......Black and Gold.... The App State thread

NASCAR race cars are all built by the teams based on templates provided by NASCAR. The only variations come in the nose and tail assemblies in order to give the car the appearance of a Ford Mustang, Chevy Camaro or Toyota Camry (which has been replaced by the Supra in NASCAR minor leagues but is still run in the Cup Series). But they are essentially all the same car. Ditto the engines; the so-called factory brands provide developmental assistance, but they are again based on NASCAR specifications and built by the teams (some of the smaller teams buy engines from larger operations like Hendrick Motorsports). Bottom line is, there is no market for an outside operation like the LSU School of Mechanical Engineering (don't know the actual name, but you know what I mean) to provide teams with cars. They'd have to create, finance and field a car as a team, including the selling of sponsorship and hiring drivers. I miss the old days of NASCAR (it started changing in the mid to late 70's) when the cars were actual street cars modified for racing.

 

IndyCar is even more monopolized. Go back and look at highlight videos of the 500 into the early '70s, and every car was called a "whatever Special", because they were virtually one of a kind. One of my favorite stories is the 1969 500, when Mario Andretti showed up with car that was body by Lotus, engine by Ford. He wrecked it in practice, so the team pulled the previous year's car - built by a no longer existing builder called Brawner Hawk - and went out an won the race. But that's also around the time rear wings were introduced; I think by McLaren. By the mid 70's everyone had copied the design, and the only variations were to the nose of the car, they were either pointed, or had a small flat nose like a flat head screwdriver (both of those had small wings in front of the front wheels, or a wide nose that incorporated the front wing into the nose. In 1997, Italian racecar builder Dallara Automobili began offering an Indycar, and in 2007 became the exclusive builder of Indy chassis, building them in a factory in Indianapolis. Ditto engines; by the late '90s, the only engine builders for Indy were Chevy, Toyota and Honda. Chevy and Toyota closed their Indy shops by the mid 2000s, so now every car in the IndyCar series is a Dallara/Honda.

EDIT: My bad, Chevy is still building Indy engines as well, so there's choice of Chevy or Honda, but all chassis are by Dallara.

Just found this website and can't wait to dive in. Publicity photos of every car raced at Indy going back to the mid '60s. Here's the 1969 field; look at the body differences.
http://openwheel33.com/paint-schemes/1969-paint-schemes/

 

so, in my neck of the woods, they're talking about playing football in half-full stadiums, with social distancing,.. how's that work?.. you drive to a game with friends, but when you get there,.. you can't sit with them?