Stupid question: Formula 1 cars vs Indy cars

janstett

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I must confess to being an ignorant noob in this area as I don't watch either Formula 1 or Indy car. I'm more of an ALMS guy and in-the-flesh track day participant. So I'm coming to my friendly neightborhood people-who-follow-F1 for advice. Maybe I can get into it.

To my untrained eye, F1 cars and Indy cars seem to be essentially cousins, definitely the same branch of the motorsport family tree.

I'm also supposing Indy is more of an America-only thing whereas F1 is popular worldwide. One difference for all motorsports is that the aristocracy in Europe seems to embrace motorsports whereas here it is largely shunned by the elite. I'm hazarding a guess that Indy cars tend to run the NASCRAP oval tracks and not road courses, but I'll plead ignorance. But that's not my main reason for asking.

What's different about the cars technologically? I find I'm wishing in my head for Clarkson to do a head-to-head of the two to see which is fastest/better.

Thanks, Joe
 
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Not getting into technical details (you can easily find all that on wiki), basic difference is money :)

F1 teams have bugets in a completely different league, and each team develop their own chassis and often engines, where indy and champ car use a single chassis afaik.
 
If I Remember right most of the cars in the IRL use customer chassis. There are a handful of chassis and a handful of motors... Not sure what the tally is exactly, but I think it's pretty low. They also race primarily on ovals. If I recall, this year is the first time they've taken to seriously driving road courses.

In F1 each team is responsibile for designing their own car. They fight over wh ogets the best motors, and some of them build their own motors in-house. IRL has much more of an emphasis on buying premade cars. F1 cars are also updated every single year. IRL cars seem to stay largely the same and differences are on the subtle side.

The pace of technological advance in F1 is insane, and the amount of resources these teams have to put these cars together can rival some first-world countries.

The main difference is F1 doesn't race ovals, and F1 teams design their own cars, and they design a new car every year to stay competitive. F1 focuses much more on the car technology. IRL is more about the drivers.
 
It's difficult to compare as F1 shares no tracks with either Champ or Indy cars.
The last time it happened as far as I know is 2002 in Montreal. On that particular occasion the F1 cars were 6 seconds faster for the pole times. The Champ cars were about 8.4% slower therefore.
But of course the F1 cars are actually slower than they used to be. It is hard to get an accurate comparison between 2002v2007 as quali has changed but if we take Q2 then it is probably the most accurate. In 2007 Hamilton got the fastest Q2 time with 1:15.486 whereas Montoya's pole time in 2002 was 1:12.836. Therefore the F1 cars are about 3.6% slower than in 2002.
Doing a shit calculation using Mexico City it appears that Champ Cars are about 3.1% faster now than they were in 2002.
It would therefore appear that the F1 would be about 1.7% faster on a normal type of course or just over a second at a track like Montreal.
All these calculations are pretty much meaningless as weather changes track times so much.
It does appear that it would be very close between a Champ Car and an F1. I don't know how Indy cars compare to a Champ Car.
 
^ F1 shares Gilles Villeneuve circuit and F1 was 7 seconds a lap faster.

To my untrained eye, F1 cars and Indy cars seem to be essentially cousins, definitely the same branch of the motorsport family tree.

If you put an F1 car side by side with a Champ Car and an IRL car, you'd spot the F1 car straight away. It looks a hell of a lot better than the American crap. But IRL and Champ Car have a massive fued going on and its limiting the sports potential. It used to be good before IRL came in and then it all got fucked around.
 
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^ F1 shares Gilles Villeneuve circuit and F1 was 7 seconds a lap faster.

Why the hell did I think they stopped going there in 2002?
Unfortunately it still doesn't give us a worthwhile comparison. The 2006 race was affected by rain as far as I can tell so there are no decent comparisons with the V8 F1 cars.
 
There are two, IRL and Champ Car. IRL do mainly ovals now, I don't really know anything about it. Champ Car (what I think of as Indy Car) do mainly, if not all road circuits.

Up until last year there was a few different chassis around, now I believe everyone uses a Panoz control chassis in Champ Car. This compared to F1 where everyone makes their own chassis. Engine wise Champ Car run a 2.85 litre twin turbo V8 running on methanol with about 750hp as opposed to the 2.4 litre N/A V8 in F1 cars running on good old unleaded also giving about 750hp.

Why the same power?? F1 cars run to 19,000rpm, Champ Cars make do with about 12,000. Before this year, Champ Car ran a sequential manual gearbox, but with the switch to the control chassis came the switch to 7 spd paddle shift boxes, same as F1.

The difference in speed comes from aerodynamics. Due to the much higher downforce on an F1 car they can brake later and carry a lot more corner speed. I like watching them both, but only really follow F1.
 
F1-All out acceleration and cornering insanity
IRL-High speed

An IRL would walk an F1 car above 150mph...but the F1 car will own it everywhere else.
 
If you put an F1 car side by side with a Champ Car and an IRL car, you'd spot the F1 car straight away. It looks a hell of a lot better than the American crap. But IRL and Champ Car have a massive fued going on and its limiting the sports potential. It used to be good before IRL came in and then it all got fucked around.



Now hold on there just one second...uhh....ahhhh nvm....I won't deny it....they do look horrible and are completely pointless. I cannot defend them. You win.
 
F1-All out acceleration and cornering insanity
IRL-High speed

An IRL would walk an F1 car above 150mph...but the F1 car will own it everywhere else.

Not necessarily. In low downforce configuration an F1 car would keep up with an IRL car. They hit about 355km/h at Monza, even with the V8's. The only reason IRL cars hit about 390km/h is they run so little downforce on those big ovals.
 
I think the F1 cars engines are reigned in though, I'm sure they're less fast than Indy / CART cars in a straight line. Plus CART/Indy cars are designed primarily for ovals so they need less downforce than an F1 car (because an F1 circuit typically is slower)

I might be wrong, but that's my understanding - I'd welcome anyone to clarify it for me.:)
 
you really can?t compare the two of them... F1 cars are simply a lot more high-tech, and would be quicker on just about any interesting track anywhere... and "interesting", as far as I?m concerned, doesn?t include ovals...

I do have a lot of respect for the skill involved in the high speed cornering, drafting, and overtaking someone because you figured out how to make your car go 400.1 km/h rather than just a mere 400, and all the other stuff that makes IRL and champ car races remotely exciting, but to say that they?re more about the drivers and F1 is just about the cars is pretty much nonsense...
 
I think the F1 cars engines are reigned in though, I'm sure they're less fast than Indy / CART cars in a straight line. Plus CART/Indy cars are designed primarily for ovals so they need less downforce than an F1 car (because an F1 circuit typically is slower)

I might be wrong, but that's my understanding - I'd welcome anyone to clarify it for me.:)

Indy is designed for ovals primarily. CART/Champ Cars are built for and run on road courses only. So your comment holds true for IRL, but not Champ.
 
You can say that IRL are the fastest single seaters, and that F1 is the fastest circuit racers, but in reality, they are all so different that they cant be compared.
 
You can say that IRL are the fastest single seaters, and that F1 is the fastest circuit racers, but in reality, they are all so different that they cant be compared.

They can, its just that nobody has. You can always compare one car to another, its just that the best way(s) to do so aren't always available or easy to pull off.
 
Get Top Gear onto it.
 
The thing is though, if you get an IndyCar from today, it has the technology on it that F1 did about ten years ago...IndyCars are much more primitive, because they have to deal with much less.
 
You can say that IRL are the fastest single seaters, and that F1 is the fastest circuit racers, but in reality, they are all so different that they cant be compared.

yes they can, and the indy car will get pwned at race tracks. Its just no one has ever tried that for some reason.....
 
yes they can, and the indy car will get pwned at race tracks. Its just no one has ever tried that for some reason.....

Would be interesting to see, though. The closest they've ever come was having Jeff Gordon and JPM switch seats when Montoya was still with McLaren. Does anyone know if there is video of that?
 
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