An ICONIC symbol of the "new" IndyCar series
by Tony Johns on Mar 23, 2010 12:59 PM EDT
in Feature Stories
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Everybody loves a good acronym, particularly in business.
The best acronyms, of course, are those that not only flow well off of the tongue, but also mean the same thing in both short and expanded form. It may take some reaching to get it to work correctly, but in the end it's a more significant symbol.
The new IZOD IndyCar Series advisory committee on the 2012 chassis question has one of those doubly-meaningful acronyms. The panel will be labeled "ICONIC," which stands for "Innovative, Competitive, Open-Wheel, New, Industry-Relevant, Cost-Effective."
Yes, the name is kind of a stretch and somewhat gimmicky. But since several of the new IndyCar concepts that have been presented to the series fit that description as well, it seems like a good fit.
The ICONIC panel is chaired by retired four-star Air Force General William R. Looney III. Looney's service record is somewhat typical of officers who achieve flag rank, with all of the requisite commands, promotions and medals that are required to advance to the top of the military ladder. The area of Looney's expertise that makes him an asset to IndyCar appears to be his experience as an administrator in the Air Force's recruiting and education command. Balancing the demands of disparate subordinates and streamlining their needs into a cohesive whole through discipline and pragmatism was definitely good practice for handling the self-interest of open-wheel lobbyists.
Joining Looney on the ICONIC panel will be experts representing IndyCar's management, team ownership, engineering, and powerplants. The team owner representative will be elected by full-time members of the Leader's Circle program, while the other experts will be selected by IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard.
ICONIC is expected to come up with a recommendation on the 2012 chassis in less than 90 days, after which Bernard will make the final selection based on their report.
The advisory committee continues the trend of major league decisions being guided by what could be termed "outsiders" to the IndyCar community. Considering the IndyCar series' history over the past two or three decades, outsider oversight may actually be overdue. The IndyCar series continues to struggle to regain its mass appeal after nearly two decades of special-interest strife and a catastrophic split between the Indy Racing League and CART/Champ Car series.
Although the IndyCar press release announcing the ICONIC panel mentioned Terry Angstadt's and Brian Barnhart's roles in "researching and developing" the 2012 chassis, most of the objectives for the new car - explained by Bernard as "safe, raceable, cost-effective, American-made, less mass/more efficient, relevant technology, modern look and green" - are directly attributable to the DeltaWing project, the details of which were leaked in advance of the concept model's unveiling in Chicago earlier this year. The leaked information spurred on a rash of new design concepts from current chassis builder Dallara, former CART/Champ Car supplier Lola, Swift Engineering, and BAT Engineering to compete against the DeltaWing, which is backed by a majority of the IndyCar team owners.
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I just stumbled upon this blog a few days ago. It is awesome. Well-written articles, frequent posts, and a decent commentator base, all add up to exactly what I was looking for in an IRL blog. I’m primarily an F1 fan, but I’ve followed IRL for the last two seasons, mostly watching for potential American F1 prospects. The race in Brazil earlier this month won me over completely and blew Bahrain out of the water.
JagtechOhio seems to have a pretty good understanding of this process and I appreciated that analysis. I’m still genuinely perplexed as to why an Air Force General is involved in this process? Does he have any racing experience? Is he some sort of an aerodynamics expert? I would think you would assemble a panel of former/current owners, drivers, and engineers and maybe the CEO of IZOD, and only because they front the money. If you want outsiders, it would seem more logical to look to top folks from other successful racing series.
Any way, I appreciate the site and keep up the good work.
Welcome!
Glad to have you aboard, and thank you for the comments!
As for why an AF general is involved, his main assets are (a) he is a friend of Randy Bernard’s, (b) he’s got a background in administration and making tough recommendations based on a widely disparate collection of theories and opinions, and © he is, in fact, NOT a member of the IndyCar establishment.
The panel itself will be made up largely of the folks you suggest, but I think anyone who has been a part of IndyCar racing for any length of time knows that the mix of those people can be extremely volatile. There will be plenty of expertise but there will also be a bunch of people on the panel eager to influence the results based on their own agendas – particularly if Chip Ganassi is the owner representative, considering that he’s the principal investor from the team owner side in the DeltaWing project. That’s why they need an objective outsider chairing the panel who can see through that and come up with a sensible consensus recommendation to forward to Bernard.
You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.
Pop Off Valve - A greasy hot tenderloin of IndyCar goodness!
Understood. Anything that puts a check on the Ganassi “conflict of interest” , or whatever you want to call it, seems like a pretty good idea.
After reading your Random Thoughts post I’ve become very intrigued with the idea of the IndyCar series adopting a new car similar to that of the LeMans cars. I like the challenges that multi-class sports car racing presents, but I think it would be pretty awesome to watch Peugot, Audi, Porsche, Acura, etc. LMP cars racing against each other in a single prototype series. It seems to me that the way to rival Nascar, and perhaps even F1, is to get the manufacturers involved while providing a fundamentally different product. A hybrid sportscar/Indycar would give the engineers tons of new opportunities, would interest the manufacturers, and would most likely draw worldwide attention.
Finally, and I’m definitely overreaching here, but let’s say we came up with this standard: IndyCar with some FIA input, sets up the regs. for the LMP1 cars. Those cars race in the IndyCar series, but also race at Sebring, LeMans, Nurburgring, Petite LeMans, etc. Sports car racing remains largely intact, but also has a flagship series to draw attention to the drivers and the manufacturers. It would be like a few years ago when Marco Andretti drove an IndyCar and then hopped on a plane to drive an LMP1 car the same day (that might have been in reverse, but I can’t remember). The only difference would be that he would be driving the same car, by himself at the Indy race, and then with co-drivers at the AMLS race. One might object and say that the teams couldn’t design a car to run the 24 hrs at LeMans and then a the Indy 500, but teams that compete in the AMLS and LeMans already do that. They put out cars that can go for 24hrs and can win 2hr timed races.
I've considered that very thing...
…with the obvious roadblock being that Le Mans and Indy happen at about the same time in the year, which would leave precious little time for teams to prepare for both.
It’d be very interesting (to me, at any rate) if the IndyCar of the future could be categorized as a prototype class of Le Mans-style sports car racing. You’d still have the separate domestic IndyCar series and ALMS/Le Mans series, but you could have a “Super Series” of combined events at Sebring, Le Mans, Indianapolis, maybe Road America, etc. to base your worldwide marketing around. In theory, it might be a terrific idea.
Now, translating that theory into practice would be more than a little dicey! :)
You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.
Pop Off Valve - A greasy hot tenderloin of IndyCar goodness!
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