Upon hearing the news that the Indy Car World Series has announced the plans to return to forced induction (turbocharger’s) for the 2011 season, I scoured the newswires to see exactly what the pundits were saying; as apparently the switch from the 3.5 liter normally aspirated Honda V-8’s is between the choice of four or six cylinders... Which I cannot say I’m overly crazy about, but I guess I should have seen this coming, since Formula 1 lopped off two cylinders two years ago in attempts to reduce horsepower... But, the IRL is actually seeking to add an extra 100bhp to today’s reputed 650bhp output... Hmm? Can you say “Power to Pass?” A la Champ Car...
And although a second manufacturer’s round table will be double top secret and held behind closed doors, Brian “Braveheart” hopes to have 3-4 interested parties on hand including Honda, which if memory serves me correctly, had some fairly stout Formula 1 six cylinder winning turbo lumps a few decades ago...
And I’d suppose it shouldn’t be to difficult to extract the amount of horsepower outta a V-6 power plant, since I’ve just learned that those beautiful 1979-81 BMW M1 Procar’s 3.5 liter twin cam straight six’s unleashed 470bhp without forced induction, before developing a beastly 3.2 liter 850bhp fire breathing twin turbocharged unit...
And doesn’t Ford have a new line of V-6 “Eco-tec” blown thumpers coming’ down the pipeline? Or perhaps these could be passed off as Mazda’s with a little badge engineering, eh?
Yet, Inquiring minds wanna know if Formula 1 Engine Manufacturers will join the fold?
Portland in 2010?
Yet, even better and MORE important to me then the announcement of the return to turbo’s, was this tiny little blurb I found in Kurt Cabin’s IndyStar article last Saturday;
Etc.
“Angstadt led a group of IRL officials on a visit to Portland International Raceway this week. If a deal can be reached, the circuit would be added to the 2010 schedule, he said. . . .”
While I’ll continue holding my breath; Its encouraging to think that perhaps my biased bashing over Portland being left out of the mix and the copy of my story regarding this that I mailed to the IMS may have been worth the effort after all?
And although a second manufacturer’s round table will be double top secret and held behind closed doors, Brian “Braveheart” hopes to have 3-4 interested parties on hand including Honda, which if memory serves me correctly, had some fairly stout Formula 1 six cylinder winning turbo lumps a few decades ago...
And I’d suppose it shouldn’t be to difficult to extract the amount of horsepower outta a V-6 power plant, since I’ve just learned that those beautiful 1979-81 BMW M1 Procar’s 3.5 liter twin cam straight six’s unleashed 470bhp without forced induction, before developing a beastly 3.2 liter 850bhp fire breathing twin turbocharged unit...
And doesn’t Ford have a new line of V-6 “Eco-tec” blown thumpers coming’ down the pipeline? Or perhaps these could be passed off as Mazda’s with a little badge engineering, eh?
Yet, Inquiring minds wanna know if Formula 1 Engine Manufacturers will join the fold?
Portland in 2010?
Yet, even better and MORE important to me then the announcement of the return to turbo’s, was this tiny little blurb I found in Kurt Cabin’s IndyStar article last Saturday;
Etc.
“Angstadt led a group of IRL officials on a visit to Portland International Raceway this week. If a deal can be reached, the circuit would be added to the 2010 schedule, he said. . . .”
While I’ll continue holding my breath; Its encouraging to think that perhaps my biased bashing over Portland being left out of the mix and the copy of my story regarding this that I mailed to the IMS may have been worth the effort after all?