Callum Ilott, Juncos Hollinger, IndyCar, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2021

Dallara extends deal to supply IndyCar chassis

IndyCar

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IndyCar has extended its contract to use Dallara chassis in a new “multi-year” deal.

The Italian manufacturer has been the exclusive supplier of chassis to the single-make championship since 2008. It also provides the monocoques for the series’ top junior category, Indy Lights

“Dallara is a tremendous partner and instrumental in everything we do on the racetrack,said IndyCar President Jay Frye said. “An important part of the success and growth of the NTT IndyCar series can be directly traced to Dallara’s collaboration with our entire paddock.”

This year was Dallara’s 25th season as an IndyCar chassis supplier. Its DW12 design has been in use since 2012, since when a new aerodynamic kit was introduced in 2018. A new safety device, the Aeroscreen, was added to the car two years later.

The series is planning to replace the DW12 chassis but will not do so until after its new hybrid engines arrive in 2023.

“This partnership will continue to fall in line with Dallara’s core values and what we want to see our technology and innovation developed for – adding emphasis to safety and sustainability for the future,” said Dallara Group CEO Andrea Pontremoli. “It is a great time for IndyCar and Dallara is proud to continue as the chassis manufacturer.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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16 comments on “Dallara extends deal to supply IndyCar chassis”

  1. Nothing against Dallara, but I wish IndyCar would drop this one chassis supplier nonsense and allow more chassis manufacturers to enter. Then we would see some more diversity in IndyCar and make it more like it was before when it was truly great and fascinating. I had hopes that Roger Penske would see the light and stop with the spec series that IndyCar has become.

    1. I agree, but IndyCar is in a good position to grow again, compared to what it was 10 years ago it’s literally night and day the difference. Future I think is great for IndyCar

    2. Those days seem to be gone forever because, apart from some of us fans, no one in the organization seems to be interested in multiple chassis manufacturers. I want to see IndyCar stand as a series that can, to a certain extent, compete with F1. It used to be that way back then, but no longer. And nobody seems to be complaining.

    3. I feel sympathy for wanting Indycar to support multiple chassis’ @pt and David, but as @mick80 points out, current Indycar is just not in a position where the sport can support that, and it might never do so again. But the series is really solid and making steps in the right direction, so let us just enjoy the growth back to a respectable series and see where it goes over the years.

    4. @mick80 @pt I completely agree & that is actually one of the reasons i’ve fell out of love with the series over recent years to the point where I basically only watch the Indy 500 now.

      For as good as the racing and as competitive as the field may be, I just find the series as a whole to be really uninteresting now, Especially considering that I remember where it used to be when things were a bit more open with multiple chassis suppliers, Tyre competition & more open development.

      Indycar in the CART days was a series I always viewed as been not too far below F1. It was fast, Exciting, Had great diversity in circuits & having different chassis with more open development was just exciting as it gave you something more to dig into in terms of staying up with the developments & gave the series a more interesting look as watching a grid of different looking cars will always be more interesting than a grid of identical ones. And that & the tyre competition also created diversity in terms of different combinations working better on different types of track or different conditions.

      The Indycar of today I don’t view as been much better than F2 or something like Super Formula. Just another spec series with a chassis supplied by Dallara.

      1. Absolutely! The only IndyCar race I feel attracted to see is the Indy 500.

  2. Really, multiple chassis, and in particular, aero on a chassis, is the single biggest way to make it much more expensive in a way that does not pay off for production car tech. And this also opens the door to fighting the “dirty air” tug of war (regs vs dev). A spec (ish) chassis is exactly how IndyCar has such good racing now…the wings and tunnels can be optimized for racing as a whole.

    Making it more interesting and open on the driveline front, from power unit to diff(s), however, would make a lot of sense. Focusing the tech aspect of the competition on energy, efficiency, and drive-ability has direct production car carry over.

    1. Agree, I want to watch drivers compete, I’m not interested in an engineers battle like F1 is, in indycar almost, almost, anyone can win not just two cars. Indycar is far for exciting, hard racing than F1’s engineering battle In my opinion.

  3. I often feel like a broken record saying this, but having a spec chassis does not mean that all cars and teams are equal. It just means that the competition is in the real, physical world between hands-on engineers, strategists on the pitwall and drivers – whereas in F1 it is predominantly a virtual competition between aerodynamicists and CFD simulators, everything at the track is secondary.

    Yes I am generalising here, but I just don’t understand the mentality that a spec series is somehow competitively inferior. I hear so many F1 fans commenting that they don’t want cars that all look the same, but come on it’s been over 10 years since we’ve had cars that are visually distinguishable (except that year every car had a “toy” stuck on the nose”). And if that is the argument, should we not all be watching GT3 racing instead?

    The argument that F1 is more about teams and engineers than just drivers making it somehow more “interesting”, why? Because there are 1,000 people in Brackley doing QA on precision-engineered mounting pins? Because a team will retire a car from a race because a supercomputer simulation says saving mileage will gain a few tenths in qualifying sometime down the road? It’s so overengineered and clinical now that I just can’t relate.

    Show me a garage full of oil-soaked mechanics arguing with the driver about whether the stock suspension should be stiffened or not, or trying to knock a wishbone back into place with a sledgehammer during an unscheduled pitstop to get their driver back in the race. This is real teamwork, real racing – so I’ll take Indycar over F1 any time.

    1. I won’t say that one is better than the other, but part of the appeal for F1 to me is the technical competition between the teams. Seeing who can come up with the newest F-Duct, double-decker diffuser, or FRIC suspension makes it fun for me in a geeky way.

  4. I just don’t understand the mentality that a spec series is somehow competitively inferior.

    @graham228221 I wouldn’t necessarily say inferior, I’d just say less interesting.

    One of the things I like about F1 & what I used to enjoy about Indycar is digging into the development race, Seeing the new updates that teams would bring to each race, Figuring out what they do, How they work & what performance they aim to bring. And how different approaches to design, development etc… work differently on different tracks & so on. That keeps my mind thinking, It gives me something extra to dig into & provides you with way more things to talk about not just over a race weekend but also in-between races weekends (Especially when testing was allowed).

    With a spec series yes that doesn’t mean everything is 100% the same & yes it does become more about driver/teams engineering, setups etc… but I just don’t find that quite as interesting because there’s less to talk about, Less to think about & therefore less to dig into or get that excited about. You see the car at the start of the design cycle & beyond that there’s nothing to get excited about on the technical/development side.

    And then there’s the visual aspect. I have just always found a grid of different designs (Be it 10+ like F1 or just a handful like you used to get in Indycar) more interesting than a grid of identical looking ones.

    It’s not just the look of the cars either. I wish we could go back to a time where different engine configurations were allowed (And this includes F1) because I miss the days when you used to have not just the different performance characteristics but also the vastly different sounds that would bring.

    I just like competition. Not just between teams/drivers but also engines, chassis, tyres, brake suppliers etc… because that is for me what the sport should be about & what for many years it used to be about.

    1. @stefmeister
      “One of the things I like about F1 & what I used to enjoy about Indycar is digging into the development race, Seeing the new updates that teams would bring to each race,”

      Yeah, another silly little winglet here, another silly little winglet there, a redirection of the wind flow here, a reiderection of the wind flow there…. And at the end of the day it all matters nothing if it’s not Mercedes or RedBull. Every F1 weekend is like a Groundhog’s Day.
      Whereas at every IndyCar weekend there’s a new driver making a great performance and achieving something for it. That’s what’s interesting for someone who loves motorsport for racing.

  5. NASCAR and IndyCar are effectively not much different if at all.
    The main differentiator are the teams, who can squeeze a few tenths out of a chassis, and the drivers. By far the bigger being the driver.
    As luck would have it, this provides the Press and Commentators, everything they need to stir up the fans. As there are only a small number that are interested in the hardware side of the business, this all fits into the cookie cutter approach to engines and cars,
    If I am not mistaken, NASCAR has a “new” spec race car and a spec engine. They need to get Tesla involved so they can have software drive all the cars the same way.
    Not something I can get fired up about so for now, it’s F1 until the cars hit 908 kg. Should be a couple of years.

  6. … you can enter any car you like in Indycar, so long as it’s a Dallarra, on fake Firestone racing tyres, and you’ve cleared it through Chip, Michael and Roge. After they’ve rubber stamped your entry, you can then bid for one of their leftover spec-series engines. Sound familiar?

  7. It is NOT a great time for Indycar. To hear it is going to remain a SPEC series is so disappointing. I had hoped for two chassis manufacturers and maybe another for engines. Sadly Roger Penske has changed nothing here. I see no hope on the horizon for diversity and excitement returning. Looks like we will continue with IndyLights 1&2.

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