Dalziel’s comments about F3 vs Atlantics

[mellowyellowcj7]

“Dalziel said the theory that Formula 3 prepares a driver for Champ Cars better than Atlantics is rubbish. "I rate Atlantic cars a lot better than a Formula 3 car. They are horrible," he continued. "Plus, it's always the same two or three guys at the front in Europe because of the disparity in teams.” From www.cart.com

I’m not really trying to stir the pot, but I remember somebody making the comment that Atlantics were easy to drive and that one must race in Europe to learn how to drive on road courses.

[ringo]

ofcourse he's going to say that

[Russfeld]

There's what, 14 Atlantic cars this year? Sometimes you get 14 F3 cars within 1 second (especially in the Euroseries). Quite frankly id rather race against 30 guys 25 times a year, than 14 guys 14 times a year.

And if you want to talk about team disparity, look at Atlantics not F3. Dalziel's driving for the best engineering team in the series. You could pay for a season of F3 with what they pay Atlantic engineers.

[Jay]

If you go back in the Ten-Tenth's newsletter there's a bit I did with him last year when he had a pretty bad Atlantic car and compares to the F3:

It's in one way pretty similar, because they're probably very similar lap times, but to drive the cars they're so different. The F3 is underpowered and it's a difficult car to drive when there's problems. If the car isn't 100% then the car is really slow. For the Atlantic, I think you can generally muscle a good lap out of it if you don't have the perfect car. You can really adapt your driving over one or two laps to try and get the best out of it. That's the biggest thing I've noticed between he two of them. Power is pretty similar, but I think my driving style definitely suits the Atlantics. With the Atlantic you can definitely get the tail out a couple for times and that's
really the quick way to drive these cars. You can throw them
about and be a lot more violent with them than you can with a Formula 3.

It should be realised though that Ryan had a pretty rough time in F3...He missed a lot of races because of illness and never really had a good go at it. Also, I don't think the people he was around treated him very well. I think his Formula Renault result is more accurate as to where his ability is. Anyway, he's a good guy and quick, so hopefully he can find his way to a Champcar.

[Jay]

Also, I wouldn't necessarily say Ryan has the best engineering team in the series this year....he has a good one, but best is pushing it. There's Doricott, Lynx and RuSport's come in extremely strong. Dalziel does have a good bunch, but Ryan-Hunter Reay had the same engineers last year, and Dalziel was still faster than him...and much faster than previous driver Roger Yukazawa (sp?).

[Russfeld]

PPI became Hylton who became Sierra Sierra


Im not surpriesd Dalziel was faster than Roger Y and RHR, I dont rate either of them.

[Jay]

Yup, that's what I meant, RD has RHR's crew from last year (well...most of it). Last year, he probably had the worse of the two Hyltons and was faster... RHR's inconsistent, but not slow by any means.

[racefanatic]

Roger Yasukawa

[Jay]

whatever... It was too much work to look that up.

[corkholio]

From what I have heard engineers in TA are getting 6-figured salaries nowdays. I hear you can do 2 F3 seasons for the price of one TA season.

Lynx is bogged down by inferior motors. ruSPORT is probably throwing more money at it than anyone else and basically bought Gerald Tyler from Dorricott, but I think Aaron Justus is more of an indication of where ruSPORT really is rather than Allmendinger.

That same Sierra Sierra crew made Anthony Lazzaro look far better than he really was. Yasukawa and Hunter-Reay have been trashing tubs left and right in the big leagues this year.

Anyways Jay, you should know this as a CART fan, that if Daziel wins the TA championship he has no chance in hell of making it to CART anyway unless he magically comes up with a nice big checkbook.

[Jay]

Hunter-Reay isn't an oval driver, and never claimed to be. At least one of those crashes was due to mech. failure too. He's been getting faster each race, and considering he's driving a Reynard has done pretty well so far - especially looking at how he compares to his teammate. I think he's actually driven better in Cart thus far than he did in Atlantic last year, all things considered.

I'm optimistic about Dalziel being able to attract some sponsorship for Cart. His dad (quite the character) seems pretty well connected, and Ryan himself is almost the ideal driver for a sponsor. Extremely sponsor an fan friendly, and fast on the track.