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It's Sad To See Cheever Go
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July 16, 2006
By Ron Felix
It's amazing to walk into a IRL IndyCar garage area at one of their races and see the place so clean. Speednewsnow.com is at Nashville Superspeedway to cover the IRL IndyCar Firestone 200.
Having covered the NASCAR scene for the past -- who knows how many years, the IRL and NASCAR difference is initially stunning. You could eat off of the floor at an IRL event an the officials bend over backwards to be of assistance. Sometimes you get that level of attention in NASCAR and sometimes they look at you like you've just stepped off of the nearest UFO.
There was some news on Friday, that we've probably all been expecting.
Eddie Cheever racing, who had won the 1998 Indianapolis 500, folded on Thursday, just two days before the IRL IndyCar Firestone 200 at Nashville. Cheever said the money simply had run out.
“We will continue to look for partners to participate in the IndyCar series,” Cheever said. “We threw this team together at the last minute, and we consistently had solid cars able to finish races. We may have not had the best equipment, due to our limited budget, but we did the best with what we had. I am sorry to see these guys go, and I hope that we can be reunited again in the future.”
Cheever struggled with an unsponsored race team the entire season and was not able to secure the proper backing. Cheever had been a participant as a driver -- and/or -- a car owner since the league's inception. Cheever's career spans the years of C.A.R.T. to sports car racing, to the IndyCar series to Formula One and to the I.R.O.C. series.
An IRL official said that a weight rule was never considered by the league.
Last season, now full-time NASCAR driver, Robby Gordon, brought up the fact that Danica Patrick had a weight advantage over the rest of the field in the Indy 500 and with that comment, a controversey was born.
"Robby Gordon doesn't race in this series," bristled Kevin H., one of the IRL tech inspectors, and we have never considered a weight rule to help out the slight disadvantage. We wouldn't make a special brake rule just because Danica Patrick can't push the brake petal down as hard as the guys can, so they have an advantage over her there, and in many other areas. So, no weight rule to help out the guys."
Not too long ago, maybe five or six years ago and beyond, most Indy Car races were coming down to a fuel mileage contest. The teams were alloted only so many gallons for each race, seemly more often than not, not enough to finish a race.
It was a race-by-race problem and if you listened in on the conversation between the driver and the chief engineer, they almost always were advising the driver to conserve on fuel, to turn the dial to a leaner setting. That doesn't happen all that much anymore.
They still have the ability to conserve by setting the dial, but now it's more to get from one pit stop to another, to stretch the run out and play strategy games.
"We have improved the engines performances to get a much better mile-per-gallon ratio out of the fuel, said Rahal/Letterman team manager," Steve Dickson. "We are still alloted so many gallons (based on 1.8 mpg for each size track) at the event, but we haven't had anyone use their entire allotment in a few years. So it's really become a non-issue."
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