Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll answer as many as we can. Published questions may be edited for length and clarity. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will appear the following week.
Q: Has IndyCar made contact with AER about racing with its P60 engine? If IndyCar is intent on sticking with the twin-turbo V6 formula, this would seem like the best option for getting a third engine into the series
Andre, Durban, South Africa
MARSHALL PRUETT: Highly unlikely, Andre. The issue isn’t about not being able to find a third engine. It’s the absence of auto manufacturers who want to make a big investment in a third engine supply program and then promote the heck out of it.
Q: With the Rolex 24 At Daytona beginning soon as I am writing this, why is IMSA and sports car racing in general growing in popularity? Also, I have always dreamed that the NTT IndyCar Series will race at places like Monaco, Silverstone and Spa. Will it ever go to those places?
Kurt Perleberg
MP: Cool new cars, big manufacturer engagement — 18 official manufacturers across all of its series, and open and inviting events. Some of IMSA’s rivals have one or two of those items to offer, but not all three, which is where I think the heart of its growth can be found.
Whatever “it” is, IMSA has it right now, as it once did from the mid-1970s through early 1990s.
Will IndyCar go to three of Formula 1’s most tenured and iconic tracks? That would be a no.
Q: NBC: This is the MOST INTERESTING DAYTONA 24 EVER! Now let’s dump coverage to show skating. Switch your TV to USA. Oh, USA has basketball? Never mind. Only 23 hours to go.
Bill Bailey
MP: It feels like a lifetime ago when the former SPEED Channel would air the entire Rolex 24 At Daytona. Since then, chasing the race from linear to streaming and back has been the norm. Wish it wasn’t, but if you’re a fan of endurance racing in the U.S., it’s become the standard practice. This is where having Peacock helps as you get all 24, 12, 10, 8, or 6 hours of IMSA’s five enduros without bouncing around.
Q: Apologies if you’ve answered this recently, but as we prepare for the 2024 IndyCar season, have you heard if any discussions are taking place within the series to formally codify red flag rules within the last five-10 laps of the 500? It feels like leaving red flag restarts to just judgment calls is unfair to the teams, and exposes the series to the risk of accusations of favoritism. Is a rule change (or clarification) being discussed?
Mark, Mason, OH
MP: I’ve not heard of a written-in-stone approach to the close of the 500 and wouldn’t want such a thing. As much as I hope we never have a repeat of last year’s pits-to-green call, we have no idea what might happen and how that situation needs to be handled. Without calling for the stewards to be locked into a rigid set of rules, I’ll place my faith in race control having learned not to pull that stunt again which made the leader a sitting duck due to aerodynamics.
Newgarden’s too good to have that controversy attached to his first win; he’ll win more 500s before he’s done, and they deserve to be won without any question as to his supreme driving skills.
Q: Sorry to put you in the position of speaking for others, but can you explain the negativity from those who write in about the current IndyCar chassis?
I follow the series pretty closely and I think I have a generally good knowledge of the sport, yet I can’t comprehend this. The only improvement I can see is that a new tub would allow different bodywork and aero bits. I suppose this could be engineered to improve the ability to follow closely and, therefore, enable more overtaking, but various racing series have pursued that objective for years with limited success.
It’s certainly possible that the cars might be a margin faster, but would it really change what you see on the track? It could be argued that racing might be degraded, as the stronger teams would probably unlock the hidden potential more quickly than those with less funding.
I don’t care much about the appearance of the cars; if something shaped like a brick was lightning quick, we would soon all think it looked fantastic.
Jack Smith
MP: But we wouldn’t, because we’ve had fast and ugly IndyCars, and interest waned and crowds dwindled. Looks matter here just as they do elsewhere in life; Google “Pontiac Aztek” if you need proof.
The chassis is old in a time where many of IndyCar’s main rivals have gone to new cars (F1, IMSA, NASCAR) so there’s the really basic premise of whatever volume of fans wanting IndyCar to get in the game and present something new and interesting to match or exceed what its rivals are doing.
Part of me wonders if we’re seeing the effect of having the same car for so long — longer than any other professional racing series I can think of — that some folks have forgotten a time or never known a time when IndyCar represented innovation and cutting-edge vehicles. Maybe it’s been so long since those days that newer fans don’t know and don’t care about such things. Maybe IndyCar should just stick with the DW12 like the NFL does with its footballs; it’s there, serves the same purpose for decades, and rarely gets noticed.
Rather than focus on what the new car would do or not do on track, I look at what IndyCar’s image happens to be outside of the Indy bubble, and that’s being perceived as a series that’s just old.
I recently threw away a 49ers t-shirt I’d had for about 10 years. I loved it; it was super comfortable. It was also faded, and there were some holes forming beneath the sleeves. I only wore it at home, mainly on game days, but even so, I wouldn’t wear it in public and it just got to the point where it was time to bid farewell.
Being the series that holds onto its old car for way too long says a lot about what the series thinks of itself. It can keep fielding the car until all that’s left is the collar, if it wants, while its rivals give their audience something new and vibrant to embrace.
Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi, Bobby Rahal, Michael Andretti, Zak Brown (through his LMP2 team) and Mike Shank (through 2023) have all seen firsthand what IMSA’s experienced with the spike in interest caused by the new GTP cars. The biggest Rolex 24 audience in history turned up to see Year 2 of GTP and new GT models go racing in Daytona. How anyone could witness that, return to their IndyCar teams, and say, “Nope, definitely not the way to go. Need to stay with the same-old-same-old” is a mystery to me.