June 23.  The IndyCar Series is known nationwide for some of the closest, most competitive racing on the planet -- highlighted by wheel-to-wheel racing and frequent margins of victory that are measured in fractions of a second.  As a ladder series, tasked with producing the next generation of IndyCar drivers, the Menards Infinti Pro Series needs to expose its up-and-coming drivers to the same kind of racing.  However, racing competitively requires more than just a desire to drive fast and close -- the equipment needs to provide a level of equality and parity.

In the second installment of our series examining the technical and business aspects of the Menards Infiniti Pro Series, we explore the effect of series leadership, rules, and equipment on competitive racing.  This is a continuation of an interview with Roger Bailey, Executive Director of the Menards Infiniti Pro Series, and Butch Meyer, Series Technical Director.

In the first segment of this series, we talked about how cost control is one of the factors that is paramount to the league management of the IPS (behind safety, of course).  However, for a ladder series to demonstrate the skill of its drivers to decision makers at the next level of racing, the cars must be relatively equivalent, so as to not skew driver ability in one direction or another.  That's where the league comes in.

The Infiniti Pro formula was developed specifically to breed competitive racing.  According to Butch Meyer, there are a few factors that help increase the level of competition in a series:  straightforward, equivalent equipment, restrictions on testing, and clarity and stability of league rules. 

On the equipment front, the IPS leadership goes to great pains to make sure that the chassis and engines used by the teams are as equal as possible (before the race engineers apply their setups).  About the chassis, says Meyer, "Dallara builds all chassis the same.  They have different vendors, so teams can use epoxy to correct issues with fit, but they're essentially identical."  Of course, teams then can modify the setup of the chassis, but they can't make any fundamental or permanent changes.  For example, ride height, springs, wickers (on the wings), bump and rebound can all be adjusted within certain prescribed tolerances, but a team can not add a new fairing or reshape a wing or other aerodynamic surface.  This helps guarantee that every chassis starts each race weekend on generally equal footing and remains equipped with all of the safety-related design elements provided by the manufacturer.  "This car is a safe race car.  Dalara did a great job with it," Meyer summarizes.

The league does the same thing with engines, but in an even more rigorous manner.  All IPS engines are owned by the league and built by the well-regarded Menards engine shop in Indianapolis (an organization that Meyer used to run before accepting a position with the Pro Series).  After each engine is built at the Menards facility, it is tested on a specialized engine dynomometer that is used to verify its power output.  As Meyer relates, "The engine dyno at Menards has a super charger and an air intake unit.  It puts the air at a specific temperature and 50% humidity.  So you've got constant 80 deg and 50% air at 1.4 inches of pressure at the intake.  This simulates what the engine would see going down a straight."  Having such well controlled conditions allows the shop to compare the motors under equal situations and verify that they are extremely close to nominal before releasing them into competition.  This helps prevent one team from getting a "hot" engine from the shop and benefiting from it for 1250 miles (which is the estimated life of an engine before a rebuild is required).

"Here lately, we haven't found much of a discrepancy at all between engines," Meyer says, "(A short period of time ago) we ran three cars on the dyno and they were within three horsepower.  You lose that much through the drivetrain."  On a relatively complex 450 horsepower motor, that is less than a one percent variation.  A truly impressive feat for any manufacturing process.  Once the engine is in the field, Meyer recounts that it usually remains relatively stable and competitive for its entire life: "over last few years have had a few assembly errors, but aside from that, the engine will run a couple thousand miles without losing anything.  In fact, they free up after 3-400 miles and pull a few more horsepower because the rings seat." 

What that means is that, generally speaking, the majority of a team's race result is tied to the preparation of the car and the work that the driver does on the track -- not research and development work on the engine and chassis.  In addition to lowering cost, this removes a lot of variability from the competitiveness equation.