Champ Car
Champ Car is generally the designation for US - formula race car with which the championship of the American Championship Car Racing will be held, which was introduced 1916th The cars that have been used in the Indianapolis 500 since 1908 are known as the Indy Car .
Until the 1990s, the terms were largely interchangeable, but then there was a break between the Championship Auto Racing Teams or their CART series, which was introduced in 1979, and the organizer of the Indy 500 race, which eventually set up its own competing racing series. After the hallmark IndyCar was licensed to the CART series until 2002, it took over in 2003, the IndyCar Series . The CART series emphasized the term Champ Car up to and including 2007 in the Champ Car World Series , until it was dissolved or incorporated into the IndyCar Series in early 2008.
history
The origin of today's Champ Car racing series is the AAA National Championship , which the American Automobile Association (AAA) organized from 1909. At the beginning, however, the races were not a coherent championship, but a series of independent races under the control of the AAA. The championship titles were therefore only awarded later, retrospectively. An official AAA championship series did not exist until after the First World War . The racing series also gave the racing cars their name: first Championship Cars and later “Champ Cars” for short.
In 1911, the first Indianapolis 500 race took place at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS). Today, with up to 300,000 spectators on race day, this race is the greatest motorsport spectacle in America and the largest one-day sporting event in the world. The later owners would have a significant impact on the history of the Champ Car racing series.
The history of the racing series after the Second World War was shaped by disputes between associations and interest groups and thus considerable discontinuities.
From 1956, the United States Auto Club (USAC) took control of the racing series and replaced the AAA. The AAA ended the organization of car races after a serious accident with over 80 deaths at Le Mans .
From the 1960s, the name " Indy Cars " became established for the cars , due to the enormous importance of the Indy 500 race. The cars were to keep this name until 1995.
Due to the dissatisfaction with the safety policy and the management of the USAC, many teams and drivers joined forces in 1978 for the CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) under the leadership of the team bosses Roger Penske and Pat Patrick . The first race under the leadership of CART and with its regulations was held on March 11, 1979 in Phoenix . Fourteen races, including the Indy 500, were held by the CART, the USAC could claim seven more races. The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) now acted as the controlling body . Until 1981 races in the racing series were held by both associations. In April 1980, the Championship Racing League (CRL) was founded to bring the CART and USAC together in the interests of the racing series. But the disputes did not end and in July the USAC resigned from the CRL at the urging of the management of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The CRL had failed. In 1981 the Indy 500 was USAC's only race in the Champ Car series and CART was now able to take the lead completely (the USAC hosted the Indy 500 until 1995). In November 1979, the racing series was renamed the PPG IndyCar World Series after the sponsor PPG was acquired . The term "World Series" was pretty euphemistic , however , as only races were held in the US, Canada and Mexico .
In 1990 the series expanded to the Gold Coast of Australia , in 1996 Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and in 1998 the Twin Ring Motegi in Japan . On September 15, 2001, the American Memorial (originally planned under the name "German 500" and also driven in 2003) was driven at the Lausitzring and a week later the Rockingham 500 km in England, making the series since the 1979 Brands Hatch race toured again on European soil.
In November 1991, beat Tony George , president of a new structure with the creation of a new umbrella company, that of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) for the IndyCar Series Indy Car Inc. ago. The CART refused. In February 1992 CART licensed the name "IndyCar" from IMS, while George founded Indy Car Inc. These two processes should cause the CART considerable problems in the future. In the following years, resentment grew at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The company lamented the diminishing importance of the Indianapolis 500 miles in the IndyCar (CART) series. In March 1994, George announced that he would found a competition series for the PPG IndyCar World Series: the Indy Racing League (IRL) . The CART protested unsuccessfully against the project. In September 1995, the competitive series formed while most of the IndyCar (CART) teams refused to participate in the Indy Racing League. In January 1996, the IRL held its first race in Orlando under the control of the USAC . The most important race of the season, the Indy 500, no longer took place in the PPG IndyCar World Series, but in the IRL. CART decided to host a competitive race in Michigan , the US 500 , on the same date .
In December 1996 CART lost the rights to the name "IndyCar" after a trademark lawsuit by the IMS. However, the IMS had to agree not to use the term for six years (i.e. until the end of 2002). The series was then renamed the PPG CART World Series . In December 1997, Federal Express became the new main sponsor of CART. The series was renamed again and traded under the name FedEx Championship Series from December 1997 . The cars were now officially called Champ Cars again. Several talks to merge the two competing series failed. The importance of the oval races in the racing series fell sharply due to competition from the IRL, but the races on the other racetracks remained successful. From the beginning of 2003 the Indy Racing League was officially called the Indy Racing League IndyCar Series after the renunciation of the name . The CART then changed the name again to Bridgestone presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford to emphasize the importance of the Champ Cars. The addition of the name Powered by Ford came from the fact that all other engine suppliers (Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Toyota) had left the series, making a virtue of necessity by winning Ford as one of the two series sponsors. The CART struggled hard after the founding of the IRL.
Many teams left the championship series for the IRL IndyCar series, particularly because of the attractiveness of the Indy 500. But the IRL IndyCar series was hardly any better: the tickets were given away and the TV ratings were down. In 2003 the racing series struggled to field the traditional field of 33 drivers at the Indy 500. By founding the rival series in an already tight market, Tony George from IMS maneuvered US formula racing into a tangible crisis. As a result of the divided and ever smaller starting fields, but also due to the enormous growth of the touring car racing series NASCAR Winston Cup ( Sprint Cup since 2008 ), it has sunk into almost insignificance in recent years. Many races, regardless of whether the Champ Car or Indy Car series (except for the Indy 500), took place without TV broadcast and often in front of empty grandstands. At the end of 2003, CART had to file for bankruptcy. A group of team owners bought the majority of the CART as the Open Wheel Racing Series (OWRS) and continued the Champ Car World Series. With Pat Patrick's withdrawal shortly before the start of the 2005 season, none of the CART founders was active in the Champ Car series for the first time. The associated extreme savings had also fallen victim to many of the traditional races and the races in Europe were canceled in the long term.
In 2007 races were held again in Europe ( Zolder & Assen ) and Australia. Thanks to the massive savings, the Champ Car series believed that it was on an upward trend again. But due to the ongoing economic difficulties of both series, Tony George and Kevin Kalkoven, one of the Champ Car owners, met again in 2008 to discuss a merger of the Champ Car World Series and the IndyCar Series . In spring 2008 the two series merged. With this merger, the ChampCar went into the Indy Racing League .
Brief overview of the changing names
Champ Cars remained Champ Cars despite the constantly changing names of the racing series:
- from 1909 AAA National Championship
- from 1956 USAC National Championship
- 1979 SCCA / CART Indy Car Series
- 1980 Championship Racing League
- from 1980 PPG IndyCar World Series
- from 1997 PPG CART World Series
- from 1998 FedEx Championship Series
- from 2003 Bridgestone presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford
- 2007 Champ Car World Series
Champ car racing car
From 1969, Champ Car racing cars had a turbo engine with a displacement of 2.65 liters. Initially, the Offenhauser four-cylinder was common, later it was usually 8 cylinders in V-shape, although four-cylinder and V6 were also used mainly until the early 1980s. The boost pressure decreased more and more over the years (from more than 50 psi in the early eighties to 35 psi) in order to limit the engine output (last approx. 720 HP) (approx. 1200 HP would be possible with the original regulations). A 900 hp Honda V8 from 1997 set the standard. In Formula 1, on the other hand, turbo engines were the standard in the 1980s, but were banned by the FIA in the 1989 season and only reintroduced in the 2014 season .
Methanol was used as fuel , which, in contrast to gasoline, can be extinguished very well with water. Sometimes the fuel ignited during refueling, which, unlike petrol, burns with an invisible flame, which is why, after refueling, water was sprayed onto the car on suspicion. This fuel change became mandatory after serious fire accidents in the 1960s. Compared to gasoline, methanol has a higher knock resistance , so it is well suited for turbo engines and less flammable. In contrast to Formula 1, the races were continuously driven on slick tires from the 1960s onwards .
Due to the conservative and cost-saving attitude of the organizers, technical changes that did not serve security were almost entirely rejected. The gearbox was operated manually with a gear lever until the 2006 season, not pneumatically or hydraulically at the push of a button on the steering wheel, as has long been the case in Formula 1. The braking of technical development resulted in relatively few technical defects. Many unit parts (especially the chassis) and unit suppliers kept costs down. Since the action on the track is seen as more important than pit stop strategies in the USA, it was ensured that the field was close together. Incidents were used much faster than in European racing to temporarily neutralize the race, which brought the field back together.
The most recently used uniform vehicle type Panoz DP01 had an output of 750 hp, accelerated from 0 to 100 km / h in 2.4 seconds and reached a top speed of around 380 km / h. In addition, the vehicles had a “turbo boost”, which enabled the driver to generate around 20 hp more power for exactly 60 seconds during a race.
Thanks to the standard car and the turbo boost, the Champ Car races were mostly exciting and close.
Champ car racetracks
In contrast to F1 drivers, Champ Car drivers basically had to adjust to five different types of race tracks. These included permanent (street) race tracks , temporary street courses , airfield courses , small to medium-sized oval courses and, ultimately, the often feared super speedways , ovals with mostly steep curves and a length of at least two miles.
For all these tasks, two different chassis versions, which differed almost exclusively in terms of aerodynamics, were sufficient: an unmodified chassis and a so-called speedway kit. The latter was equipped with extremely small wings (the so-called speedway wings), side pods with differently positioned air outlets and carbon fiber brake discs for use in the super speedway. From 1998 onwards, the so-called Hanford Device , a special rear wing, was prescribed for all Superspeedway events, as this avoided very high speeds (around 400 km / h) on the one hand and a tightly packed field of vehicles ensured high voltage because the Wing creates a vacuum behind the vehicle, which served as an extreme slipstream .
In the last season of 2007, the Champ Car World Series no longer drove on ovals, but left this field to the IndyCar Series. It was emphasized at the presentation of the Panoz -Champ-Car for the 2007 season that the oval legacy should not be given up, but it had become increasingly difficult to compete in champ car races on ovals against the competition from NASCAR and IRL market.
Champ-car champions
Post-awarded AAA National Championship titles
|
|
|
AAA National Championship
|
|
|
USAC National Championship
|
Champions since 1979
.svg){kind=small}
See also
Web links
- champcarworld.net - European ChampCar website (German)
- News, photos and results of the ChampCar (German)
- Champcar statistics since 1905 (English)
- Statistics (Indy Car - Champ Car from 1909 )
Individual evidence
- ^ Indycar website: George, series owners sign unification agreement. Archived from the original on March 13, 2008 ; Retrieved December 7, 2012 .