Polishing a Turd

I’m at odds with how the merits of an open source practice with the 2012 car are being discussed.

I’m completely on board with how the open source/open competition policy could reinvigorate an IndyCar support industry that has been suffocated by single supplier practices. Gasoline Alley used to be filled with a thriving industry of fabricators, designers, electricians and specialist houses that employed throngs of IndyCar experts.

An IndyCar team can spend in one day at a wind tunnel what the average American earns in a year. Does that make sense when those dollars are being spent on a car that debuted in 2003? (LAT)

If open source is adopted by the League, there’s a strong likelihood we’ll see a return to the previous level of small business involvement to support the series.

There’s one aspect of open source I keep hearing about – that it will make it easier for the smaller teams to do better because they will have the exact same equipment as the bigger teams – that falls short of being true.

As we’ve seen far too many times in a spec racing series, money and experience will always trump enthusiasm and equality. That’s not to say a smaller team can’t or won’t break through to find victory circle once or twice a year -- Justin Wilson and Dale Coyne Racing dominated at Watkins Glen in 2009 -- but wins such as theirs are a rarity. And open source won’t change that.

While it’s true that Penske and Ganassi have developed that private bits on their cars that have proven to offer a small advantage, those bits aren’t the reason they dominate the series. They might win by a smaller margin in truly identical equipment, but the wins would keep rolling in. It only serves to prove that in spec racing, the path to success is paved by money and experience.

With more money, teams are capable of hiring the best driving and engineering talent, not to mention investing in exhaustive wind tunnel, CFD, and simulation programs.

A team filled with veterans will usually beat a team with lesser experienced staff, and whether that’s the men performing pit stops, those handling race strategy or the engineers calling for setup changes, the battle of cubic dollars usually favors those with the biggest war chest.

Creating a system where every team can own the same exact equipment as a Penske or Ganassi won’t alter the finishing order inside the top-6. It might not even change it in the top-10.

Where the biggest performance differentiators come from these days is away from the track. In an effort to reduce costs, the League has all but banned track testing. It has served its purpose – teams now spend very little on going to tracks and discovering the fastest way around them – but this ban has only served to drive the costs of virtual testing through the roof.

For the smaller teams, the costs of virtual testing are the same as what they previously spent on track testing. For the bigger teams, that ratio of virtual to real has crept up to a ratio of 1.5:1, if not higher for the most affluent teams.

“The costs might be hidden from the fans, but it’s still there,” one leading engineer told me. “It doesn’t matter what it is – we will spend every penny we can to quantify the car through simulation and CFD, and the speed it can produce is directly proportional to how much is spent. It just doesn’t happen out in public so the average fan doesn’t know it’s going on.”

And that’s the reality of what the current rules allow. As long as teams are able to spend whatever they can afford, there will always be a disparity in speed and results. Rather than burn up money on engines, gearboxes and tires, it gets spent on visits to wind tunnels like ARC’s 50% scale tunnel in Indy or Windshear’s 100% scale tunnel in North Carolina.

A trip to Windshear will cost you tens of thousands of dollar per day, and for those who can afford it -- and it’s only IndyCar’s upper crust -- visits to Ken Anderson’s pride and joy come frequently (and anonymously). While teams spent money on wind tunnels before the ban, their use has spiked in the post-track testing IndyCar Series.

And because all of this happens away from the public eye, it has fostered an ‘out of sight; out of mind’ approach by the League. But the problem doesn’t stop there.

Away from the wind tunnels, virtual testing goes on 365 days a year. Every team has been forced to invest in the costly software applications and software experts it requires. The penalty of not going virtual means being buried at the bottom of the time sheets and finishing at the back of the back.

The small- and medium-sized teams carry out the same CFD and simulation programs, and some even fork out for a few hours of wind tunnel testing, but the level of funding behind those three key areas of IndyCar development pale in comparison to what the big teams can bring to bear.

It’s not hard to see how the lessons learned in 40 hours of wind tunnel testing carried out by Penske results in gains that dwarf what an HVM or a Dale Coyne learns during the 5 hours they can afford.

Apply that same model to the disparity in CFD and simulation time, and we’re left with very little guesswork as to why the same teams always win. You can plug the current Dallara into that wind tunnel/CFD/simulation process, or an open source 2012 car from any one of the four proposed manufacturers, and the results will be the same.

It’s like saying that a basketball court is an even playing field because everyone uses the same ball. Tell that to a lowly team like the New Jersey Nets when LeBron, Shaq and the Cleveland Cavaliers come to visit, or when Kobe, Pau and the Los Angeles Lakers come to play. The ball might be identical, but the available cash to stack the bigger teams with talent is anything but equal.

It leaves us with a reality that is almost impossible to police: It isn’t the tool that matters – a basketball, a football or an IndyCar – what matters is the team that plays with them. Until the IndyCar Series goes so far as to limit budgets, to cap salaries, and to balance everyone’s bank accounts, the myth of open source or of spec racing being a practice that will empower the ‘have nots’ to become the ‘haves’ will continue to be just that: A myth.

If there has been a benefit to forcing IndyCar teams off of the race track, it has been in the vast amounts of knowledge they’ve gained about every aspect of their vehicles. While simulation and CFD has been used since the 1990s, the full power of those virtual tools has only been maximized in the last decade, and especially since IndyCar banned open testing.

The time honored protocols have changed – mechanics no longer load the trailer and head out for three days of testing at Putnam Park where the driver and engineer were solely responsible for unlocking the car’s speed.

A respected, successful and tenured team owner like Bobby Rahal would make a perfect paddock delegate to vote on major decisions that would impact the budgets of every IndyCar team. (LAT)

Today, a new layer of IndyCar employment has become mandatory – the hiring of PhD-level engineers to manage and run sim programs that cost well into the six-figure range. Many have never bolted an a-arm onto a Dallara, much less engineered a car on feel or intuition, rather than using data acquisition, but their place in the team is vital the everyone’s success.

Spec cars, engines, tires and simulation engineers have created the highest level of knowledge the sport has ever known, but it hasn’t saved anyone a penny. It has actually ended up costing most teams more, and a move to open source bidding and manufacturing won’t address this whatsoever.

I’m not one who believes the playing field should be leveled, but I would like to see the League wise up a bit and pump the brakes on some of the cubic dollars teams are spending away from the race track to extract a fraction of a percent advantage over their rivals.

Most teams already know about as much as one can possibly learn about the Dallara/Honda/Firestone package. It has been the subject of thousands and thousands of hours of simulation and CFD, as much wind tunnel time as they can afford, and it has all been done in the name of polishing the same turd a little bit better than the next guy can.

I’m all for innovation, but that isn’t what is coming out of all of this work and extreme spending. This is a case of refining something that is already so heavily refined, teams are spending between 25-40 percent of their annual budgets on chasing a 1/10th of a second advantage.

That’s anywhere from 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 dollars each year in pursuit of a fraction of a second that by my estimation, IndyCar teams would be better served to put that money in the bank, or to strike it from their budgets altogether. This isn’t F1 – IndyCar teams don’t need to spend themselves into oblivion just for the sake of it.

More than half of the IndyCar paddock is strapped for cash, but because League officials no longer see teams pounding around test tracks at will, they believe they’ve helped teams to address the poor state of the economy. Unfortunately, the exact opposite has happened.

In the best case scenarios, some teams have continued to spend the exact same amount on testing. For others, it has gone up at least 50 percent. When going to the track was the common practice, off-track testing was kept in check. Since off-track testing is just about the only things teams can to these days, they are always on the lookout for new technology to employ in order to find an edge, and as we know, new technologies are always the most expensive.

The toothpaste is now out of the tube. Teams can’t go back to the days of primarily lapping around test tracks. The march of technology is in full stride, and that’s not a bad thing, unless the League allows the off-track testing costs to continue to get out of hand.

Racing is about competition, and mandating the use of spec cars won’t change that. Banning open testing won’t change that. Teams, big or small, will spend whatever they can to beat their rivals – that’s what they are supposed to do.

If the League wants to reduce the cost of competing in their series until the 2012 car gets here, lock down the virtual testing. Not for good, mind you, but at least until the current dog is put out of its misery. Take what Ganassi, Penske, Andretti, Panther, KV, and the rest of the teams will spend in 2010 on off-track testing with their Dallaras, and at least 10,000,000 dollars will be wasted this year.

As much as I love technical freedom, allowing teams to continue to pour millions of dollars each year into learning about a chassis that debuted in 2003 borders on criminal.

IndyCar Competition Committee

Provided the Delta Wing group is allowed to act as the technical working group that liaises between the series and the paddock, how about establishing an IndyCar Competition Committee, where the paddock nominates one member to sit in and vote on all major decisions that would affect the owners.

I’m wanting to steer VERY clear of suggestion that an ownership group ala CART is formed; history hasn’t looked back kindly on that endeavor, but I do think that when critical decisions like setting the number of races for the following season or choosing which TV partner to sign with are brought to the table, the men and women that have to foot the bills to get to those races, and the folks that have to pitch sponsors based on anticipated TV ratings must have a voice in the process.

If one resounding message came from the formation of the Delta Wing group, it was the paddock saying, ‘Don’t spend our money without asking us first.’ Extend that into the non-technical realm of IndyCar racing, and starting with 2009, I’d bet things would look somewhat different.

First, the move to Versus would have been vetoed. Teams having to secure new sponsors have heard a common message – that companies only want to spend for the ABC races. It’s what people said would happen the switch to Versus was announced, and it continues to be true today. Reduce IndyCar’s TV audience to what you’d get for a WNBA game, and sponsors will look elsewhere.

When it comes to a 17-race calendar, the paddock would make sure the number of races would be set to a realistic amount that takes into account what they can afford. I’d imagine we’d have something closer to 13 or 14 this year. Calculate all of the flights, hotel rooms, meals, miles on the Honda engines, and everything else that consumes money at each race, and you’d likely see a schedule that fits the economy.

I realize that most promoters have multi-year contracts – shorter terms with options for additional years would be a wise shift, regardless of the economy – and additional races can be added back when it’s affordable.

If the owners had a seat at the table (and that seat carried some weight) I’d like to believe we’d be in a better position than we are now. Adopting some form of sliding scale of costs and expenditures each season – something that appraises the current economic climate and adjusts accordingly – is needed to keep the League sharp, and able to quickly react when times are tough and when sponsorship is bountiful.

I’ll admit that I’m weary, and not completely trusting in the series to make the right business decisions when it comes to their entrants. Like the move to Versus, they’ve shown they will make a deal if it’s prosperous for the League -- even if it cripples the paddock.

New series CEO Randy Bernard has already reached out to the paddock on a number of occasions already, fielding opinions on a variety of topics. Provided this trend continues, maybe the paddock won’t need an official seat to be included in the decision making process after all.

WTF

• 14 Indy Lights cars test at Barber. One American driver was amongst them.

• The FIA finally launched their oddly titled ‘World GT1’ series. For something claiming to be ‘World,’ and where 33% of the manufacturers are from North America, how does World GT1 manage to leave a North American date off their calendar? World GT1 will visit Brazil and Argentina, but that’s as close as they’ll come in 2010.

MISC

• After two years of racing in the ALMS, Lou Gigliotti will debut his new GRAND-AM Rolex GT Corvette this weekend at Homestead-Miami, piloted by Kelly Collins and Eric Lux.

• Shane Lewis and Richard Zahn will debut a new Bank of America-sponsored Porsche for Autohaus Motorsports at the same race. Exactly how the BofA car will be embraced in a series with such close ties to SunTrust bank remains to be seen.

• I caught the last five minutes of Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana, and felt compelled to order the DVD. I’ll give it a full review shortly, but if the beginning and middle are anything like the ending, I have a new favorite auto racing movie.



The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

Marshall Pruett is SPEEDtv.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, no, he isn’t related to Scott Pruett.

Marshall lives in Northern California with his wife Shabral.