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Guess it depends on how you look at it....
Brian Barnhart said on "Windtunnel" last summer that when the IRL first started with their new engines and formula, the engines could be bought new for about $85,000....and the rpice for any of the engines in the series last year was supposedly $110,000 each...that was the price he quoted on the air...
If Penske and Ganassi didn't buy theirs, then they must have worked a development deal with TRD, because they were doing adjustments and such on their dynos last April on what TRD had created as a "Qualifying" engine that ended up being so reliable that it became the Toyota "Race" engine....at that point was when Toyota really stepped out ahead of the competition last year....
Also, Speedway Engine Development did "Performance Tuning" for Panther Racing's "Chevy" engines following Indy, the Menard-Cheever partnership was trying to do their own set of Chevy upgrades, and Speedway Engines also did all of the conversion of Panther's car and the spec work on the "Chevy-Worth" or "Gen IV" plus the prep for the additional engines that were ultimaely distributed to other Chevy Teams last August....
That tells me that if Barnhart's quoted price was to "Buy" it, that isn't very expensive....
It also tells me that good engine men were opening up Toyota, Chevy and Cosworth engines last season....probably with special permissions from the manufacturers...
It raises questions in my mind on this issue.....last night was the first I had heard of the "Buy" option being available to teams with the three engine manufacturers that were in the mix in 2003....everything else I had read or heard spelled "Lease Only" starting in 2003....
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