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An open-wheel car is a car with the wheels outside the car's main body, and usually having only one seat. Open-wheel cars contrast with street cars, Sports car, stock cars, and touring cars, which have their wheels below the body or inside fenders. Open-wheel cars are built both for road racing and oval track racing. Open-wheel cars licensed for use on public roads (street legal), such as the Ariel Atom, are uncommon, as they are often impractical for everyday use.
Prior to World War II, street automobiles generally had wheels that protruded beyond the vehicle's main body, though they were typically covered with mudguards to protect the car body and following traffic from water and mud spray. With the advent of unibody vehicle construction, the desire to maximise interior space, to improve aerodynamics, and aircraft-inspired styling trends of the era, by the end of the 1950s the majority of new road-registerable vehicles had wheels that were under the main body of the car, and thus the open-wheel design became almost exclusively associated with racing vehicles. which featured wheels under the main body of the vehicle, primarily for aerodynamic drag reduction]]
Formula One cars have almost exclusively used the open-wheel design throughout the history of the championship. The only notable exception was the "Monza body" variation of the Mercedes-Benz W196 racer of 1954–55, which covered the wheels with bodywork for aerodynamic reasons. Modern Formula One regulations mandate the open-wheel configuration.
Virtually all modern open-wheelers have a mid-engined configuration with the engine between the driver and the rear axle line. While most early Formula One cars had a front-engined layout, the mid-engined Cooper T12 appeared in Formula One in the second-ever race in 1950. In 1958, a later mid-engined Cooper car won its first race and in 1959, Jack Brabham won the first championship in a mid-engined car. Every championship since has been won by a mid-engined car, and the vast majority of racing open-wheeler designs have followed this pattern. Notable modern exceptions include asphalt modified cars, such as the Whelen Modified Tour, and the Caterham Seven and its many imitators.
Some major races, such as the Singapore Grand Prix, Monaco Grand Prix (sanctioned by Formula One) and the Long Beach Grand Prix (sanctioned by IndyCar), are held on temporary . However, most open-wheel races are on dedicated , such as Watkins Glen in the US, Nürburgring in Germany, Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium and Silverstone in Great Britain. In the United States, some top-level open-wheel events are held on ovals, of both short track and superspeedway variety, with emphasis more on speed and endurance than the maneuverability required for road and street course events. The Whelen Modified Tour is the only opened wheeled race car series endorsed by NASCAR. This series races on most of NASCAR's most famous tracks in the United States. Other asphalt modified series race on short tracks in the United States and Canada, such as Wyoming County International Speedway in New York. The best-attended oval race in the world is the annual Indianapolis 500 (Indy 500) in Speedway, Indiana, sanctioned by IndyCar; in the United States it is quite common to refer to open-wheel cars as IndyCars, because of their recognizable appearance and widespread popularity across America at the Indy 500. Compared to covered-wheel race cars, open-wheeled cars allow more precise placement of the front wheels on the race course, as the tires are clearly visible to the driver. This allows the maximum potential of the cars to be achieved during cornering and passing. Furthermore, open-wheeled cars are less tolerant of vehicle-to-vehicle contact, which usually results in vehicle damage and retiring, whereas some level of contact is expected in covered-wheel racing, as for example in NASCAR. Open-wheeled drivers must be extremely precise to avoid contact.
Regulations tend to permit much lower open-wheel car weights than in categories that more closely resemble street-legal vehicles, such as sports, touring, and stock cars. For instance, a Formula One car must weigh at least ; the minimum weight for NASCAR is .
Regardless of top speeds, Formula One open-wheel race cars hold the outright lap record at the circuits where they currently race due to their combination of top speed, acceleration, and cornering abilities in mixed tracks made of straights, corners and chicanes. For example, at the Monza Circuit the fastest lap in the 2021 Grand Prix (Daniel Ricciardo 1:24.812) is more than six seconds per lap faster than the fastest closed-wheel racing car, an LMP1 sports car, and more than 20 seconds per lap faster than the DTM touring car lap record.
Driving an open-wheel car is substantially different from driving a car with fenders. Virtually all Formula One and IndyCar drivers spend some time in various open-wheel categories before joining either top series. Open-wheel vehicles, due to their light weight, aerodynamics capabilities, and powerful engines, are often considered the fastest racing vehicles available and among the most challenging to master. Wheel-to-wheel contact is dangerous, particularly when the forward edge of one tire contacts the rear of another tire: since the treads are moving in opposite directions (one upward, one downward) at the point of contact, both wheels rapidly decelerate, torquing the chassis of both cars and often causing one or both vehicles to be suddenly and powerfully flung upwards (the rear car tends to pitch forward, and the front car tends to pitch backward.) An example of this is the 2005 Chicagoland crash of Ryan Briscoe and Alex Barron.
==Gallery==
In 2019, the newly-formed FIA Formula 3 Championship introduced a halo to their new chassis which was unveiled at the 2018 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
In 2020, the IndyCar Series adopted a halo combined with an aeroscreen, built by Red Bull Advanced Technologies.
At the start of the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix, Romain Grosjean collided with Daniil Kvyat in which his car broke in two and burst into flames as it split the barrier. The halo helped protect Grosjean from possible decapitation while it allowed him to escape from the fire.
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