Penske's Rear Wings

[Alexamateo]

Anyone out there have an idea on what happened to the rear wings on the Penske cars. Helio's breaks while leading and he crashes, then a few laps later, and only 6-8 laps or so from the finish, Sam's also starts to lay over while he was running second. He didn't crash, but he slowed waaay down and dropped back to 9th at the checked flag.

[FerrrariF1]

Anyone out there have an idea on what happened to the rear wings on the Penske cars. Helio's breaks while leading and he crashes, then a few laps later, and only 6-8 laps or so from the finish, Sam's also starts to lay over while he was running second. He didn't crash, but he slowed waaay down and dropped back to 9th at the checked flag.


Most likely illegal wings mounts

[Old3Fan]

They probably consulted with DEI on wing mounting procedures.

[Sandfly]

The High Downforce setup required for the full throttle run is like pushing a brick with a parachute on it. Too much stress. It happens.

[keysersoze]

The High Downforce setup required for the full throttle run is like pushing a brick with a parachute on it. Too much stress. It happens.

Are you saying that the cars were wide open throughout? The telemetry I saw showed drivers braking on each end of the track.

[Champcar4life]

It was not the first time something like that happen, when he had his team in CART the rear wings broken on both deFarran and Helio, Helio made contact with the tire barrels, lucky it he was about too brake when the wing broken and he was running up front at the time, just like he was at the mile.

[CCFanatic]

FLEX WINGS! Ferrari engineering makes it to IRL.

What is funny is that the whole wing is just held on by 2 pins that cost about 10 dollars and could easily be replaced by bobby pins. Some cheap things failed on the cars and if it was a faster course we could have been mourning a driver or two instead of talking about how Penske screwed up.

[Phoenixent]

FLEX WINGS! Ferrari engineering makes it to IRL.

What is funny is that the whole wing is just held on by 2 pins that cost about 10 dollars and could easily be replaced by bobby pins. Some cheap things failed on the cars and if it was a faster course we could have been mourning a driver or two instead of talking about how Penske screwed up.


I Believe Honda-BAR started had a failure like Castroneves years ago. Also Cheever brought this up about Panther team years ago when Sam was running away with Championships. The rear wing support moved as the pressure increased. Not that hard to do with all the different alloys and composites out there and with all the inspection points in can still be missed. Aircraft industry comes up with these ideas all the time. The part would move at all until x amount of psi.

That Penske unfairadvantage did not work this time around it will be back.

[45 Below]

Here's what Barnhart has to say on "Winggate".

http://www.indycar.com/news/story.php?story_id=9113

I only have this second-hand so can't provide a link but apparently the non-Dallara part that failed was the rear wing adjusters Penske developed for Indy. They couldn't handle the downforce created by the three element wing they were using at Milwaukee.

[tbyars]

Most likely illegal wings mounts

Why do you automatically assume they were illegal?

Non-standard? Perhaps. But there are no requirements in the IRL that ALL parts have to be spec. There are parts open for development, as we saw at Indy with the multiple styles of mirror mounts.

This could have been - and probably was - a development part that did not perform as expected on both the Penske cars. But, again, I stress that does not, by any means, indicate the part or the engineering was in any way cheating or illegal.

[DBell]

Why do you automatically assume they were illegal?

Non-standard? Perhaps. But there are no requirements in the IRL that ALL parts have to be spec. There are parts open for development, as we saw at Indy with the multiple styles of mirror mounts.

This could have been - and probably was - a development part that did not perform as expected on both the Penske cars. But, again, I stress that does not, by any means, indicate the part or the engineering was in any way cheating or illegal.

Then maybe wing mounts should be spec. Everyone is racing the same chassis anyway. Leaving teams to make or modify the mounts could lead a team try to gain an advantage through engineering a flex wing. At the least, it leads to a lot of speculation in such an incident that happened. Wasn't Gannasi found with an illegal wing mount before. I seem to remember someone talking about it.

[Hoss Ghoul]

I wouldn't be surprised if Penske was trying something, he's famous for his ingenuity, nor would I be surprised if it was just a simple part or engineering failure.

How did Legge's wing break at Road America last year, was it just the center plane or did the mounts fail?

Haven't seen this yet with the COT in NASCAR, and of course they generate much less downforce, but this type of thing happens in all forms of racing.

[Komahawk]

The worst part was when Hornish had to give up the lead since I had picked him on victory... ;)