| | NHRA | IDRC | WINNER |
| START PAGE | Boring | Overstuffed | IDRC wins for opening with more photos and upcoming event info. |
| GRAPHICS | Lots of black | Lots of white | NHRA wins here for the starting-tree navigation system, which is a neat way to get around the site. |
| WOMEN | None | A few | IDRC wins here, but brings itself no glory. They have a link to a section on the “IDRC Starter Girls Team” but nothing really about that team or the girls in it. No larger photos of them either. |
| SCHEDULE | Solid | Excellent | IDRC wins again, since its schedules include information on ticket pricing, driving directions and hotels for the events. Plus there are links to venue sites and pre-registration pages. At the NHRA site, you only get the where and when of the event. That’s not enough. |
| RULES | Downloadable | Readable | This is a toss up. The NHRA lets you download the entire series rulebook as a pdf file for easy reference and printing with Adobe Acrobat. But all the rules on the IDRC site are readable in your browser without Acrobat mak- ing reference easy. We’d like both sites to offer each other’s methods in addition to their own. |
| NEWS | Up-to-date and extensive | Lagging | With loads of features built around racers and regular updates, the NHRA has the IDRC covered here. Three days after the IDRC’s West Coast Nationals, the results were finally posted on their site. |
| | | | Overall Winner: IDRC by a very thin margin. |
Carted.OffExcept for the fact that the CART sanctioning body is a basket case and political nightmare, Honda's performance in the FedEx Championship series has been nothing less than stellar. After four manufacturer's championships for its Champ Car V8, Honda plans to make it five and out during 2002. Yup, after this year Honda will be spending its racing budget elsewhere.
Honda's major weapon this year will be the eighth (and final) generation of its Champ Car V8 engine, the 800+ hp, single turbo HR-2. Developed from last year's HR-1 engine by Honda Performance Development, in Santa Clarita, Calif., the HR-2 has increased horsepower, more efficient packaging, greater fuel economy and improved efficiency and drivability. You didn't expect it to get worse, did you?
During the 2002 season, six drivers will campaign the Honda engine. Though there are solid competitors among Tony Kanaan, Paul Tracy, Dario Franchitti, Michael Andretti, Adrian Fernandez and Shinji Nakano, it's who's missing from the Honda ranks that's the biggest news. Team Penske, which used Honda power in the cars of Helio Castroneves and champion Gil De Ferran, has bolted for the rival IRL this year.
When Honda is gone from CART, we think CART will miss them much more than Honda will miss CART.
Totally EclipsedUntil the Evo VII gets here, the only Mitsubishi with performance intentions (or pretensions) will remain the Diamond Star-built Eclipse sport coupe. A mild update is due for the car, now in its third generation, in 2003, as shown at February's Chicago Auto Show.
Most of the tweaks that make the 2003 Eclipse a 2003 Eclipse are cosmetic. There's a new nose, which puts the driving lights low on either side of the grille, and new headlights. In the back it has clear lens "tuner-style" taillights, which indicate just how much influence the readers of Import Tuner are having on the designers-WE NOW RULE TAILLIGHT DESIGN!