The Eagle 997 was the final built CART chassis by

Eagle Eagle is the common name for the golden eagle, bald eagle, and other birds of prey in the family of the Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of Genus, genera, some of which are closely related. True eagles comprise the genus ''Aquila ( ...

. The car was used in the 1999 CART FedEx Championship Series and was primarily campaigned by

All American Racers All American Racers is an American-licensed auto racing team and constructor based in Santa Ana, California. Founded by Dan Gurney and Carroll Shelby in 1964, All American Racers initially participated in American sports car and Champ Car races ...

Robby Gordon Robert Wesley Gordon (born January 2, 1969) is an American semi-retired auto racing driver. He has raced in NASCAR, Championship Auto Racing Teams, CART, the IndyCar Series, the Trans-Am Series, International Motor Sports Association, IMSA, Inter ...

also used a privately-entered Eagle 997 in select races in the later half of the 1999 season.

Development History

The car would be the first

CART A cart or dray (Australia and New Zealand) is a vehicle designed for transport, using two wheels and normally pulled by draught animals such as horses, donkeys, mules and oxen, or even smaller animals such as goats or large dogs. A handcart ...

race car to be designed using

Computational fluid dynamics Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid dynamics, fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required ...

. This would lead to the car having significantly more down force then the other cars on the grid, the winning Reynard 99I of the year would make ~ of down force at , where as the 997 would produce of down force at . This would lead the car to be exceptionally good in the corners, but have extremely low top speed for its time, meaning that this car would have its top speed limited to , versus the ~ of the aforementioned 99I, this lowered top speed would allow for significantly lower gearing for the car, meaning that even though it would be more then 0.3 seconds quicker to then the 99I, with the 997's 0-, with the 997 capable of 2.8 seconds to , however that was only simulated, and it was capable of only around 3 seconds, meaning it was only 0.1 seconds quicker then the 99I which is a negligible difference.

CART/Champ car results

References

{{CART 1999 American Championship racing cars Eagle racing cars Open wheel racing cars 1999 CART season cars Mid-engined cars Rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive vehicles Rear-wheel-drive vehicles