No Panoz Chassis for IRL This Year?

[bzcam]

I noted that all the cars lining up for St. Pete are Dallaras. What happened to the Panoz IRL chassis? Last season it was the choice for road courses. Anyone know?

bz

[DRC]

I would guess, since there are few road courses, nobody would suffer the chassis on ovals just to have a good road course chassis.

[robd]

I would'nt be surprised if the Gannassi team (especialy Scott Dixon) would prefer the Panoz chassis for the road/street courses. But it is probably a matter of cost.
The budgets these teams were used to when multiple engine manufacturers were involved are no longer available.
I guess even Chip Gannassi is feeling the pinch, thus his talk of wanting one premier american open wheel competition.

[Jonesi]

New fuel with new size engines are seeing a heating problem that's worse on the Panoz. Also Panoz isn't signed up as a support company anymore, so if they have some old ones, they'll have to figure out the fix themselves.

[bzcam]

The indycar.com website still lists Panoz as an official chassis supplier. Is this just obsolete info? I wonder if CCWS switch from Lola to Panoz had anything to do with IRL abandoning them.

bz

[Alexamateo]

Panoz still legal and you'll see some one-offs for Indy, especially since you can pick up a bargain basement Panoz. I haven't heard if the heating problem has been addressed though.

[indycool]

For whatever reason, the Panoz is competitive at Indy and apparently no place else. Rahal-Letterman was the last to give up on it and get Dallaras when they couldn't get it to work on the big ovals. As someone said, there are quite a few laying around and I'm sure we'll see some one-offs at Indy with 'em.

[bzcam]

I noticed in yesterday's Indy 500 lineup announcement that Playa Del Racing has two Panoz entries with TBS drivers and sponsors. I wonder if these are the exact same cars they ran last year. Does this mean the return of Buddy to Indy?

[Mark in Oshawa]

People cant afford to keep both chassis, so they picked the one that is best for the whole series. Dallara is the way to go. This is no different than in Champ Car when Reynard was still around but most teams went to the Lola's because they were better in more tracks. You have to think points, and you cant risk sucking on 3/4's of the race tracks to win on 2.