IndyCar teams are testing Panoz DP-01 ChampCars with outside organization

Though it seems like it has actually been going on under the radar for a while Marshall Pruett recently discovered that a Brownsburg, Indiana company called MKR Racing has acquired a bunch of Will Power’s favorite race car — the Panoz DP-01 that ran for the final 2007 season of the Champ Car World Series — allowing current and prospective IndyCar drivers to gain relevant testing and experience in these absolute beasts without falling foul of IndyCar’s testing restrictions.

The arrangement is a little bit shady now, but I think it could stand to be legitimized. IndyCar severely limits testing — just like Formula 1 does — to keep the cost of competition at a level that is manageable for small teams; otherwise, the teams with the most money could do the most testing and maintain an unsurpassable advantage as was essentially the case in bygone eras. However, Formula 1 provides a formal way for teams to run Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) programs running cars that have aged out of present-day specifications, and customer teams without old cars of their own can even borrow them from their works team, as Cadillac did before its first season.

IndyCar could conceivably allow this formally with cars like the Panoz. It also remains to be seen what will happen to all the DW12s in a couple years when the new IndyCar finally arrives. There is a balance to be struck between ensuring drivers have enough relevant seat time to be in fighting shape and keeping teams on a level playing field for testing current-spec race cars.