Horton said that the IRL has a good budget for safety and testing, which uses the SAFER walls and full-sized cars. This is done at the University of Nebraska, where Dr Dean Sickling is the director of the famed Midwest Roadside Safety Facility. Sickling, along with Dr Ronald Faller, Dr John Rohde, Dr John Reid and John Holloway, developed the SAFER barrier and won the 2002 Louis Schwitzer Award for contributing to,and significantly improving, driver safety at the Indianapolis 500. The award is presented annually at the Brickyard during the second week of qualifying, and is for engineering innovation and excellence at the blue riband race.
This year, the IRL introduced paddleshifters and variable assist steering racks for its IndyCar category, which further increase driver safety. The paddleshifters are mandatory at all IRL races, save for the Indy 500. Paddleshifters were made optional for Indy so that one-off teams would not be required to have the financial burden of installing them. That was instituted pre-unification, but all cars present in the first week of practice have them. The steering racks remain optional.
The Brickyard is the only IRL racetrack where the Panoz chassis is allowed, because of its ability to faster cool the hot burning ethanol fuel down the long front straight. There are only two Panoz cars entered - for American Dream Racing and PDM Racing, both yet to name a driver. These teams are on the 'short' programme, meaning they run only the second weekend of qualifying.
![Alex Lloyd crashes out of practice at Indianapolis [pic credit: IRL/Young]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/437090.jpg)
