Indy Racing League
The Indy Racing League, better known as IRL, is the promoter of an all-oval open-wheel racing series in the United States and more recently, Japan. Among the races it sponsors is the Indianapolis 500. IRL began in 1994 and is owned by Hulman and Co. which also owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway complex. IRL was masterminded in 1994 by Tony George and was created with a break-away group of drivers from CART, which had coordinated Indycar racing since 1979. George designed IRL as a lower-cost open-wheel alternative to CART, which had come to be technology-driven and dominated by a few wealthy multi-car teams much in the manner of Formula One. George also wanted to maintain the U.S. tradition of higher-speed oval tracks as opposed to the road courses favored by F1, and, increasingly, CART as well. At first George was widely ridiculed; IRL's early seasons consisted of few races and mostly unknown drivers, even in the Indy 500. Later the caliber of racing improved greatly and IRL began to draw teams over from CART, which contributed greatly to the later's recent bankruptcy.The League consists of two series, the IndyCar Series (usually considered synonymous with Indy Racing League) and the Menards Infiniti Pro Series, which is the developmental series for IndyCar.
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2 IRL Rookies of the Year 3 External links |
IRL is also an initialism used commonly on the Internet to mean In Real Life.IRL Champions
IRL Rookies of the Year
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