{"id":21725,"date":"2018-01-18T14:10:12","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T18:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=21725"},"modified":"2018-01-18T14:10:12","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T18:10:12","slug":"stars-come-out-for-indy-race-car-detroit-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/stars-come-out-for-indy-race-car-detroit-reveal","title":{"rendered":"Stars come out for Indy race car Detroit reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Indycar_panel\"What major reveal at the Detroit auto show brought in GM Product Chief Mark Reuss, Detroit mogul Roger Penske, racing legend Mario Andretti, and racing superstar Josef Newgarden?<\/p>\n<\/div>

If you answered the new Dallara IndyCar, you\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

With a captive audience of some 5,000 auto journalists at Cobo Center, racing organizations have become savvy in using Detroit to do reveals of their own vehicles.<\/p>\n

Last year NASCAR unveiled its new Camry racer as part of the Toyota Camry production car debut and this year Acura is showing its new prototype racer (run by Penske\u2019s race team) ahead of this month\u2019s 24 Hours of Daytona.<\/p>\n

IndyCar used its press conference to debut its landmark, all-new aerodynamics package \u2014 the wings \u2019n\u2019 things that suck open-wheel race cars to the ground, especially on road courses like the Detroit Grand Prix on Belle Isle. Italian manufacturer Dallara makes IndyCar\u2019s chassis and aero kits.<\/p>\n

But as the celebrities indicate, IndyCar\u2019s high profile brings together a lot of interests, from Big Auto corporate marketing to Detroit\u2019s Renaissance to the place of American racing in the sports marketplace. All those subjects came up on stage in a moderated, post-reveal discussion.<\/p>\n

Begin with the new IndyCar introduced by the Hollywood-handsome Newgarden, who won the American open-wheel championship for Team Penske last year.<\/p>\n

While most performance cars on the floor tout increased downforce \u2014 Chevy\u2019s winged Corvette ZR1 monster boasts nearly 950 pounds, for example \u2014 for better cornering, the IndyCar series has experienced the issue of too\u00a0much<\/i>\u00a0downforce. Festooned with aerofoils, last year\u2019s design made a staggering 6,000 pounds of downforce \u2014 making the cars faster, but also making them difficult to follow closely so turbulent was their wake (the same reason Boeing 747s can\u2019t follow each other closely on airport landings).<\/p>\n

\u00a0The turbulence makes passing \u2014 and therefore, the close-combat racing that drivers and fans alike crave \u2014 difficult, so the new IndyCar aero package is redesigned to make 20 percent less downforce.<\/div>\n

\u201cWe think it\u2019s going to be great. It\u2019s going to mean more passing,\u201d said Newgarden, standing next to a red IndyCar which is more aesthetically appealing without garish winglets crowding the car\u2019s sleek, coke-bottle shape. \u201cIt\u2019s going to mean better battles between drivers, and you won\u2019t get that anywhere else in the open-wheel racing world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think ultra-high tech, ultra-high downforce Formula One, which has become a parade with little passing.<\/p>\n

\u201cToo much turbulence is what drivers complain about,\u201d said Andretti, still looking racy at 77. \u201cThey can\u2019t get close to each other. You have to keep in mind the show itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every great sporting organization has to put on a show. It\u2019s how they attract crowds, sponsorships, and big bucks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s those crowds that interest GM\u2019s Reuss whose Chevy brand is major sponsor \u2014 and engine provider \u2014 for the series.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great fan base to reach,\u201d he said of the IndyCar series, which saw its TV audience grow 3 percent last year. The Detroit Grand Prix\u2019s doubleheader (called the Dual in Detroit) alone attracted 100,000 spectators and another 1.8 million on ABC\u2019s broadcasts of the weekend event.<\/p>\n

Reuss said racing also hones GM technology \u2014 especially in competition with arch-rival Honda, which also supplies engines for the series. Henio Arcangeli, Jr., Honda North America\u2019s chief, joined Reuss on stage to tout the importance of the IndyCar series to his company\u2019s marketing and technical strategies. Reuss, a licensed track driver, said the twin-turbo V-6 used by IndyCar trickles down in to the turbo-4 engines found in Chevy production cars like the Camaro and Equinox.<\/p>\n

Like any other auto debut, the new IndyCar has to make a business case, and Penske said the new aero package will make racing more affordable \u2014 which, in turn, may attract more manufacturers and more competition to the series.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could sell out old car chassis, for example, and then a new team would just have to buy the new standard aero kits to outfit them,\u201d said Penske. \u201cBefore, it was costly to engineer the aero.\u201d The Captain puts the cost of a new chassis at $500,000. The once-size-fits-all aero kits are another $150,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a customer, competition, and driver perspective, the new IndyCar is going to be a home run,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Andretti is the only driver to have ever won the Indianapolis 500 (IndyCar\u2019s marquee event), NASCAR\u2019s Daytona 500, and the Formula One championship. As the car debut wound down, he noticed all the beaming faces on stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is a negative in all this, it\u2019s that I don\u2019t have an (IndyCar) ride yet,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What major reveal at the Detroit auto show brought in GM Product Chief Mark Reuss, Detroit mogul Roger Penske, racing legend Mario Andretti, and racing superstar Josef Newgarden? If you answered the new Dallara IndyCar, you\u2019re right. With a captive audience of some 5,000 auto journalists at Cobo Center, racing organizations have become savvy in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21725"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21726,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21725\/revisions\/21726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}