The Panoz never ran at San Jose when it had the tram line issue. The Lola ran there and had no problems what so ever, other than the obvious, the drivers complaining the cars were taking off.
The Panoz was introduced in 2007, and on the first DAY suffered structural problems at Las Vegas. With no other chassis avaliable they simply patched them up (no joke) and took them to Long Beach, where they continued to have issues, and Figge and Tracy suffered spinal injuries in low speed accidents.
Add to that all the other issues. The electrics didn't work, the fuel tank didn't vent properly, making it impossible to refuel the car correctly, the starter motor didn't work, because they had to fit a smaller one due to the lack of space at the back despite the car being the size of a small planet.
The Panoz chassis was chosen for the same reason it's always chosen - it is cheap. There is a reason it's cheap too - it's crap. It has been slowly phased out of IRL as Dallara has continued to produce enough chassis to make it a viable option for everybody. And thank god for that, because almost every IRL injury was in the Panoz.
Some of the Lola chassis had done over 50 race distances by the time they were retired. The Panoz couldn't even cope with 1.
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theRacingLine.netSportsCarArchives.comEdited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2009 10:14PM by DaveEllis.