The gist of this whole event is fun and crazy combinations. NOT a serious affair but a seriously FUN event.

that looks bad

Looks silly, but that is a cool set up if it does that. Still think it looks a bit like training wheels though.

All that crap under the car generated about 1000 pounds of downforce at zero miles per hour at an average of 12 inches of mercury. They had the engineering to back it up.

Just what is that scaffolding looking crap under it though?

I love the flat black look!

The Chapparal The 2J was as radical. The car looked like a white brick. A very fast white brick. The car carried two motors. A 465 cubic inch Chevy V8 powered the rear wheels and a 274 cc Rockwell snowmobile engine powered a pair of “sucker” fans in the rear bodywork.
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The fans sucked air out from under the car, creating a vacuum that held the 2J on the track. Sliding Lexan skirts were placed around the bottom edge of the body to seal the “plenum” area under the car. Enough suction could be generated to hold the car upside down on the ceiling of a room! Where a wing generates downforce (good) it also generates drag (bad). The suction device generated downforce with NO DRAG LOSS.

In 1970, Reigning F1 World Driving Champion Jackie Stewart qualified the 2J third at Watkins Glen and drove the race’s fastest lap, but his race was cut short by brake problems. The Chaparral team missed the next three races but returned to competition in September at Road Atlanta. They also brought a new driver with them, Vic Elford. Elford drove the 2J in three of the remaining four races. (The team would miss one more race.)

Elford was fastest qualifier in all three of those races but he only finished one (sixth at Road Atlanta). Something always broke. But the competition felt that, with a year of experience under their belt, the Chaparral team would bury them in 1971. Competitors were always lobbying the SCCA to ban the 2J. At the end of the season it was.

The reason it was banned oficially was because the lexan skirts on the underside violated a ban on moveable aerodynamic devices. The real reason was because the car had a gross advantage over the competition, leaving only mechanical issues and driver error to decide the race when the 2J was on the track.

So, sure, the thing on the underside of the “Cheaparral” may look stupid, but sometimes stupid-looking inventions can really make a difference.

Info Source: http://www.vintagerpm.com/chaparral_history.htm

They used the Chapparal vacuum concept?!?
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Talk about having some mechanical huevos… I think that was brilliance bordering on madness.
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I wonder if the system:
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1.generated enough suction to make a difference in cornering and
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2.redeemed itself despite its weight penalties being added to the car.

all that crap under the car makes it look dumb

So was the sucker fan to suck the car down? Looks like a pretty neat event!