Forrest Jehlik, a research engineer at Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Powertrain Research Facility, speaking at the IMIS Safety & Technical Conference in Indianapolis:

Almost everybody has a smart phone these days and we change them every couple of years. New stuff comes along and changes arrive so quickly today. Racing is competing against video game systems like Grand Turismo 5 that are just superb. That’s the market today’s youth are familiar with and that’s our competition.

There’s nothing more exciting than racing but when you step back and take a look at some of the racing organizations a lot of them are very reluctant to accept new things. A lot of race cars for example still have carburetors! But the technology that we integrate and play with every day comes so fast and so quickly and the young people pick it up and love it and run with it.

Racing has got to do the same thing. It has to stop being so reluctant to let the fuel injection guys come in and let the people who want to try different technology come in and let them run. The youth are going to be more attracted to that link to a car through today’s technology rather than the old ways.

A racing organization that embraces the past, not the future, by relying on outdated tech like carburetors? You mean like, say, NASCAR? OK, NASCAR is finally going to fuel injection in 2012 but some people in the sport don’t like it one bit.