In 1988 and 1989 I lived in Indiana and worked on indy 500 cars as well as other things. I was doing body work on the cars so after a crash we would get the parts and repair them and get them going again. The cars are carbon fiber no mytery there but the repairs were for all different reasons.
A fire in the engine bay would always mean too much heat and a the outer layers would come away from the nomex core which would be aluminium or aluminum if your American. The engine is a tight fit to the body work so it has refective heat shields as well. Other repairs were from crashes that were from hiting things as you do in a race car for one reason or another and often we would make fast repairs by a special method from good parts then splice then into the section required. as the cars would not see many seasons it was not worth having full moulds for repairs. At that time cars were having problems with front down force as the front wings were crushing at speed. When one the front wings lost its down force the cars were prone to crash. The remedy for that was replacing front wings stronger wing with a core to handle the wind force. The pictures above are oval track set up with small wings and the cars used for cuircut racing have larger wings and bigger air intakes for slower speeds. The gear ratios change as well for the right gearing for the track.
The cars are almost silent at top speed with only a faint noise as they zip past when they are on the track doing time trials pre race. It is a good idea to get to the track a few days early and go in to the infield and experience this.
The race can get snowed in or can be perfect. This year was snow a week befor the race the perfect day for racing and even got sunburn to go with my smile.
It was Emerson that won the day after misshaps with the other cars. Which was cool to have a car I worked on win the Indy 500 which was a very close race. Often the finish is shown in the indy 500 highlights pre race some times.
If your interested in these cars you can visit Indiana motor speedway most days as the museum is open with a shop for memrobilia or collectables. It is a great race to go to with a great vibe that need to go to the race to understand fully.
