Everybody should be searching for speed the day before qualifying begins for the Indianapolis 500.
But many of the teams at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway spent Friday looking for engines.This most unusual month of May at Indy has come about because the Indy Racing League, in only its second season, has switched to all-new chassis and engines.
The chassis makers involved so far, G-Force of England and Dallara of Italy, have managed to supply enough cars to seemingly assure a starting field of 33 for the 81st Indy 500 on May 25.
Despite the best efforts of engine-makers Oldsmobile Aurora and Nissan Infiniti - designing and building 4-liter, non-turbocharged racing engines in fewer than 18 months - the IRL teams have found themselves short of power plants.
Representatives of Aurora, which is supplying engines for the majority of the teams, say more than 100 kits have been delivered to engine builders. Nissan officials say they have supplied 30 engines for the six or seven teams that will be using the Infiniti.
Apparently, though, some of the teams have stockpiled the engines, leaving others to search and worry.
Eddie Cheever, who gave Aurora its first IRL victory in January at Orlando, Fla., had not turned a wheel on the 21/2-mile oval until Friday because he had no engines available for his G-Force.
Cheever, part-owner of his own team, thought he had four engines available for himself and rookie teammate Jeff Ward. But after Ward experienced some engine problems during the Rookie Orientation program early in the week, the team sent the engines back to be reworked at Brayton Engineering in Coldwater, Mich.
"We were saving our bullets for Indy," Cheever said. "We thought we had a good plan, but it bit us in the butt."
Cheever finally ran some practice laps Friday and got up to 212.665. Ward improved to 215.249.
Other teams have had to limit practice time to conserve engines, while several others could find nothing to buy.