This Ex-IndyCar Driver Wants to Completely Rethink Motorsports

• J.R. Hildebrand, a former IndyCar racer, has created a radical rethinking of what he believes open-wheel racing should look like.
• The Blackbird 66 Mk. 1 eschews complex wings, moving away from downforce for a car that relies more on mechanical grip.
• He believes this will create a more visually dynamic, enthralling racing product and allow drivers to better showcase their talent.

Modern open-wheel race cars are incredibly impressive machines, festooned with wings and diffusers that suction them to the racetrack, allowing them to tear around tracks at a blistering pace. But if you've ever watched the historic racing at an event like the Goodwood Revival, you know that watching, say, a Jaguar E-type slither and slide around a circuit, as the driver explores the limits of the car's mechanical grip, is more entertaining than the effortless speed of a modern F1 car.

Former IndyCar driver J.R. Hildebrand—who famously very nearly won the 2011 Indy 500—agrees, and he has cooked up a project to investigate a new, more exciting direction that the future of open-wheel racing could take. Called Blackbird 66 Mk. 1, this new concept created by Hildebrand imagines a race car that prioritizes the visual drama of a car being pushed to its limits without the help of downforce to keep it planted, but also without sacrificing the high speeds that make series like F1 and IndyCar the pinnacles of open-wheel motorsports.

The first thing you'll probably notice about the Blackbird 66 is that, unlike nearly every top-class open-wheel racer since the 1970s, there is no front or rear wing. Instead, there is simply a safety cell that holds the driver and engine, and the look is eye-catching. But this radical design is not about style, rather it's about creating a package that highlights the human achievement of driving a car on the absolute edge, something he says downforce is masking.

Hildebrand proposes stripping all the wings off the car, claiming that removing 20 percent of downforce would only reduce lap times by up to 1.5 percent. To counteract that, he proposes cutting weight and boosting power. In Hildebrand's ideal world, the Blackbird is powered by a twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V-10, sending roughly 1250 horsepower on road courses and 850 hp on ovals to the rear wheels. The powertrain, however, isn't the main focus of this thought experiment.

While more power and less downforce would make it harder for the cars to carry high speeds through corners, Hildebrand believes an increase in tire width will help offset the reduction in aerodynamic grip with mechanical grip. Plus, Hildebrand sees the challenge of managing this mechanical grip as part of the appeal. "Speed alone is not the goal," he writes. Instead of chasing outright speed, Hildebrand is focused on creating a car that produces exciting racing, allowing fans to watch the drivers wrestle the cars through corners without the aid of downforce and show their true skills.

The more dynamic and twitchy car behavior these changes would produce would, theoretically, make even a single car on track—such as in a qualifying run—a true spectacle. Not only would drivers be forced to work harder to get the cars through the corners, but the higher straight-line speed afforded by more power would also mean more intense braking zones, where the cars would squirm around as the drivers try to get them slowed in time for the turn.

This would, in Hildebrand's mind, make it easier for fans to discern the cream of the crop from the merely good drivers, something that is more challenging to parse in today's aero-intensive world. "When it comes to the baseline level of difficulty to get the car around the track, I think cars all across motorsports have gotten easier and easier," he said in a conversation with Car and Driver.

Hildebrand's Blackbird 66 is purely theoretical at the moment, contained simply within these illustrations and his manifesto on his website. While he would love to see the car built, Hildebrand's main focus is getting a conversation started around what the future of open-wheel racing formulas could look like.