I can still distinctly remember quite a bit about my earliest days at a race track. They came at  Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on Bump Day 1977 and Race Day 1978.
So many sights and sounds for a budding race fan! Many different and distinctive chassis, including McLarens and Parnellis that traced their roots to Formula One.
What made that possible was the Cosworth DFX engine. The Vel’s Parnelli Jones team took a three-liter Cosworth DFV F-1 mill, destroked it to 2.65 liters and added a turbocharger. The resulting powerplant changed the face — and the soundtrack — of Indy-car racing.
During my first trips to Indy, I was taken by the sounds of the different engines — the gruff roar of the Foyt-Fords, the lazy, asthmatic wheeze of the ancient turbo Offys.
Then there was the Cosworth — higher pitched and with smoother harmonics. Quieter, too, thanks to the turbocharger which added a distinctive whistle to the overall tone.
It was an engine that sounded eager and even futuristic. Even now, 30 years later, the sound of a modern-day turbo Cosworth XFE engine is music to my ears.
Cosworth dominated Indy car racing in the 1980s before getting competition from Ilmor, Honda and Toyota. But no matter what the badge, a 2.65-liter turbo still produced a wonderful noise.
The sound might be the biggest difference Long Beach fans notice next year when the IRL IndyCar Series takes over as the formula for the LBGP.
The IndyCar Honda engine has an extremely loud and piercing exhaust note that will have earplug vendors rushing to re-stock. Honda and League officials admit as much and a muffling solution has been in the works for the last couple of years.
Many longtime fans also believe the Champ Car is more aesthetically pleasing than the needle-nose Dallara IndyCar. At Long Beach, a display of March, Lola, Eagle and Reynard Champ Cars from the mid-80s to the present allowed viewers to really see the development of the basic Champ Car theme that originated with John Barnard’s 1979 Chaparral 2K.
Park an IRL car next to any Champ Car from the last 20 years and it looks large and ungainly.
The good news is that the drivers seem to enjoy driving them. At least, they did until they got one last chance to sample the extra 150-horsepower kick of the Champ Car’s Cosworth turbo.
“It’s a kick in the butt — it’s really a lot of power,” observed Oriol Servia of KV Racing Technology. “It’s a great car. It’s just a newer machine. It was designed later and differently, and actually, I don’t think it’s fair to compare it with the IndyCar like we are asked all the time because it’s just different rules. It has a lot more downforce, it’s lighter and has more power, so it’s just a better performing and faster car.”
Justin Wilson said the transition back to the Champ Car was more difficult than adapting to the IndyCar earlier this year.
“There’s a few things that took a bit of getting used to,” said the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing pilot. “One was adjusting to the power and the turbo lag, and then the downforce built in the car. So there’s been a lot to adjust to this weekend, going from one to the other. It was easy to go from the Champ Car to the IndyCar, but now switching back, it took a few more laps than I expected.”
I’m just happy that we’ll have the opportunity to see any top-level open-wheel cars circulating the famous Long Beach street circuit for years to come. And based on the way things are going in the first couple of months of unification, there’s no reason to expect the Grand Prix won’t recreate those glory days of the ’80s and ’90s.