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The secret of success for the IRL’s “Big Three”?

Straight-line testing gets the job done for AGR, Penske, Ganassi

While I’m sure there’s more to the utter dominance of Andretti Green, Team Penske and Target Chip Ganassi Racing in the IndyCar Series, USA Today’s Nate Ryan may have found one really good reason why the Big Three have been that way for several years now.

It ain’t glamorous, but apparently, straight-line testing is working out for them. Ryan writes:

“Cars accelerate to 200 mph, then coast to a stop as teams calculate wind resistance and down force. Such information also can be gleaned from a wind tunnel, but straight-line testing affords better data collection because the readings occur while the car runs at speed.”

The Big Three are apparently the only ones that do this in the IRL, which heavily restricts testing but doesn’t rule out straight-line work. What’s more, while it’s meant to be a largely secretive art, it looks like Ganassi’s location for straight-line testing isn’t so secret after all.

Considering that the league won’t be trotting out a new car until 2011, maybe some of the smaller teams oughta find their own patch of asphalt for the time being.

Again, check out Ryan’s article. It’s a very interesting read, although I’m sure some people would rather not see this much attention given to it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.