IRL to test mufflers

UPDATE As we have said all along, Champ Car had it right when it came to turbo engines and to the sound of that engine. The sound of the normally aspirated Honda turbo in the IndyCar has been horrible since its introduction in 2006. Since then Honda designed a muffler that the current cars use, which makes the noise a bit more tolerable. In 2011 IndyCar will finally adopt a turbo engine format. Until 2011, the IRL plans to soften the sound of the normally aspirated engines with even better mufflers being tested. Those should be in place for next season, Brian Barnhart said Friday at Infineon.

12/03/06 Rumor has it that the IRL will test various mufflers for their Honda engines. Industry wide the IRL is known to have the worse sounding, mind-numbing engine noise in all of racing, and that includes tractor pulling. It's about time they did something. When their engines used to blow every 20 laps and spill oil all over the track they added diapers to the cars. Later they added impact attenuators on the back of the transmissions (known in the industry as butt pads) after the numerous broken driver backs from rear-end collisions with the wall. So the mufflers are the latest in the line of IRL innovations to fix what most deem as an inferior product. And imagine, they wanted Champ Car to switch to these engines.