June 2.  This is part one of a series examining the technical and business aspects of the Infiniti Pro Series.

Part of the charter of fromthetrack.com is to provide a depth of coverage not ordinarily found in traditional racing media.  This is no exception.  In this set of articles, our goal is to shed some light on parts of the IPS that frankly are hard to get information on.  Things like the rules, the tech process, the logic behind the formula, and the business aspects of the series.  The first of these issues that we will cover is cost containment: how the series leadership has structured the Pro Series to keep competitiveness high and costs low.

In a world of rising costs and tightening sponsorship budgets, just getting enough cars to make a successful series is sometimes the most difficult battle.  That's one of the areas where series management comes in.  Fromthetrack.com was able to spend some time with Roger Bailey, Executive Director of the Menards Infiniti Pro Series, and Butch Meyer, Technical Director, to discuss how the Pro Series is structured to control costs and to bring an accessible, open-wheel oval ladder series to the North American racing market.

From the inception of the series, one of the goals of the Menards Infiniti Pro Series has been to provide a transition from racing series such as karting, midgets, and sprint cars -- where it is difficult (although not impossible) for a person to make a living exclusively as a driver -- to the world of IndyCar racing.  To do this, the series needed to provide a realistic cost of entry that made it financially feasible for a team or driver to make the jump from midgets, sprints, karts, or one of the other ladder formulas to the Infiniti Pro Series.  However, building a series that contains the features necessary to train budding drivers and engineers on the nuances of setting up and driving rear-engine cars with a significant aerodynamic component while keeping costs reasonable is not easy.  Some of the keys to keeping costs low are: A solid, well thought-out formula, good vendor and sponsor relations, and constant attention from the series management. 

So, how does the IPS keep the costs reasonable?  Let's look a little deeper at the formula first:

The Pro Series has one standard chassis, made by Dallara.  This is unlike the two chassis (Dallara and Panoz) that are found in the IndyCar series.  Because there is only one spec chassis, there is no possibility of an "arms race" of update kits and enhancements by manufacturers to compete with each other.  In many industries, competition can lower costs. But in auto racing, where winning is generally valued more than money, competition usually leads to costs spiraling upwards as people who have money spend it to try to find an advantage.  So, keeping a single chassis in the series is definitely an advantage from a cost standpoint.

Once the chassis is delivered, it will generally remain unchanged for it's life in the series, which also reduces cost:  "The chassis are the same," says Meyer, "About the only thing we allow teams to do is improve body fit since Dallara has different vendors build parts of the chassis and sometimes parts will fit together slightly differently on one chassis than on another… So teams can use epoxy to correct issues with fit."  Other than that, teams are not allowed to independently modify or enhance the chassis itself.  This eliminates the need for teams to purchase wind tunnel time, or run computer simulations to test potential modifications.

League mandated modifications to the chassis are also tightly controlled with cost in mind.  For example, when the IPS decided to go road racing in the 2005 season, they needed to put together a reasonably priced update kit that wouldn't break the bank for their teams.   As Roger Bailey puts it, "To some extent, road courses were always on Tony (George's) horizon.  It's clearly easier to find 18-20 year olds who want to do a mixture of racing, not just ovals."  However, the fact that the IPS is a primarily oval series (to prepare drivers for the IndyCar series, which is also primarily ovals) made it extremely important to control the cost of entry for road racing so that teams didn't have to spend a ton of money to compete in the four road races on the schedule.  So, the IPS technical team went to work with their vendors and came up with an excellent, yet simple, solution.  As Butch Meyer relates, "Essentially, the road course kit is uprights and wishbones for the left side and a differential for the gearbox.  For about $18,000, they're going racing."