Dallara
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dallara Automobili is a chassis manufacturer for various motor racing series, being most notable for its near-monopoly in Formula 3 since 1993. Dallara also is the chassis used by almost all teams in the Indy Racing League.
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[edit] Early years
The company was founded by designer Gian Paolo Dallara in 1972, near Parma, Italy and started building chassis for sports car racing and hillclimbing, racing in the smaller engine classes. In 1978 the company moved to the Italian F3 Championship, where it dominated the field and won the championship ever since. Dallara had a brief dalliance with Formula 3000 in the mid 1980s.
[edit] Formula 1
In 1988 the company became a Formula One constructor, after being hired by Scuderia Italia to build their chassis. The relationship between the Italian constructor and Beppe Luchinni's racing outfit endured until 1992, with their best result being two third places: one at the 1989 Canadian Grand Prix with Andrea de Cesaris; the other at the 1991 San Marino Grand Prix, thanks to JJ Lehto. Dallara would return briefly to F1 in 1999, building the test-chassis for Honda's planned and aborted return to the series. During 2004, Dallara recruited ex-Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar F1 designer Gary Anderson, leading to speculation that the Italian company was working on another F1 project. Late in 2004 the nascent Midland team announced that Dallara would be designing and building their Formula One chassis which was due to be entered for the 2006 season. Following Midland's purchase of the Jordan team for early entry to F1 in 2005, Dallara continued co-operating with the team technically. However the relationship fizzled out as Midland focussed its resources on developing the existing Jordan infrastructure and a new Dallara F1 chassis never appeared.
[edit] Other Formulae
In 1993, Dallara built their F393 chassis for Formula 3, a car that was so competitive it forced every team to drop their Reynard and Ralt chassis, driving them out of nearly every F3 market, which became Dallara's playground in the following years. Only a few one-off entries, mostly from Martini Cars, attempted to fight the Italian company's dominion. Dallara eventually branched into other areas with equal success, establishing another near-monopoly in the Indy Racing League, starting in 1997.
Dallara was one of the original chassis contructors when the IRL debuted its own chassis in late 1996. The cars were most notably differentiated from the competing G-Force chassis by the ovoid shape of the air intake inlet, while the G-Force's was triangular, a design characteristic that both manufacturers still retain. Dallara cars have won six of the ten Indianapolis 500's they have contested. For the 2006 season, over 80% of the field began the season with Dallaras, a possible symptom of competitor Panoz's perceived lack of interest in the series. Currently, all IRL teams use Dallara chasses.
In 2002 they become the exclusive supplier for World Series by Nissan, a move that allowed them to gain the contract for the World Series by Renault in 2004. Dallara was also appointed by the FIA to be the sole supplier of the GP2 Series, giving them a near-monopoly of every motorsport series used as a direct entry point into F1.
[edit] Sports car racing
1993 was the year Dallara returned to endurance racing, although very few chassis would take their name. The first project was the Ferrari 333 SP, made for the new WSC regulations in the IMSA Championship. The 333 SP, manufactured at Michelotto, won a great number of races both in North America and Europe. Ferrari also hired Dallara to develop the racing version of the Ferrari F50, financed by French racing driver Fabien Giroix, but the project was aborted before it got off the ground, in 1998.
As a consequence, the company secured other contracts and built chassis for Toyota (GT One), Audi (various incarnations of the R8) and Chrysler (the Oreca-run Mopar LMP, which has also served as a test mule for Nissan's aborted return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans). All these cars were competitive in prototype sports car racing, with the Audi R8 in particular becoming the most dominant chassis in modern times at the 24 Hours and the American Le Mans Series.
