PRUETT: ICONIC Thud Or Thunder?

IndyCar

PRUETT: ICONIC Thud Or Thunder?

I’m not sure whether to call it the ICONIC thud, the ICONIC dud or simply ICONIC confusion. Or maybe it was just what we needed. That’s my hope.

Marshall Pruett | Posted July 14, 2010 Indianapolis, IN

A packed house watched as the ICONIC panel unveiled their strategy for the 2012 IndyCar. Reactions to their findings were met with mixed reviews. (LAT)

I’m not sure whether to call it the ICONIC thud, the ICONIC dud or simply ICONIC confusion. Or maybe it was just what we needed. Maybe the 2012 Strategy announcement was worthy of the ‘ICONIC’ moniker.

Part of me – a small part – thinks it just might work. Maybe the choice to tab Dallara as the sole supplier for 2012, albeit with an open policy on aero design, is too advanced for my simple mind to comprehend.

Another part of me wants to believe that auto manufacturers and chassis manufacturers will choose to sign up for 2012, and when they do, we’ll get to see a diverse group of cars that look nothing alike.

That’s my hope.

But that’s also where I keep getting stuck.

Hope…wish…could…maybe…might.

The 2012 Strategy announcement that the ICONIC panel has set into motion relies on hope – and vast quantities of it – for their plan to succeed.

I’m not a betting man when it comes to the things I love. I want to see the IndyCar Series put a plan in place that will see different looking cars on the 2012 grid. Period. Full stop. No hope required.

It’s the ‘If we announce it, they will come’ business plan that has me most concerned, and in our current economy, I’m afraid that kind of ’gosh I hope this works approach to IndyCar’s future comes across as reckless and rather naive.

With two to three different chassis accepted for 2012 (pick two or three of your favorite designs) we could have had a guarantee of that all-elusive diversity. With only the Dallara chosen and an option for others to make their own bodywork, the default is a 2012 Indy 500 with 33 copies of the same model on the grid, which would be no different than 2011, or 2010, or 2009…

That’s the worst case scenario. If no one signs up to play aero kit manufacturer, we have newer looking version of the same vehicular monotony that’s lulled a nation of open-wheel fans to sleep, or worse, sent them packing to buy ‘3’ t-shirts and watch racing at Darlington and Martinsville from the chicken bone seats.

I asked IZOD IndyCar Series CEO Randy Bernard if he would be happy or satisfied with the decisions the ICONIC panel made if the 2012 Indy 500 ends up being an all-Dallara show. This question was clearly something that has been discussed many times internally before I posed it.

“I think we have to stay realistic to this. I think that we were behind the eight ball just a little bit. I think that if we could have announced this last August we’d be doing much better. But, I want to stay – I told all of this to the committee – we need to stay realistic and we’re going to bust our butts to try to get something done. But I think that we really need to be looking at what we make decisions on and what this committee was [meant to do] long-term, and we’re more optimistic about 2013.”

At a time where the IZOD IndyCar Series needed to redefine itself in the industry and to potential suitors, it has done the opposite. After months of hoping (sorry, just can’t escape that word today) the ICONIC panel would avoid a spec car or selecting a sole supplier, both items were chosen in rather predictable manner. (How depressing. In hindsight, I too was being naïve.) Today’s 2012 IndyCar Strategy revealing was less shock and awe, and more shock and what? Come again? It also leaves IndyCar fans, teams and potential constructors with more questions than answers.

The this is where we’re going, here’s who’s going with us, here are the facts, rules and everything else you need to know about the changing face of IndyCar racing didn’t happen. Not even close. What we got was speculation, a lack of specifics and a whole lot of crossed fingers on the podium.

To quickly rehash their plans, the ICONIC panel delivered a recommendation to IZOD IndyCar Series CEO Randy Bernard for the series to elect Dallara as the sole supplier of the 2012 IndyCar, minus engine and bodywork. Utilizing what has been termed the “Indy Safety Cell,” the somewhat misleading name refers to a complete car, with exception of the items listed above.

Everything under the bodywork – something that almost every panel member I spoke with told me “the average fan doesn’t care about” – is spec. How insulting.

I can’t speak for IndyCar fans as a whole, but it came across like the panel believes that open-wheel fans are too dumb to notice what makes a Lola different from a Reynard, or a Panoz different from a Dallara. It assumes that IndyCar fans aren’t curious about technical aspects of a racing car. It assumes IndyCar fans can’t see beyond pretty colors on a sidepod, or are they capable of comprehending or caring why two rival constructors chose different suspension styles or different cockpit shapes. It assumes that the few diehards who showed up to Watkins Glen, or the masses who will likely pack Toronto’s grandstands this weekend, are the low hanging fruit of auto racing. It assumes that after almost a decade of spec IndyCars, IndyCar fans have had their minds turn to mush and have lost all interest in the small details that made open-wheel racing unique.

If the panel thinks different bodywork is all that’s needed to pull back the fans they lost to NASCAR, they are sadly mistaken. This is a huge miscalculation.

One of the major talking points of the panel members, including Bernard, was that everyone but Dallara insisted on having sole supplier status. Lola wanted it, as did Swift, DeltaWing and BAT. With the exception of free bodywork design, I’m left wondering how Dallara is little more than the sole supplier for 2012? Chassis, floor, uprights, suspension…all will come from their firm. The gearbox vendor is of their choosing, as is the brake supplier, etc. I’m curious whether the losing constructors were asked if they would accept a spec deal like the one Dallara has been given.

Randy Bernard expects for the ICONIC panel to continue in its advisory role, which would then shift towards defining the 2012 rules and some of the other chassis components, but in essence, what Dallara has been tasked with – to go and find vendors to supply brakes, gearboxes, etc, to help them hit the fixed 2012 chassis price – is no different than what Lola, Swift or the other constructors would have done.

I’m not a fan of sole suppliers, but if Dallara has become the defacto sole chassis supplier for 2012, why was their design chosen over the other constructors who made a proposal?

Dallara, with their promise of a new production facility in Indiana, won the contract.

Sing a little bit of the O’Jays with me … “Money money money money ……. money!”

Bernard didn’t entirely agree with my assessment. “I think the thing that set Dallara apart was, first of all, the track history and the credibility that they’ve already brought to the table. The fact that they’ve have 300 cars racing every week is pretty amazing in itself. They had a very detailed plan for bringing their business here to Speedway. I think that we were very impressed with that. I think their safety track record is fantastic, and since this is a safety cell we’ve asked them to make, I think this is one of the biggest and most important elements that the committee looked at as well.”

(I’ll refer back to my ‘a safety cell is a tub or a cockpit, not an entire car’ argument. It’s a confusing moniker – a misnomer -- that needs to be dropped, ASAP.)

Finally, knowing that the success for his 2012 plan currently rests on a bunch of hopes, wishes, coulds, maybes and mights, is Bernard ready to shine his shoes and hit the pavement on a whirlwind tour to recruit every major auto manufacturer on the planet? The 2012 announcement puts everything on his shoulders to succeed. If he fails, we’re right back to where we are today. If he pulls it off, it would be the defining point of his legacy as IndyCar Series CEO.

“I welcome that,” he said. “I think that the IndyCar Series, if you go back since 1911, it was all about relevance and showcasing cars that you’d see elements of in show rooms. I think that what I need to do with this committee is reach out to auto manufacturers and tell them that they’re not only a competitor– if we attract them back – they’re not just an IndyCar competitor but they have to be a partner of ours. We want to help them. We want to help them sell cars. We want their input. And I think that one key step that we heard from before was brand identity. They are welcoming it. They want to see brand identity within our racing series. And I think hopefully this plan with the Dallara and any car company being able to make their own aero kit and name the car after themselves addresses that.”

With Randy fully aware of how much responsibility he now bears, let’s move on to a review of what I thought hit and missed today.

What’s Right

Go Indiana

• The biggest applause of the entire announcement came during Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels’ detailing of how the state would work with Dallara to subsidize a health portion of the first 28 chassis sold.

• The loudest roar came when he revealed that Dallara would be building a new technical and manufacturing center in Speedway, IN., home of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I’m indifferent, if not slightly amused at this move by Dallara.

• I’m a fan of the IndyCar Series pumping money into our economy, and even happier to see Indiana and Indianapolis embrace the series and its manufacturers. It isn’t the first time this has happened, as the city offered major tax incentives two decades ago to any team that chose to relocate to Indianapolis. Just as most major cities help to subsidize the costs of building a new major sports arena with tax dollars, the concept of embracing a sport, rather than a stick and ball team is rather refreshing.

Go Brain Power

• Whether they choose to build their own aero kits, elect to hire on as consultants to aid a bigger company, aerodynamicists, wind tunnel operators and CFD engineers just became an even more precious commodity in North America. Folks like Ben Bowlby, Bruce Ashmore, Nick Wirth and many other wind-friendly engineers now have the potential to unleash their aero creativity in the IZOD IndyCar Series.

Alternate Fuels

• The series plans to implement the use of E85 ethanol, which has a much greater relevance than the E100 they use now.

Cheaper Chassis

• The sub-$400K for a rolling chassis is a smart call. With the rebate offered for Indiana-based teams, it get the price down to an astonishingly low level.

Open Source Aero

• It is still frustratingly undefined, but the panel will require aero kits to be made available to whomever wants to buy one. Whether that means HVM Racing can buy the current version of a Ganassi aero kit, or if a Ganassi would get to use the kit for an exclusive period before others could buy it is unknown.

What’s in the Middle

New Technical Staff

• I’m relieved to see the ICONIC panel realized that a major upgrade to the series’ technical staff is in order. It’s a must. But yet again, this was a need they highlighted over the past few months without making any headway towards finding a solution. When asked by a member from the media, The Great Brian Barnhart (TGBB) said it was something they needed to address soon. When I asked Randy Bernard about the timeline and urgency to put the technical people in place who would then work to develop the 2012 rules, he said, “Because I wanted to make sure that we had a team in place, we didn’t want to discuss with any type of technical people until after today because we felt that it would be leaked. And so now that we shared this, now we need to put that specific team that is employees or consultants of IndyCar, it could be a phenomenal engineering company as far as that goes, but this committee needs to make sure that whoever we select is looking at it the same way these guys did it, as the future of IndyCar. I think that [the ICONIC panel’s] next step is selecting someone that is going to help – or a key person, one person that’s going to write the rules for the next IndyCar.”

• Tony Cotman confirmed the importance of expanding IndyCar’s technical staff. “We’ve obviously heard and read and we’ve heard directly from team owners where they think it needs upgrading or the areas that need to be upgraded. Randy has committed to address those areas and – it’s going to be a lot of work involved here. On the outside it looks easy. When you sift through the people required and what areas need to be addressed, it’s a huge undertaking. And we can’t just gloss over that. But I think Randy has grasped it, understands it now and, hey, the ball’s in his court.”

• Asked what it would take to get him to take the post of IndyCar technical chief, Cotman said it wasn’t an impossible request to fill, nor was it easy. “You know what? I’m happy with my new business, to be honest. Never say never. I originally turned down the ICONIC committee a couple times as well and I didn’t think I’d have the time for it, but I’ve enjoyed it. I never want to work away from racing and this has been a fun part, but, again, if there is something for me down the road that works for both sides, I’m certainly open to discussing it. But right now I have responsibilities with other people and my primary responsibility is my circuit design business and it’s going gangbusters so I don’t want to just shut it down.”

What’s Wrong

No Rules

• The first thing my wife asked me when she called right after the announcement ended was “How did everything go? Was it OK?” My response was rather short. “If I’d known I was flying out to Indiana to look at a hologram while hearing absolutely nothing concrete about the 2012 rules, I’d have stayed home.” This was yet another ‘planning to plan’ move. For all of the ceremonial efforts and cash poured out by the series – lots of sizzle without the steak -- to leave people with no roadmap on how 2012 will be governed, what regulations are in place, the dimensions and specific component costs the 2012 car will conform to, or who will lead the new technical team was a major letdown.

• Other than a few cost figures and some minor technical details, I left knowing little more than the 2012 car will be built by Dallara and will have open bodywork. It’s worth repeating this fact as I had about a dozen conversations once I got back to my hotel room – from IndyCar drivers who missed the presentation to public relations folk to the heads of other racing series – and other than parroting the Dallara/open bodywork line, the universal response was, “That’s it? No rules? How is that an announcement?” I couldn’t agree more.

Aero Kit Development Costs

• If you watched or listened to the live streaming video from today’s announcement and heard an audience member laugh out loud when ICONIC panel member Tony Purnell said, on the topic of designing a 2012 aero kit, “There's a framework here to showcase your technical prowess without a major raid on the piggy bank,” it was me. I’ll raise my hand and admit it. I couldn’t help it. The manner by which the topic was presented was ripe with fiction.

• The single biggest expense incurred by IndyCar teams, and most professional racing teams, for that matter, is aerodynamic development. Whether it’s designing a 2012 aero kit or spending a fortune on CFD and wind tunnel testing on a kit that was purchased, the ICONIC panel has opened up the one area of the rules that will cost teams and constructors the most money.

• Limiting the price of an aero kit to $70,000 forces small constructors to aim low, or worse, to spend vast sums to participate in the series with a questionable chance of recouping their investment over the four years the 2012 car is meant to last. Teams won’t buy a cheap aero kit that is inferior to what biggest constructors offer. That means a lot of money must be spent on CFD and wind tunnel testing. Once again, Purnell’s challenge of “So come on, Ford, come on GM, Lotus, Ferrari, come on Lockheed, come on Boeing, come on you engineers working in small technology businesses. We want you to rise to the challenge” rings hollow for all but the major marques he described. His assertion that garage innovators have a place in 2012 is lacking any basis in truth or reality. It’s still a rich man’s game and the ICONIC panel has done nothing to ease the path for ‘garagistes’ to do more than look through the chain link fence and dream of being a part of the equation.

• BAT principal Bruce Ashmore, the ‘B’ in BAT, broke down what he expects an aero kit to cost Ashmore Design to produce. “You’re talking several millions of dollars. So you’ve got to sell a lot of kits to recoup your investment. But I think it’s the type of thing that once you’re in, you see they announced there’s a four year package and you can sell a new kit every year for four years then you can make a business case out of it. It’s all a risk because you’ve got to win – but I think it’s something that a little company like myself could partner with a big company. Say a Lockheed or a Boeing or Ford or somebody who wanted to come in, I have the potential to partner with some of those companies…that’s the only way.”

• If you’ve followed sportscar racing for the past decade, you’ll know that we suffered from the ‘Audi Effect’ in North America. That syndrome, in short, is one where new manufacturers chose, almost entirely, to avoid competing in the same class as Audi in the ALMS. Audi’s massive war chest, coupled with their enormous resources, made building an LMP900/LMP1 car nothing more than a suicide mission. Defeat was all but guaranteed and teams chose to go down a class to buy smaller, cheaper P675/P2 cars instead. It left Audi to play by themselves most of the time. Apply that phenomenon to Dallara and the choice for almost anyone wanting to build a 2012 aero kit to topple the Italians. When it comes to aerodynamics, Dallara is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Dallara is so good that Audi chose them to build their sportscar tubs and to do the majority of their sportscar aerodynamics! In F3, the IRL or almost any other series they compete in, the aerodynamic shape and development capabilities of any car Dallara produces tends to serve as the benchmark.

The 2012 'Indy Safety Cell' in different possible iterations. (Marshall Pruett)

• While this isn’t a development cost concern, how likely is a Lola or Swift to build bodywork that attaches to a car produced by their most heated rival? It asks enemies to be friends, and in motorsport, that’s a tall order. It’s asking a New York Yankees fan to wear a Boston Red Sox jersey, or for Mel Gibson to sing lullabies to his girlfriend over the phone. In another odd twist from the world of sportscar racing, Lola has been in a heated battle with Aston Martin Racing (AMR), who bought a few of their LMP1 closed-top prototypes. AMR, better known as Prodrive, opted to use their extensive design and production capabilities to manufacture all-new bodywork for their Lolas, and have dropped the Lola name, entering the cars as Aston Martins. The chassis, suspension, gearbox and most of the car is no different than any other Lola P1 coupe, but with AMR’s clothes on it, they’ve chosen to ignore the Lola name altogether. And how well was that received by Lola? How about a long, protracted battle where Lola refused to sell them spare parts or to support the cars in any way… The message, provided it applies to the 2012 car, is that recent history has shown just how warm and fuzzy Lola feels about dressing a car that came from their factory with the bodywork and name of a different manufacturer. I can’t see how Lola then falls in love with doing the same thing in reverse to a Dallara chassis. I hope (there goes that word again) to be proven wrong by Lola, Swift, etc. I really do.

• Tony Cotman says that despite my estimation that the losing chassis constructors won’t want to build aero kits, some have expressed an interest. “Understand they only just were told this morning. So a couple of them have already asked us for some detailed parameters on what they need to do, which is obviously awesome if it goes that way. So we entice it, obviously.”

• Cotman hopes (man, that word is on overload today) the small IndyCar teams can benefit from the aero kits the bigger teams could (oops, there goes another one) produce. “Obviously, we’re trying to entice either engine manufacturers or any kind of corporation who wants to do it. I’ll repeat a Penske example. Penske used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars looking for half a pound less drag on a sidepod mirror. So I think the big teams particularly are still going to spend their million plus dollars on R&D. What we hope out of it in that situation is the smaller teams can sit back, see how it kind of performs and go along and spend 70 grand [to buy a Penske aero kit]. Because at the end of the day, the little guys are not going to spend a million bucks. If they’re not spending it now, they’re not going to spend it in the future. But maybe it can entice technology partners, which is someone I think has been shut out to this point, to get involved with them, come in and design their own kit. And we end up with five or six named vehicles out there. Is it going to happen overnight? Absolutely not. Anyone that says it is dreaming. But I do expect to see some kits out there prior to Indy in 2012.”

Tight Timelines

• Getting wrapped up in the built in speedway, Indiana angle seems misguided with such a late start to the 2012 process. It was mentioned on multiple occasions that the timeline to produce the 2012 car and any alternative aero kits will be extremely tight. It could push things uncomfortably close to the start of the 2012 IndyCar season. With that known, would it not have been smarter to have Dallara produce the first batch of cars – enough to at least supply one car per team -- from Italy?

• Aero kit manufacturers will need Dallara’s design in hand long before the first chassis goes into production. Bruce Ashmore said, “There’s really no reason why they couldn’t get the information that we need out by say April 2011 and that would give you plenty of body kits on the racetrack during 2012. So that would be the type of timeframe. You could define the envelope that I need to work in really by April 2011.”

Longer Life Components

• TGBB said today “We're also expecting a significant increase in the life of the parts. This will result in an overall reduction in running costs of nearly 50 percent.” Lowering costs by almost half will somehow increase the life of components? I don’t get this one. I know I’m posing the question backwards, but if the series is looking to Dallara to produce a much cheaper chassis, and one that is significantly lighter than the current IR07, I’m not clear on how those two objectives are met while providing a greater lifespan for components. Lightness comes from the use of things like carbon fiber, but that’s not cheap. Durability comes from the use of materials like steel, but that adds weight. Gil de Ferran explained the thinking behind TGBB’s statement, and while I get part of it, I’m still a bit fuzzy. “If you make a component that costs $10 but only lasts one race, that theoretically is equivalent to a component that costs $100 and that lasts 10 races. So the cost equation is a more complex one than the sticker price. And shall we say, during a lot of these discussions, the discussion wasn’t only around the sticker price but was around the whole cost equation.”

Engine Costs

• According to one panel member, after a lot of discussions with dedicated racing engine manufacturers, the maximum price tag of $690,000 per engine was established, and that is for a lease. While the full details of what that cost includes remains to be seen (does that $690K come with three engine and 10 rebuilds, one engine and no rebuilds, two and five?...) it is still a big number for a small engine needing to make good, but not crazy amounts of power. I'd ask the panel to share how they consider a bespoke IndyCar racing engine -- one that costs a fortune to manufacture while having no ties to a production engine whatsoever -- is in any way relevant or cost-effective for an auto manufacturer. I seem to recall those last two items as pillars of the 2012 decision making process.

Hmmn. Maybe we can get Citgo to sponsor the Push-to-Pass buttons. (Marshall Pruett)

• Rick Long, the engine expert on the ICONIC panel, countered my opinion with a nice historical fact, and put in this context, he’s correct. “One thing that always gets me kind of wound up is in 1992 and 1993 your engine lease was 2 ½ million dollars and now we’re down to basically $600,000. And the cost of equipment is just a lot more money and the quality is a lot better.”

• Provided auto manufacturers actually commission 2012 engines, it will require a massive investment. When I saw the nearly $700,000 figure, I knew that non-stressed engines had been bypassed as a 2012 solution. The only way a 2.4L 4-cylinder turbo goes for $700K is if it is built like the CART engines of the late 1990s. For that sum, expect to see miniature versions of the jewels that Cosworth, Ilmor, Honda, and Toyota produced before the costs became unmanageable and they chose to leave the series. This feels like history repeating itself.

• Leasing IndyCar engines for $690,000 is economical when compared to the $1.5M teams are spending per annum on the current Honda lease/rebuild program. Teams benefit from the 2012 engine rules, but it does nothing to entice new manufacturers to join in the fun.

• Engine manufacturers have had the option to build engines to compete with Honda for years, yet have chosen to stay away. Whether it was because of Honda’s impressive record or the overly rich sum required to build a new engine from scratch, the same manufacturers who’ve chosen to ignore the series through 2010 will be the very same manufacturers that the series hope will jump in for 2012. If it’s no less expensive to design/built/support a 2012 engine, despite the shift to something smaller and greener, how likely is it that manufacturers will change their minds? In this economic climate, keeping the sky high costs of building a new engine in place is a deterrent.

Non-stressed Engines

• With the intent to have the 2012 Dallara chassis manufactured to only accept fully-stressed engines, the series has embraced the status quo. While my belief that small, independent engine builders, and even some of the smaller auto companies would have an interest in using race-prepped production-based engines in the IndyCar Series was appreciated by some of the panel members, limiting engines to fully-stressed members leaves open-wheel racing in the same situation it finds itself today.

• Referring back to Tony Purnell’s “Our goal is to reach out and challenge the automotive and aerospace industries. So come on, Ford, come on GM, Lotus, Ferrari, come on Lockheed, come on Boeing, come on you engineers working in small technology businesses. We want you to rise to the challenge.” I can only assume he was speaking in terms of aero kits, because the use of fully-stressed engines eliminates the engineers working in small technology businesses. Odd how the 2012 plan cherishes small businesses when it comes to the chassis, but totally ignores them on the engine front.

Push to Pass

• The Push-to-Pass button delivering a 100 horsepower boost is just ridiculous. I heard very few things today that qualify as being stupid, but this was one of them. It’s a pushbutton Hanford device. It’s cartoonish. It also requires engine manufacturers to set their power levels low in order to handle a 100 hp jump, or to overly stress a small displacement engine to jump from 700 to 800 repeatedly. I can only hope that by the time the ICONIC panel sets their final rules, the PtP is set to a shot of an extra 25 horsepower, and no more. Making passes in an IndyCar should require more than having a functional thumb, and Milk and Doughnuts (Milka Duno) has two of them.

No Show of Support

• Today’s announcement needed to have a long line of supportive team owners – from both ends of the paddock – in front of the assembled media and the many fans in attendance. It was a day where the series needed to present a unified front.

• But… Penske was out of town, as was Penske Racing president Tim Cindric. Chip Ganassi had a trip to Europe scheduled. No Michael Andretti. Dennis Reinbold was in Michigan, and even Tony George was fishing in Colorado. John Barnes changed his mind and attended, so good on him, but in general, the series was left on their own. Not good. We also had very few drivers. Will Power was in attendance, as was Sarah Fisher, but the only two other IndyCar drivers to make the effort were part-timers – Tomas Scheckter and J.R. Hildebrand. In terms of first impressions, and except for the few drivers and owners that did show up, it looked like the majority of the competitors didn’t care and couldn’t be bothered.

Technical Tidbits

• The 2012 engines will be full stressed members, identical to the current Honda and all of the previous IndyCar engines for the past three decades. According to one ICONIC panel member, many of the discussions they held with auto manufacturers yielded responses that favored non-production-based engines, and as a result, the panel chose not to implement the use of cradles.

• With just the 2012 Honda engine on the docket, Dallara currently plans to design the engine-to-chassis mounting interface based off the Honda. Although Honda’s V6 has a somewhat narrow V, Dallara expects any inline-4 engines to produce a mounting bracket that would branch out from the front of the motor to slide over the wider, V6-inspired studs attached to the back of the tub. Mounting points for the bottom of each engine should require much less material to adapt to the Honda-based chassis stud layout.

• Look for engine leases to remain the norm, but Rick Long says engine sales remain an option. “Basically, between Honda and a couple of other manufacturers and some cost projections that were done. Like if we went the four-cylinder route with your Cosworth type programs, what would be projections to build an engine for our application? Most everybody, unfortunately, wants to lease engines instead of selling, and so naturally most everybody’s going to offer you a discount if you lease. The general format is to get in a position to be able run them 2000 miles. If you do that you’re probably looking at using five or six engine rebuilds if you use one engine.”

• Dallara sees their new technical center as a place that would benefit their GRAND-AM Daytona Prototype chassis, which currently has all of its R&D and manufacturing done in Italy.

• Suspension, brakes, gearbox, and the majority of the 2012 car will be spec, but areas such as electronics, wheels, radiators, exhausts and engine ancillaries remain undefined.

• With its original design intended for ovals, the addition of bonded anti-intrusion panels added to the IR07’s weight. The details are still unclear, but with the expressed plans for the 2012 Dallara to be a road course car that can run on ovals, designing a lighter tub with the anti-intrusion cladding in mind from the outset will account for some of the 200-pound weight loss.

• Look for more paddle shifting. Asked about its use for 2012, Dallara’s Sam Garrett told me “We’re still needing to define the gearbox parameters with the League, but I think it would be safe to say the new car will have no fewer options than the current gearbox.”

• Rick Long expects for engine manufacturers to be given a lower cost, spec ECU for 2012. “That’s a little detail, and the big details need to be ironed out some more. But I would say we’re probably going to have to go more towards a spec type controller just to keep costs down.”

• Dallara has been working on an update to the current IR07 for the past five years, dating back to when the last new IndyCar chassis was meant to launch. Using a few of the development concepts that have emerged over those five years, Dallara intends to pen a brand new chassis, rather than attempt to simply modify their 5-year-old stillborn design.

• Tony Cotman sees the possibility of more technical freedom after the 2012 car is produced, provided the economy has improved. “We’ve talked about multiple suspension options, you still got to buy it from Dallara. Leaving the shocks open as they are. I think our perspective from the Iconic committee is to open things up. People like a challenge, let them challenge. Anytime we open it up, how do you control the costs? So we need to be cognizant of that. But open it up and let it go. I don’t see free dampers or anything like that changing. The good thing about it is there is lot of areas or lot of room to make changes down the road if the series sees they need to. So if they want to open more up, open more up, be my guest. I think that, unfortunately, at least for the moment, we need to be cognizant of the cost.”

What some of the other chassis constructors had to say:

DeltaWing: “We will have to sit down and regroup. I’ll have to meet with my partners and decide on which direction to take the company,” DeltaWing designer Ben Bowlby told me. “We’re understandably gutted as the decision that’s been made, but I’m determined to see a DeltaWing race somewhere, in some form of competition.”

Lola: In a call placed to Lola, which was later responded to via email, the British firm did not want to comment on any aspect of the panel’s decision to choose Dallara, or on any potential interest they might have to produce an aero kit at the moment. If the tone from the normally cheery group at Lola can be taken from their email, it was a dark day in the UK.

Wirth Research: In a call placed to Nick Wirth of Wirth Research, producers of the Virgin F1 car, the 2009 ALMS championship-winning Acura ARX-02a LMP1 car and the 2010 Le Mans LMP2 class-winning HPD-ARX01c, and former IndyCar development partners of Honda, the 2012 announcement spurred the lanky Brit to reach out to his board of directors. “I read the IndyCar release and thought, ‘this suits a company like ours quite well.’ I sent an email to my group to discuss the topic shortly.”

BAT: Bruce Ashmore was highly receptive to the aero kit concept. “What it’s done is when we were going to form BAT Engineering, that was really for the whole car project. So now it’s broken down to the bodywork. This is something that Ashmore Design could get involved in. And I think it’s a very exciting concept. I think it’s a way that I can get to the Indy 500. The aero side of the business is the thing that I’ve always enjoyed. And that was the part of the car project that I always controlled.

“I think it’s got the potential of being quite an exciting look because if you take, when you look at a car you see the engine cover and the side part, that’s the big part of the car and there’s a lot of development in the suspension, transmission, uprights in the current car that you can’t see. So they’ve turned it around the other way and locked all those components in and opened up the outer, big visual parts. I think if there’s a way of being involved in the Indy 500 I think a lot of people will try and do that. So I think this concept has been discussed several times with several different series over the years. I’m really pleased IndyCar have sat down and chosen it as their course.”

Funnies and Oddities

• Declan Brennan forwarded a Tweet sent by Danica Patrick in the middle of the 2012 presentation: “In LA for the espys. I am presenting best male athlete! Thanks for picking my tissot watch for tonight! How far has she checked out from the world of open-wheel?

• I momentarily looked away in embarrassment for the series when they cut to the made-for-TV ICONIC panel voting footage. It was the old ‘We’ve put five names in a hat and will pull one out to determine the winner of the IndyCar lottery’ trick. My guess is that all five names were the same, or in this case, there was one name on everyone’s cell phone, and it started with the letter ‘D.’ I think LeBron used the same model of phone to choose Miami over Cleveland…

• If the series wanted to do a bad, pre-recorded voting tribunal, why not hire Jeff Probst to do one, Survivor: Indianapolis style. He could have asked the seven men their choices for the 2012 IndyCar, and walked over to extinguish Tiki torches with the names of Lola, Swift, BAT and DeltaWing on them one by one. That would have been 100 times less awkward than the canned ICONIC-panel-votes-using-Verizon-cell-phones routine. Painful. Very painful.

• The Dallara tub hologram that was shown to everyone was NOT the 2012 tub. Dallara was given three days to come up with an animation that would demonstrate the 2012 concept, but members of the Dallara team seemed rather amused that they were rushed to produce a fake 2012 car on such short notice.

• I’ve watched or listened to ESPN News for a few hours straight, and I’ve yet to see or hear a single mention of the 2012 strategy announcement. I did learn, though, that French soccer player Thierry Henry is coming to America to play for the New York Red Bulls. I also learned that one of the Miami Heat’s former bench warmers pulled a muscle of some sorts while training. I think. I’m trying not to be pessimistic here, but when ESPN, a longstanding partner of the series, ignores the biggest announcement in years but opts to include a segment on one of France’s fading soccer superstars coming to America, methinks the 2012 strategy failed to capture the imaginations of the major media outlets. If we can agree that news of the 2012 announcement needed to reach beyond the borders of the dedicated auto racing media, I’m not sure that was accomplished. We’ll know more on Thursday when the newspapers come out.

• I received a text from Sam Collins, Racecar Engineering Magazine’s deputy editor, during the presentation that embodied what I was thinking at the time, and what some others shared later. “spec tub. spec gearbox. spec suspension. spec brakes. spec tyres. what’s the point of doing a non-spec body?”

• I asked Tony Cotman when he was expecting to receive his Screen Actors Guild membership card after the acting job he and his panel members put on with the pre-recorded vote. He laughed, saying “You liked that did you? It just took me a little bit, took me a few minutes to figure out how to use the phone, actually. But I was good, right?” Get that man a cameo on Entourage, STAT.

Did the IZOD IndyCar Series make the right call for 2012?customer surveys

What do you think about their chassis choice?Market Research

Was Dallara the right choice to be the sole supplier?online survey

How many companies do you think will build 2012 aero kits?survey software

Should other parts of the 2012 car be open tech?online survey

Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com’s Auto Racing Editor, and also covers IndyCar and sportscar racing for the site. Pruett grew up at ‘Pruett's Olde English Garage,’ his father's shelter for abused foreign cars, and spent his childhood being dragged across the West Coast to help with his dad's amateur racing exploits.

Pruett spent 20 years working in the IRL, CART, IMSA, and most of the known open-wheel feeder series before retiring from active duty in 2001. And in case you were wondering, he isn’t related to Scott Pruett.

Marshall lives in Northern California with his wife Shabral, and can be emailed . He can also be harassed on Twitter .