CART went out of buisness. Personally I am hoping that CART and the IRL will get back togeather. The split has hurt both series.

[therrydicule]

whats it's hard on oval:you make the race at full fuel and you have to never slow down...They are crazy,now in Irl and they stay on old Indy tradition...
Nascar, it's more dificult technicaly because they got 3 in a row some time...
Cart are a futur base of a curious mix betwen f1 and Irl: monoposte on oval and road (open-wheel) track and a turbo for him savour...
F1 stay f1:the more hi-tech and a litlle doll race, but on open-wheel track...
And le mans stay Lemans:Open-wheel "long shoot"...A "no-monoposto" proto series...

Finaly, what the better...Hum Hum:depend of the year because sometime one race it's good (whitch some action,whitout pit winning) and the other it's doll (stay one by one...whitout a try a get the lead during the 60% of the starting part...)

[Steven]

I don't there's much future in oval racing though... I'll clarify my opinion in that:

First of all, I think normal street and circuit races are much more exciting, technically demanding and more interesting for the driver. There is idd the fact that you see the cars at an oval all the time, but on the other hand, more of current F1 circuits all have their grandstands eguipped with large screens, so that the spectators also see what people see at home.

Second, I think the risk is too high to drive on an oval, it's all flat out, not as hard to drive as a cornery circuit, but when you hit the wall and a few secs later you know what happend, I think you can be considered very lucky to have survived. It's really too dangerous. However, if they want to continue it (with the high popularity in the USA of course) they should talk with some F1 team and have them supplied with decent advice on how to increase safety for the fragile CART / IRL cars (compared to F1 I mean)

[Scuderia_Russ]

Neither!

[Carbon]

I'm not too sure were Guest is getting his information from about IRL/CART, but I can assure you, CART cars are not v-6 Turbos, rather they are 2.6L V-8's. Until about '01, where CART still enjoyed strong grids and lucrative sponsorship, the formula was quite exotic, with engine's spinning to 14 000rpm. To kerb costs, redlines weres drastically reduced, and exotic metals were banned. Toyota, Ford and Honda (among others) all shared in power plant glory. Since the Series was put on the financial rocks, a freeze was put on the technology and aerodynamics, and a common Ford engine was introduced.

[Silver-Arrowz]

CART. As a devoted F1 fan, I like races where there are left and right corners on one track.

I think most drivers moved to IRL simply because they knew the CART series had it coming. Costs of running a CART team is way more expensive than an IRL team. Sponsors/manufacturers were leaving. Thus many teams moved to IRL and drivers followed suit.

What would be more interesting is if IRL added some non oval tracks.

[West]

Well... CART and IRL are totally different series; I doubt you will see IRL running road courses. Both divisions used to run as one...

I would chose CART because there is a variety of turns... meaning there is some sort of skill involved, relative to IRL. Why? Most people think of oval racing as one big left turn, and it is almost impossible to convince the masses there's so much skill in that.

Scott Dixon seems to be the closest driver to F1... and he's an oval racer... and Jeff Gordan was invited by BAR in the late ninties... so that should signify that oval drivers do have skill.

To anybody who hates NASCAR... it wouldn't matter in America, since nobody really cares about F1. Nobody knows anybody in F1 in my apartment except for Michael Schumacher, but they don't even know what he's accomplished. People who don't know about racing ask me if my favorite driver is Jeff Gordon. If I told them who Mark Webber is they wouldn't give a f*ck.

[Irvingthien]

I thought there were once talks that Cart might merge with f1 or jointly cooperating or something.Thoough,since the series is falling apart,I would love to see some engineers from CART come into Formula 1 to have a new challenge,especially Ford Cosworth,they are dominating the with Forthsye series and why not have some engineers from there to help out Jaguar and Jordan.