Champ Cars vs IRL at Milwaukee

[Amar7605]

I got these from another forum, and the results were startling!

mechanical bull
Senior Member

Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Wisconsin
Posts: 219
I don't know about you guys, but this makes me feel good.
The IRL cars are once again much slower than the Champ cars. The pole time at Milwaukee this weekend would have been 16th on the grid for the champ car race. I know that they are two different rule packages, but for a spec series with a chassis development freeze that is 2-3 years old to be faster than a similar series with chassis and engine competition is sweet for us champ car fans.

CHAMP CAR QUALIFYING FROM MILWAUKEE

1 R. Hunter-Reay 4 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.509 181.150 291.532

2 S. Bourdais 2 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.667 179.765 289.303 0.158

3 P. Carpentier 7 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.740 179.132 288.284 0.231 0.073

4 M. Dominguez 55 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.785 178.744 287.660 0.276 0.045

5 P. Tracy 1 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.800 178.615 287.452 0.291 0.015

6 R. Lavin 3 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.809 178.538 287.328 0.300 0.009

7 A. Tagliani 8 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.815 178.487 287.246 0.306 0.006

8 J. Vasser 12 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.854 178.153 286.709 0.345 0.039

9 M. Jourdain Jr. 9 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.862 178.085 286.599 0.353 0.008

10 B. Junqueira 6 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.867 178.042 286.530 0.358 0.005


11 O. Servia 11 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 20.916 177.625 285.859 0.407 0.049

12 J. Wilson 34 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 21.184 175.378 282.243 0.675 0.268

13 A. Allmendinger 10 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 21.352 173.998 280.022 0.843 0.168

14 R. Gonzalez 21 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 21.483 172.937 278.314 0.974 0.131

15 M. Haberfeld 5 Ford-Cosworth/Reynard/Bridgestone 21.568 172.255 277.217 1.059 0.085


16 G. Mazzacane 19 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 21.907 169.590 272.928 1.398 0.339

17 N. Philippe 17 Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone 21.955 169.219 272.331 1.446 0.048

18 A. Sperafico 14 Ford-Cosworth/Reynard/Bridgestone 22.388 165.946 267.064 1.879 0.433



IRL QUALIFYING FROM MILWAUKEE
1) Vitor Meira, No. 17 Rahal-Letterman G-Force/Honda, 21.5781sec/169.338mph

2) Tony Kanaan, No. 11 7-Eleven/Andretti Green Racing Dallara/Honda, 21.6730/168.597

3) Buddy Rice, No. 15 Argent Mortgage/Pioneer/Rahal-Letterman G-Force/Honda, 21.7149/168.272

4) Sam Hornish Jr., No. 6 Marlboro Team Penske, Dallara/Toyota, 21.7167/168.258

5) Helio Castroneves, No. 3 Marlboro Team Penske, Dallara/Toyota, 21.8354/167.343

6) Adrian Fernandez, No. 5 Quaker State/Tecate Fernandez Racing G-Force/Honda, 21.7499/168.001

7) Dario Franchitti, No. 27 Arca-EX/Andretti Green Racing Dallara/Honda, 21.8394/167.312

8) Tomas Scheckter, No. 4 Pennzoil/Panther Racing Dallara/Chevrolet, 21.9027/166.829

9) Jaques Lazier, No. 20 Patrick Racing Dallara/Chevrolet, 21.9625/166.375

10) Darren Manning, No. 10 Target/Chip Ganassi Racing G-Force/Toyota, 22.0014/166.080

11) Bryan Herta, No. 7 XM Satellite Radio/Andretti Green Racing Dallara/Honda, 22.0282/165.878

12) Townsend Bell, No. 2 Menards/Panther Racing Dallara/Chevrolet, 22.0351/165.826

13) Felipe Giaffone, No. 24 Team Purex/Dreyer & Reinbold Racing Dallara/Chevrolet, 22.1173/165.210

14) Scott Dixon, No. 9 Target/Chip Ganassi Racing G-Force/Toyota, 22.2236/164.420

15) Ed Carpenter, No. 52 Red Bull Cheever Racing Dallara/Chevrolet, 22.2428/164.278

16) Alex Barron, No. 51 Red Bull Cheever Racing Dallara/Chevrolet, 22.2585/164.162

17) Dan Wheldon, No. 26 Klein Tools/Jim Beam /Andretti Green Racing Dallara/Honda, 22.2712/164.068

18) Mark Taylor, No. 13 Access Motorsports G-Force/Honda, 22.3255/163.669

19) Tora Takagi, No. 12 Pioneer/Mo Nunn Racing Dallara/Toyota, 22.4383/162.847

20) A.J. Foyt IV, No. 14 Conseco/A.J. Foyt Racing Dallara/Toyota, 22.5738/161.869

21) Scott Sharp, No. 8 Delphi Dallara/Toyota, 22.6202/161.537

22) Kosuke Matsuura, No. 55 Panasonic/ARTA/S. Aguri Fernandez Racing G-Force/Honda, 22.8413/159.973



Clearly at this track Champ Cars are much superior than the Indy Racing League. Notch one more for OWRS!!!!!


You spelled "Indy" wrong - DF

[Down F0rce]

Champcars are faster at Milwaukee. So what?

[N I Tram]

The IRL race was probably more exciting, and certainly had more overtaking. This is just being petty and narrow-minded. I don't see what pure speed proves. The IRL's chassis design was always leant mroe towards overtaking that brute speed - the man on the street doesn't notice an extra 10mph anywway.

[1200Datto27]

Ovals, So What!

[Kicking-back]

Yep. The difference in speed was not noticeable, and while not a thriller, the IRL race was more interesting than the Champ Car one at the same track.

[Mouser]

It would be interesting to see how champ cars perform
at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Do you think Tony George
would be confident enough in his IRL to prove who's fastest?

[indycool]

Mouser, have you forgotten the fact that the IRL went from 3.5 liter engines to 3.0 liter engines to slow the cars down for safety reasons? Have you forgotten the fact that Arie Luyendyk holds the track record at Indy at 238 with a year-old CART spec car in '96 before the IRL went to the normally aspirated formula? Have you forgotten the fact that the then-CART cars were so fast at Texas that the drivers got vertigo and the race was cancelled at 10 o'clock on race morning?

[BootsOntheSide]

Did you say anything when CART went to Montreal and lapped outside the 107% F1 time? Does that make Montreal's race, or CART in general, inferior to F1? I don't think so. Very poor argument rally.

[indycool]

What Boots said.....

[Uesque]

A better comparison would be attendance, anyone have the numbers?

[JohnSSC]

Uesque is asking for the most important comparison of all!

I have seen Formula Ford races that were more exciting than Vancouver. That does not mean that I think that Formula Foolish is better than CC or that it "proves" anything about CC for that matter.

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally posted by Uesque
A better comparison would be attendance, anyone have the numbers?

According to the Indy Star this morning:

Race attendace for IRL on Sunday: 37,821

Champ Car Race Crowd in June: 25,000 (estimated)

NOTE:

In Saturday's Star, the promoter at the track said he was expecting a larger crowd for the IRL race, and that sales at that time were stronger than they were for the OWRS race....

No figures were given for the full weekend of attendance...

[Kicking-back]

I'd have thought the numbers watching on television were ultimately more important than attendance at the track.

[Snrub]

Of course CART was faster than the IRL, I don't see why that was a surprise to anyone. I agree with the others who've said that has little bearing on the racing. CART could theoretically easily change the engines to the old formula where they reved to 16k and the level of boost when they actually reved lower than that but made a LOT of power. (I'm not going to cite the peak figure because everyone always argues it with me ) Does the fact that they only run 700hp on ovals mean that the series is worse than when they ran a lot more?

I didn't get to see the IRL race because the CART race was on, bit I did do a but of flipping on the commercials. There was definately a good crowd.

Milwaukee holds 45k. There's no question the IRL race had a good crowd. I say this without any injection of bias, but after *American* RHR won in June I had a feeling it would boost the IRL attendance. That may or may not have been the reason for the higher attendance, but I think there's a good chance it was a factor. Us CART die-hards were obviously hoping the IRL would have worse attendance, but clearly it didn't happen.

Before we discussed CART attendance. For the weekend it was ~48k, so 25k on race day is probably in the ballpark.

[BootsOntheSide]

The IRL attendance being about 50% higher is what I'd've expected - not too shabby for either series, but good evidence of the state of play in open-wheel racing.

I doubt RHR's victory in the CART race boosted the IRL one, but the race being later in summer, and the surprise emergence of Buddy Rice as a title challenger, might've done.

[f1manoz]

I don't really see the point in comparing the two considering the cars are completely different...

[sr230772]

i dis agree with boots take out indy add up 10 races over a season on average carts going to come out on top on track attendance easy,on tv no doubt irl is going to come out on top but the point is you may very well say two differnt seris but the point is there always going to be conpared its human nature as for f1 on montreal give cart all the f1 gizmos then conpare

[Tim Northcutt]

I posted this elsewhere, but I'll post it here as well in response to your comment, sr230772:

Since the Indy 500, the IRL drew between 95,000 and 100,000 at Texas

I don't know about Richmond, beacuse I was a Mid-Ohio, but Richmond holds between 60,000 and 80,000 people and the crowd looked pretty good there....

Kansas had 60,000 people

Nashville had between 50,000 and 60,000, and it was jam-packed...

In virtually every journalistic report I have read, and even in some posts in this Forum, attendance at most of the OWRS races has been less than it was the previous year....

I would agree that in Canada, at Surfer's Paradise, and in Mexico, OWRS draws great crowds...they drew good crowds in Europe last year, tooo....I believe there were more than 75,000 people at Brands Hatch

But they do not draw well in the USA...Long Beach was down this year compared to the past....Portland had a small crowd....Milwaukee drew only about 25,000

Maybe OWRS is making the best move possible by going "international," because that's where their fans seem to be....

and the IRL should stick to the USA, because they sure seem to be doing just fine at their venues thus far this year...

Finally...

according to surveys done by both USA Today and ESPN, over the past four years in the USA only, there polling numbers show that there are four times as many IRL fans in the US than ther are OWRS or CART fans...

IRL's numbers are at 5.6% and growing slightly each year, and the numbers for CART and/or OWRS have been steady at 1.5%...

Look it up....

I'm not saying this as a "we vs. they" thing....

The point I'm making is that both serve different markets....

The IRL gets crowds at its venues here in the US....OWRS draws its best crowds outside of the USA....

I say to both:

Race where your fans are, and where you can make money....

Cut your losses and dump the venues where you don't draw well...

It's just good business....

[BootsOntheSide]

Originally posted by sr230772
i dis agree with boots take out indy add up 10 races over a season on average carts going to come out on top on track attendance easy,on tv no doubt irl is going to come out on top but the point is you may very well say two differnt seris but the point is there always going to be conpared its human nature as for f1 on montreal give cart all the f1 gizmos then conpare

You can't 'take out Indy' and make a comparison - Indy is the nucleus of US open-wheel racing, CART voerlooked that at their peril. It was that which drew the top teams to the IRL.

The attendance comparison has been proven wrong by Tim. As for TV figures, it's a shame CART doesn't have wider coverage, but I still feel that the IRL product is more exciting to casual viewers.

I'm not sure what you're saying in the final sentacne - if oyu give the IRL teams CART equipment, they'll blow away CART times at Milwaukee. CART isn't about driver aids, it's about the drivers doing the work themselves and making teh difference. Likewise, the IRL has reduced speeds so as to a) increase overtaking and b) increase safety.

[indycool]

Even though people try in such comparisons, you can't just "take out Indy" or "if it wasn't for Indy, this would happen" or the like.

If there was no Indy, there would have been no USAC, no CART, no IRL or no OWRS....and for that matter, none of these forums around to argue about Indy.

[macdaddy]

It seems that we can't go for much more than a week without turning a discussion into a comparison between these two series. If we're not comparing drivers, we're comparing speeds. Or safety. Or television contracts. Or crowds.

Hey! I've got an idea! Let's talk about ChampCars - what we've got now and what we're gonna have tomorrow!

This horse is so dead that I'm feeling sorry for it.