Putting lipstick on the pig

A reader writes, Dear AR1.com, Shame on you for bowing to IndyCar pressure to not speak out about the new IndyCar. No matter how you slice it the new IndyCar is a pig so stop putting lipstick on it. The car is 2.5 seconds slower than the last Champ Car around the Sebring short course and the handling is diabolical. The drivers are doing their best to paint a rosy picture (or risk being outcast by IndyCar) but I read on Racer.com that Justin Wilson said the "behavior of the 2012 machine is very different," i.e. it handles horribly – nice lipstick Justin.

"This car drives very differently than any other car I have ever driven," he said during open testing at Sebring on Monday. "It has a lot of downforce, so if you get the balance right, you can really carry a lot of speed through the corners, but since we are so new to the car, we are still trying to figure out how the changes affect the car in every situation."

"We've learned a lot of things, made a lot of changes and are making gains on the car," he said. "You have to remember, we are still in the very early stages with this car and there is a lot left to do in order to get where we want to be."

In contrast, last year's championship runner-up Will Power said his Penske team had reached the stage where it was fine-tuning its cars (i.e. it's just about reached its full potential folks).

"I think every test is valuable, but we're at a point where we've narrowed it down to the configuration we are going to run," said Power. "It's all about finding the little details now."

It's already a known fact that at Indy the car handles worse than the old 'Crapwagon' and the lap times show it at Indy. So it's slow at Sebring on the road course and it's slow on the Indy oval. And the chassis is a 'flexible flyer' on the 7-post rig.

And I still think it is the ugliest race car ever built despite AR1.com saying they thought it looked good from the top and from the side. Stop putting lipstick on this pig and be real journalists and report the facts. Don Bosco P.S. And Dallara should be fired for designing such a piece of cr#%, but oh wait they have their hand in the Indy government trough yet are creating hundreds of jobs in Italy where the car was designed and all the parts are made. Only a handful of Americans assemble the cars here in the USA. At least Champ Car was decent enough to hire an American company (Elan/Panoz) in Georgia to design and build the car.

Dear Don, Rest assured IndyCar has not asked us to only write nice things about their new car. Everyone knows the new car is not the best, but there is a bright side. The initial turn-in is nice and crisp but then it's almost like the car changes it's mind and decides not to turn, probably because of its poor design. You can even see that in the videos if you watch. For me, that means the car needs to be steered with the pedal more, which is what I like because it separates the really good drivers from the mediocre ones so this year we are going to see who the really talented drivers are. It will also help to separate the pack on ovals so we won't see dangerous 'pack' racing as much, which was a goal of the new car. And the new car is definitely safer. Mark C.