IRL races ahead

Honda and Toyota join dominant General Motors in a more tech-friendly racing series that gets a new chassis builder for 2003.

A cornerstone of the Indy Racing League's cost-control philosophy is its approval of chassis and engine designs and suppliers for three-year intervals. Rules remain unchanged, with only slight modifications permitted to cars and engines during that period to ensure maximum competition while allowing teams to amortize costs over three years instead of having to replace cars annually.

This year inaugurates a new set of rules, with new engine and chassis suppliers competing for teams' business in the series. The two biggest changes under the new rules are an increased focus on driver crash protection for the chassis and an abandonment of the notion that racing engines need to be dimensionally similar to a manufacturer's production engine. That means thoroughbred racing engines, albeit with restrictions aimed at maximizing durability, mated to safer, better-handling cars. Technophiles will find more to capture their interest in a series that had seemed technology-averse.