[bil588]

Originally Posted by davehenrie

According to Wirth the Dp will. This was a situation Similar to the statement/question in post 16, why would they send the car just for publicity if they didn't want to do it right? Well they didn't NEED to do much to surpass an A1gp lap so why spend all that extra money?
That car was there to sell tickets, not to crush a lap record...if they really wanted to do that, they would have shown up with a 1998ish Lola and a Honda Powerplant.

Well, clearly the Champcar demo was just that, a skeleton crew and no real setup. Obviously Toyota was convinced that an F1 car was so much faster than other cars that use Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, that they saw no need to bring the 100 or so people that would normally accompany the car to an F1 weekend. Similarly, people were underwhelmed by the times set by the Sauber BMW when it made it's 3 or 4 laps around the Nordschleiffe.
High ride-heights, and Engine Limits prevented a true 'assault' on the course record. The cost of such an effort, just as Toyota at Laguna, far outweighs the publicity benefits.

I still say the car that Sebastien drove to eclipse the time set by the Toyota, would probably not pass race scrutineering. And they only reason they made the effort was because the bulk of the two day test was over, and Kelkoven probably paid for the extra effort. Certainly they would not have transported to Laguna the entire Y-N-H-L team just for an attempt to beat the F1 lap record. They were there, they were done, and somebody offered them them opportunity. A few tweeks from Cosworth, Red tires...who knows how much weight was removed and POOF! A lap record.

dave henrie

thanks for the official statement.

the Y part of Y/N/H/L will be no more.