I agree with billytheskink here. What has happened in auto racing is everyone in multiple forms of the sport has become professional and the end effect of this is they all converged onto whatever the winning formula is and they want to use this formula and only it. People decry IRL for going spec in the mid-2000s, but it wasn’t their choice. G-Force/Panoz dropped out of developing their car to be sole supplier for ChampCar after awhile when it became clear Dallara was superior, and Toyota and Chevy both left when Honda became top dog. I think the last major full-season team to have the G-Force was Rahal circa 2005 and I imagine if you were Bobby you thought to yourself “I can develop this car myself when it’s at 98% of the Dallara, or I can just use what everyone else is running and not suffer being behind doing development.”

Now for people that want engine and car competition, that statement sucks, but if you were Rahal wouldn’t you do the same thing? It costs too much money to be running at a disadvantage. The G-Force never got kicked out, it was ran by Playa del Racing at Indy for a couple years and I remember Phil Giebler attempting one in maybe 2008.

Sir, I enjoy most of your comments but this statement by you here is incredibly ignorant. Judd is a great engine builder and their record in multiple racing series shows it. We don’t base the competitiveness of this year’s Chevrolet engine on the fact they had to pay Cosworth to build them an engine in 2005 do we?

Indycar didn’t even understand the economic model they were creating. They own the blame.

Second, the amount of complaining about and utter lack of patience with Lotus, not just from fans but from teams and owners, illustrates just how long it has been since we’ve seen engine competition. We seem to have awfully short memories. Have we really all forgotten Alfa-Romeo, Nissan-Infiniti, Porsche, and the fact that it took Toyota’s CART program nearly 3 years to score a top-5 finish? It is unfortunate that talented and well-liked drivers and teams have to use an uncompetitive engine, but before this past decade, that was life in IndyCar racing.
Should Bryan Herta, DRR, Dragon, Michael Shank, etc. be entitled to a competitive engine? If so, it would be the first time in IndyCar racing history for that to be the case.

The guys who tried to qualify for Indy in stockblocks and old Offys in the early 80′s and the guys who couldn’t get the Greenfield and those enormous ancient Cosworths up to speed in the early 90′s are probably wondering what is with all the fuss about running a Lotus.

Phantom 97

I do not pretend to know any of the details leading up to the selection of this engine specification, but INDYCAR should have given more thought to the ramifications of limited interest in participation by manufacturers and the availability of powerplants in the initial year of the new formula. Personally, I think we are going to see a lot of inactivity at the track this month during practice time as most all of these teams will be holding back for fear of expiration of their limited engine supply. If that happens, it will be a disaster from a marketing/promotion viewpoint for a series that is struggling to gain marketshare.