F1 cars (past and present) vs Indy cars.

Depends on the era. At one time not too long ago, F1 spent anywhere from $400 million to $450 million(depending on the team) per year on their cars and upgrades.

An IndyCar team spends less than $20 million per year.

It's literally apples vs oranges.

 

F1 is hot from lap 1 to probably lap 8, then it becomes a tire management issue (track dependent) and hopefully it goes smoothly from there unless there's a Red Flag, Yellow Flag, or a SC. You gotta have a backup tire compound for those inconsistencies.

The corners is where F1 excels, more so than IndyCar because of the batteries coexisting with the suspension geometry and tire compound(F1 tires take more than a ton of lateral and centrifugal load happening at the same time). Then you have DRS for the DRS zones.


Wait till 2026, when F1 cars have active aero on the front wings and rear wings and floor extends a little more outward from the rear wheels which gives more downforce loading. So many aero bits on an F1 car....its crazy.

 

F1 teams design and build their own new cars every year.
Then, they constantly develop them during the season, and travel to 24 different locations all over the world.

Indycar teams buy turn-key specs car from Dallara, and aren't allowed to develop them.
The same design can last several years. The teams travel to 17 events in the US only .

The engineering, operating and logistic costs are on different scales,

 

And really what is the purpose?

Somewhere in between might work?

 

pole qualifying times from COTA, the only track F1, WEC, Indy and NASCAR have all raced on in recent(ish) times:

F1: 1:32.029, Valteri Bottas, Mercedes W10, 2019
LMP1: 1:44.741, Neel Jani, Porsche 919, 2017
Indycar: 1:46.017, Will Power, Dallara DW12/Chevy, 2019
Hypercar: 1:57.655, Robert Kubica, Ferrari 499P, 2025
Nascar: 2:09.636, William Byron, Chevy, 2024

I'm a big IndyCar fan, but the cars aren't even close. and NASCAR...lol.

 

Exactly this. The only place where an indycar will beat an F1 car is at a proper oval and it has it's oval aero package installed.

Indycar is about the same as F2 speeds on any normal racing track.

 

Colton Herta should do alright in F2 next season then.

 

The first comparison has Benneton in high DF configuration and IndyCar in low DF configuration.
This is not anything close to a fair comparison.

The second configuration has Monza in 1965 configuration.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, ...

Trying to compare the incomparable is a waste of time.

 

I was fortunate to be there to see a master class by Mario, and an event that will probably never be repeated. The results would be the same today but the gap would be even more obvious.

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http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/us-racing/f1-vs-f5000-remembering-a-single-seater-showdown-at-the-questor-grand-prix

 

I've done a lot of physics work on Racing Simulators over the years and typically I put zero trust in any of these comparison videos as most of the time the physics are WAY off. Many of these downloaded cars for Assetto Corsa or whatever sim I find the cars to be way too fast from the developer. There is no way, me an ordinary guy that races on a sim for fun from time to time can be 5 seconds faster than real life. Or the power, the downforce or the drag will be wrong. It's quite hard to get it reasonably accurate across the whole setup window too.

As far as I know there were two times where Indy/Champ cars could be compared to F1. COTA as mentioned before. But also in 2002 around Montreal.
Pole for Champ car: 1:18.959
Pole for F1: 1:12.836

Using real life setups, an Indy car would destroy an F1 car around a big oval like Indianapolis. F1 simply doesn't have a minimal downforce package to run high speed ovals.

Gil De Ferran still holds the closed course speed record of 241.428 mph average around California Speedway in 2000 during the Champ Car season.

Around a road course, it typically isn't even close. F1 is much faster. Obviously it can depend what year or generation of F1 car vs which Indy or Champ car. But there are many many years of F1 cars that are faster than the fastest Indy or Champ car.

 

I would think that going from F1 to IndyCar would be fairly easy (like Mansell 1993) once one got used to the need to brake earlier. But I think that going the other way would be more difficult, and consider the drivers who tried and failed, like Michael Andretti or Alex Zanardi. The only one that seemed to do it successfully was Jacques Villeneuve.

 

When he was asked his impression after winning the Indianapolis 500 in 1966, rookie Graham Hill replied deadpan:

"It's a doddle to do only 800 left turns".

 

Fastest Champ car would not have made the grid for the F1 race.

Back when F1 ran at Indy, the F1 cars reached nearly 230 MPH before hitting the brakes into T1 (road course), yet it takes the champ cars (of that era) 1.5-2.5 laps to get up to that speed--a speed which F1 cars reach in 1/3rd lap.

 

In qualifying the fastest speed trap at Indy US GP was 342.2 kph by Toyota in 2005. I am pretty sure I recall seeing the fastest speed in the race being 356 kph, obviously with a pretty big tow. That's just over 221 mph. No questioning the acceleration of an F1 car. Even the Monza packages in V10 F1 cars topped out around 363 in 2004, and the highest recorded trap speed was just over 374 kph in the 2005 test in the draft. The 2002-2005 V10 F1 cars would have the best chance of being competitive around Indy no doubt. They'd probably blow the engines as I doubt those V10s could sustain 18000+ RPM for the better part of 3 hrs.

Speaking of acceleration. In 1999 or 2000, a car magazine tested race cars on the drag strip. In that article a 900 hp Champ Car did 9.0@167 in the quarter if memory serves. Reports from F1 teams at the time said 1/4 mile times of around 9.0-9.4@180+ mph.