According to sources in and around the Indy Racing League, Dreyer and Reinbold Racing has been fined at least $25,000 for using inappropriate fuel in one of their cars. The team will also be forced to pay IndyCar Series engine supplier Honda an estimated $100,000 for engine damage caused by the illegal fuel.

Brian Barnhart, IRL vice president for competition, told the Indianapolis Star that a fuel mixture containing 27% methanol was found in one of the DRR cars. The IndyCar Series recently switched to 98% ethanol (with 2% gasoline as a denaturing agent), so any amount of the methanol would be expressly illegal. Methanol was the primary fuel in open wheel racing for decades before made the move to the more renewable ethanol partially in 2006 (E10) and completely in 2007.

Team officials claimed the methanol was put into the car by an inexperienced crewmember that accidentally picked up an old fuel can, telling the Star, it was a 'dumb mistake'. According to the story, IRL officials found the suspect fuel during routine pre-qualifying fuel testing.

Taken at face value and considering everyone knows that all cars get their fuel inspected regularly, the 'mistake' explanation is almost believable. Barnhart termed the team's explanation, "at least plausible. But whether it was an accident or not, we couldn't let it slide. It was not within our rules."

Interestingly, the DRR fuel 'mistake' comes on the heels of several fuel related incidents uncovered during practice for the Indianapolis 500. In hindsight, these all cast suspicion that DRR may have been doing other work outside of the rule book.

Early in the Month of May, it was revealed that Honda was taking away all teams ability to adjust their fuel mixture during the race. Instead they would get just two options: one for green flag conditions, and the other for running under a caution period.

The original report indicated Honda had found unexplained detonation at a particular fuel setting and Honda was being cautious by mandating a single fuel flow 'map'. Honda sources indicate this change occurred during the first week of practice and before pole day qualifying on May 12th.

During the final day of qualifying, May 20th, another story surfaced that teams had also had the engine air temperature sensors taken away. Honda, team, and IRL officials confirmed this was indeed the case and indicated the change also happened before May 12th.

Sources (requesting anonymity), have revealed that a team was using the air temperature probe to get methanol in to the engine's fuel injectors. When also mixed with a slight amount of water, this would cool the ethanol (and now illegal methanol) fuel mixture, creating more powerful combustion and thus increased horsepower.

Noting that Honda has had just two engine failures in 2007, and one of them happened with the DRR of Rice, certainly makes it appear that all of these incidents are related. Rice had his engine expire at Kansas with the failure initially credited to a hardware problem - something that would be extremely rare for Honda since they became the sole engine supplier to the IndyCar Series. Kosuke Matsuura of Panther Racing also had an engine issue at Kansas, but that was diagnosed as overheated electronics.

When the teams arrived at Indy, Clarke and his Honda engineer's again found a car (now believed to be Rice's) with excessively high exhaust temperatures - likely caused by detonation.

DRR has been mildly improved this year, with Rice scoring top 10's in each of the first three races. Usually struggling at the very back, this was considered to be a great move forward for the team.

Much of the credit for the improved performance was give to John Dick, a veteran engineer and team manager who brought many of his crew members over from the now defunct Fernandez Racing IndyCar Series team.

As DRR did not qualify with the illegal fuel (or any of the suspected other illegal parts), they were not penalized any positions for the Indianapolis 500. Rice will start the race in 16th, with full-time team-mate Sarah Fisher 21st and their Indy only team-mate, Roger Yasukawa 23rd.

ORS / CAPSIS International