Aerodynamics will play an increasingly important role during this weekend’s NTT IndyCar Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. New allowances for the fast 1.5-mile oval will give the 28 drivers on the entry list and their race engineers the potential …
Aerodynamics will play an increasingly important role during this weekend’s NTT IndyCar Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.
New allowances for the fast 1.5-mile oval will give the 28 drivers on the entry list and their race engineers the potential of adding up to 10 percent more downforce than last year’s aero specification could produce, which equates to approximately 250 pounds of downforce.
At the front of the Dallara DW12’s floor, the Italian firm has produced a second optional barge board (above, in red) that adds downforce. With the increase in downforce, an increase in front ride height sensitivity also comes as part of the puzzle to solve.
On the outer flanks of the floor’s forward section, the infill Gurney flap (below, in blue) has been changed from mandatory to optional.
And at the back of the cars, the outermost portions of the diffusers have gone from an optional trimmed sidewall to channel the air leaving the bottom of the cars to optional full-length sidewalls which do a more effective job of concentrating the air and making more downforce.
The new aero options have been put through intensive computational fluid dynamics, simulation, and driver-in-the-loop testing prior to Saturday morning’s lone practice session, so most teams will have an idea on what they’ll want to try for qualifying and race setups.
But with the short 50-minute session serving as the only on-track outing for the series prior to qualifying, teams will likely be rushing to give the barge boards and Gurneys and sidewalls a try along with all of the other to-do items on their run plans.
“Texas is actually pretty interesting because of the new aero bits we get to play with,” Scott McLaughlin’s Team Penske race engineer Ben Bretzman told RACER. “What’s interesting is there’s not much running. It’s really limited and it’s gonna push everybody pretty hard on Saturday, because obviously we start running so early and you have to decide if you want to do qualifying work, race work, or both.
“The sidewall bits bring a pretty substantial chunk of downforce which also changes the ride profile on the car. So the teams have to figure out where do they want to run the cars and where do you want to take advantage of those sidewalls. Texas is different than any other oval track from the standpoint of that type of underwing configuring the right height profile of the car. We’ll see what people do with the little Gurneys; there’s a downforce gain there but will people take those off?”
Factor in the time required to get a handle on the correct pressures for Firestone’s tires along with refining camber settings, damper settings, damper builds, springs and the rest of each car’s mechanical setup, and the new aero options are part of a bigger menu of to-do items to cover from 8:10-9am Saturday morning in Texas. Qualifying for the 250-lap race starts soon after at 11:15am.
“And the new inner bargeboards are one step more you can go than just the single ones we had last year,” Bretzman noted. “The cars were really sensitive to one, so two will make it even more sensitive. With all of the steep banking that Texas has and the speeds we go and the compression we deal with in the corners, ride heights are really important to get right.
“So like with the full sidewalls at the back (above, in blue), we have to be careful to hit the optimal ride height at the front of the car with the barge boards in mind because their full effectiveness is affected by right height as well. Nailing both ends is critical, so there’s a lot for us to sort out in less than an hour of running.”
Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. Due to the high volume of questions received, we can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll answer as many as we can. Published …
Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. Due to the high volume of questions received, 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: How is IndyCar’s search for a new head of marketing going? Also, if anyone out there is looking for an IndyCar video game substitute, download the IndyCar 2023 mod available for “Automobilista 2” from Kaos modding group. It’s available at Race Department’s website.
Rob, Rochester, NY
MARSHALL PRUETT: Last I heard, which was around St. Pete, there were no prime candidates, but that was almost a month ago. I sent the series a note asking for an update, and while nothing was provided on the marketing VP search, we did get this promo:
“In the near-term, with the significant growth in investment across IndyCar marketing, we’ve prioritized bolstering the size and scale of our team and resources. This includes doubling our digital staff in the first quarter with several searches underway to fill new roles in our organization. And the addition of a national creative firm and new publicity agency to assist with efforts. Our leadership team across IndyCar Marketing is doing a great job leveraging a more robust staff and tool bag.”
Q: Now that I’ve had the chance to watch a replay of the 12 Hours of Sebring and then hearing and reading about the braking issues the Paul Miller Racing BMW had during the race, I was wondering about brake pad and rotor changes during a race. I reckon how often teams change brakes would depend on the type of car and how long the race is. Are teams changing brakes more or less frequently compared to what they were doing 10 or 20 years ago?
Brandon Karsten
MP: Fewer changes these days, for sure. Typical deal where technology and products improve over time, but even so, it won’t guarantee no problems occur as PMR experienced.
Q: I’m sure RACER’s comments will be lit up again about the IndyCar sim fiasco, as they should.
I’m a 68-year-old guy who supports IndyCar and have since I was 10 years old. The fact that no viable IndyCar race sim exists today will not deter me from doing my 27th 500, third Nashville (they will get that one right eventually), and 14th Long Beach. But this is 2023 and us old dogs will pass on, needing to be replaced by the newer fans — kids who live and breathe video games.
My kids are huge race fans and I will partly credit that to a video game called “Grand Prix 4” — a 20-year-old game that we still run! It is unique in that it can be challenging like all of them, but even kids enjoy it as the rookie settings really work. Geoff Crammond wrote that one. I believe he is retired, but for a price The Captain may bring him back. The guy is a master and could make Indycar come to life on a PC or Xbox.
That game is so famous, hobbyist programmers worldwide still offer free tracks and cars for it. We run the 2022 Indy cars on GP4 now.
If heads haven’t rolled at Georgetown and 16th, they surely should. Just my two cents.
James Herbert Harrison
MP: Along with my teammates at whatever junior open-wheel teams I worked at in the early-to-mid 1990s, I spent hundreds of hours playing Crammond’s “Grand Prix,” “Grand Prix II,” etc. Every racing game that followed was influenced by Crammond, so while it would be great to have the man himself, there are plenty of sharp and proven game makers IndyCar can engage to bring a product to market.
There’s probably a lot of things you could have seen in the Minardi Team USA Champ Car hospitality unit that you can’t see in the IndyCar paddock today, but a current series video game is definitely on the list. Motorsport Images
Q: Any recommendations for someone attending the Texas IndyCar race for the first time on Sunday?
Scott Thompson
MP: Not sure where you’re going to be located, but if you can move around, get as close to Turn 1 and Turn 4 as possible because the speeds are insane. Same with the backstraight; if you can get near Turn 3, it’s also something wild to experience. Other than Indianapolis, Texas is the only oval on the calendar — and it’s been this way for decades — where the raw speed into, through, and out of the corners is truly jarring.
Outside of the track, there’s tons of standard fare for BBQ and beer. If you want to see IndyCar people — crew and maybe some drivers — visit the Buc-ee’s right across from the main TMS entrance and you’ll find folks stocking up on all manner of wacky food and drink at the unofficial convenience megastore of IndyCar.
Q: I don’t know where all this grumbling about the IndyCar points system came from. You know what’s silly? Thinking drivers should score points for running in the lead pack during the race, but dropping out before the finish. And why should we care what F1 used back in the last century?
Here’s an idea: Winner gets 100 points. Second through 33rd get zero points. The end.
I like that IndyCar awards points all the way through the field. If 20th place awards the same points as 11th, the back half of the field is just out there cruising around! Why would they risk the damage if the payout is the same? Weight the points heavier for finishing towards the pointy end of the field if need be, and maybe have a provision that the cars must be running at the finish to be awarded those points. (Or must be on the lead lap? Could get tricky at Iowa).
Would anyone say it wasn’t fair if the Astor Cup was awarded to the driver with the highest average finish over the season?
PS. John in Cincinnati is 100% right. The current ful- course yellows in North America, especially the wave-around procedure, is hurting racing. We’re artificially penalizing the cars that have better pace.
Gabe, Northwest Indiana
MP: It’s IndyCar. People will complain about anything.
Q: Does anyone know how to listen to the radio broadcast of an IndyCar race at the track in real time without a scanner? When I lived in Chicago and drove down to the 500, I’d take my scanner, headsets, sandwiches and who knows what else in my scanner bag into the race. Now that I’ve moved and fly into Indy, I just use my far more portable phone and AirPods, but even on the IndyCar app and the local radio stations stream, the radio broadcast is delayed a half lap or so after bouncing off various satellites, I’d assume.
Any ideas?
Larry Miller, Key West, FL
MP: I’ve grown accustomed to having Peacock playing on my phone with AirPods or similar. What other solutions might we suggest? Maybe I’ll just post Leigh Diffey’s cell number so people can get the calls straight from the booth.
When you think of Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, the month of May might be the first thing that comes to mind. But while the team has been a fixture at The Greatest Spectacle in Racing for over two decades, it has more recently become a major force in …
When you think of Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, the month of May might be the first thing that comes to mind.
But while the team has been a fixture at The Greatest Spectacle in Racing for over two decades, it has more recently become a major force in the Nitro Rallycross championship, where it has just taken a dominant 1-2-3 finish in the series’ first-ever all-electric season.
“I’m still kind of dizzy by the whole thing,” team owner Dennis Reinbold tells RACER. “I mean, even though I’ve been here for several days, you get in here and you deal with so many different things throughout the course of a race weekend that you get caught up in, and then finally it’s over and all the dust settles. You look around and, and here we are. We did a great job.
“I’m relieved right now and just proud of my guys. How hard these guys work and what they put in, the time and the effort they put in, paid off. So it feels great, it really does, it feels good to be champions.
“It feels good to be 1-2-3. We didn’t expect any of that, but we expected to be good. We knew we’d be competitive and do a good job, but we just had really, really good chemistry all year long and that paid off. It’s like any kind of team sport that you put together, so it’s been fun to see that come together.”
DRR’s all-conquering top-level rallycross operation is the result of years of work. It debuted in the second tier category of the former Global Rallycross series in 2016, winning what was then known as the Lites title at the first attempt in 2016 with Cabot Bigham.
It remained a frontrunner in the category for a number of years, and briefly dipped its toes in the old top-level combustion Supercar class in partnership with SH Racing in the meantime. A full move into the top class for the 2021 season with European powerhouse JC Raceteknik – with whom it remains partnered with today – proved to be tricky, and the team’s quartet of Audi S1s failed to podium all season.
The campaign was nevertheless educational, with the team having one eye on the future the whole time.
The team struggled on the demanding U.S. tracks with the Audi S1 in 2021. Nitro Rallycross
“Last year we did the supercar effort on purpose to get back into supercars,” explains Reinbold. “We had been out of Supercar for a while, so we wanted to get back into it to prepare for this new electric car. And so my expectations last year were pretty low – we met those, that’s for sure.
“But it was a learning curve for us so that we could be prepared and really we felt like we had a good opportunity, as good as anybody else, to compete with this, with this new car.
“So we worked hard to learn it and worked hard to prep it really well and get it ready and once you do that, you hand it off to the drivers to bring home and these guys exceeded my expectations. All three of them.”
The team began the 2022-23 season with back-to-back victories in the UK and Sweden with Larsson and Andreas Bakkerud respectively – the latter being an unprecedented 1-2-3-4-5 sweep with Larsson, Johan Kristoffersson, Fraser McConnell, and Ole Christian Veiby following Bakkerud home.
McConnell added to the haul in round four at Glen Helen Raceway in California before Larsson took another in the second race in Phoenix in November. When the series returned to Glen Helen for three season-ending races earlier this month, Bakkerud and Larsson once again returned to the winners’ circle, either side of a win for Vermont SportsCar’s Travis Pastrana.
Overall the team had more wins than any other – six from 10 – and was the only team to claim points-paying victories with more than one driver. In what is a single-make category using the first-year FC1-X electric racing car, DRR JC clearly adapted best, but Reinbold says there’s no secret ingredient to the team’s overwhelming success.
“I don’t think there’s a secret ingredient other than just get good people around you and work together as best you can,” he insists. “I mean, it’s difficult to have multi-car teams and share the information openly and work hard to make sure that each car’s ready to go every time.
“So in this sport, because the turnaround time’s pretty quick and you’re going to hit something, you’re going to have issues every time you go out – hopefully not every time, but it seems like you’ve got to be prepared for that – so preparation has been incredible, and just diving in to help put out a fire where it erupts is what we’ve been able to do pretty well.”
Robin Larsson gave DRR its first top-level rallycross championship. Nitro Rallycross
With the intense but successful 2022-23 season now in the history books, the team now turns its attention to what’s next – although that doesn’t mean there’ll be much of an off-season. The JC side of the team has races to contest in Europe, while DRR’s focus is on the Indy 500 with 2014 Indy winner Ryan Hunter-Reay and Stefan Wilson.
“April’s not going to be much fun because it’s more fun to go to a race track and compete,” Reinbold said. “In April we don’t have a race, so we have to wait till May. So it’s okay. After every Indy 500 we start working on the next year, so we’ve been doing that at the same time as putting this together.
“It’s been a big year prepping for Indy as well as launching this brand new car and learning it for our team. So we’ve been busy, we’re on a good roll, so we’ll keep trying to capitalize and grow as much as we can.
“The 500 is the next box to tick. That’s it. 1-2-3 here, we only have two cars in the 500, so we’re only asking for one-two there! It’s not a big deal, right?”
As for the team’s Nitro Rallycross program, that is set to expand to four full-time cars for the 2023-24 season, after running a fourth (and on one occasion fifth) entry on a part-time basis this season for the likes of Veiby, Kristoffersson, and Andrew Carlson in the first half of the season. Reinbold’s also expecting the competition to up its game.
“I think it’s going to be great. The racing’s going be competitive,” he says. “(But) that’s all history, just like our championship is tomorrow. We’ve got to work on the next season.”
The big news this year in American junior open-wheel racing is the growth of the Indy NXT by Firestone series. In its expansion from 12 full-time cars in 2022 during the first year under Penske Entertainment’s control to the 19 full-time entries …
The big news this year in American junior open-wheel racing is the growth of the Indy NXT by Firestone series.
In its expansion from 12 full-time cars in 2022 during the first year under Penske Entertainment’s control to the 19 full-time entries that took part in the season-opening race earlier this month in St. Petersburg, Indy NXT has been a great year-to-year success story that speaks to the efforts by its owner to grow the top training category. Those 19 entries are spread across six teams, with half belonging to one team, HMD Motorsports, winners of the opening round with Danial Frost.
And the good news isn’t limited to the series formerly known as Indy Lights.
What often gets overlooked in Indy NXT’s turnaround is how just as much prosperity is taking place directly below the series in Andersen Promotions’ USF Championships presented by Cooper Tires.
At the top step of Andersen’s ladder, USF Pro 2000 opened the season with 20 cars and just completed its fourth race of the year with Christian Brooks taking race one at St. Pete before Myles Rowe claimed race two to close the event. Rowe then swept both races last weekend in Sebring to earn three in a row and a healthy lead in the championship standings. The best part is found within the paddock, as eight teams are invested in USF Pro 2000.
USF2000, Andersen’s previous entry-level series, has welcomed 23 drivers to its grid so far in 2023, with 19 taking part in Sebring where Lochie Hughes won on Saturday and points leader Simon Sikes — Rowe’s stablemate at Pabst Racing — won on Sunday. And like USF Pro 2000, USF2000 boasts eight teams powering its grid.
USF Pro 2000 has opened the new season with 20 cars across eight teams. Image via USF Pro Racing
“The thing that’s greatest to see is more team owners coming into our series because I’ve always thought of our team owners as essentially my partners,” Dan Andersen told RACER. “They’re the people that go out marketing the series to potential drivers, alongside me doing that same marketing, so we’re in it together and the more people I have with seats they need to fill, the more I’m going to see my series grow. So, I’m always gratified when I get more team owners into the series, and that’s a good thing.
“The growth has been coming for several years now. Even [in 2021], the last year that we ran Indy Lights [for Penske Entertainment], the numbers came up a bit and we have done a lot of legwork internationally as well as nationally to try and sow the seeds of interest in Indy Lights. And they seem to be doing fine now, which I’m very happy about, because we certainly want to send people from our USF Championships to a healthy Indy NXT series.”
Junior open-wheel car counts always fluctuate a little bit, with some rounds losing a few cars while others have a couple of extra entries, but as a whole, there’s a reason to feel optimistic about the health of IndyCar’s training categories with approximately 60 drivers spread across Indy NXT, USF Pro 2000, and USF2000 trying to make their way to the big series.
Andersen also has his latest creation, the new entry-level slicks-and-wings USF Juniors series which launched last year using existing Formula 4 cars, which had 17 drivers or so on the grid. A switch to a brand-new car this season has come with an anticipated dip in entries with 13 drivers present for its opening weekend in Sebring, where the three races delivered three different winners in Quinn Armstrong, Nicolas Giaffone—the son of IndyCar race winner Felipe Giaffone—and Joey Brienza. Andersen expects USF Juniors to match or exceed the fields in his other series before long.
“Last year we ran the old F4 car for our first season as a lot of them were around, but they didn’t have the halo and we knew from the outset that a new car was needed, which we’ve introduced for year two. And so far, we have we have sold more than 20 new cars,” he said.
“We had one two-car team that didn’t make it to Sebring because their drivers didn’t get their passports in time, but I’m not worried about the car count going up. We have two more cars being delivered in the next two weeks and that will take us up to 22. We’ll be there soon with Juniors as teams get their new car ready, and this is something we’ve done with all of our series where every car is 2022 or newer and has a halo and all of the latest safety technology. That’s the most important part for the parents who send their kids our way.”
Give USF Juniors some time and we’ll be edging towards 80 young drivers from North America and abroad who are chasing their IndyCar dreams on the same ladder that gave us Scott Dixon, Josef Newgarden, Colton Herta, and Pato O’Ward, among dozens and dozens of others.
Pick any of the four series that serve as IndyCar’s equivalent of college for open-wheel racers, and there’s health and talent to be found within each championship. From Brienza to Sikes to Rowe to Frost and all of their title-contending rivals, we’re in a rich period of driver and team development that will eventually benefit the NTT IndyCar Series. Long may it continue.
Two rounds into the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, let’s address the elephant in the room: Balance of Performance matters. That’s the most obvious takeaway after the recent 71st running of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. To …
Two rounds into the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, let’s address the elephant in the room: Balance of Performance matters.
That’s the most obvious takeaway after the recent 71st running of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
To refresh your memory, BoP is the tool used by sanctioning bodies including IMSA and the FIA to create parity between competitors. By mandating incremental adjustments to performance-related items including car weight, engine power, fuel consumption, and aerodynamics – sometimes on a race-by-race basis – the ultimate goal is to have all cars within a 0.5 percent window, expressed as 0.5s over a 100-second (1 minute, 40-second) lap. It’s especially effective in the GT classes, with multiple manufacturers fielding cars with front-, mid-, and rear-mounted engines in a variety of sizes and configurations.
At the Rolex 24 At Daytona International Speedway, the Mercedes-AMG GT3 was demonstrably the fastest car, with WeatherTech Racing claiming the GTD PRO class win in the No. 79 car, and the No. 32 Team Korthoff Motorsport and No. 57 Winward Racing entries showing class-leading speed in GTD. Aston Martin also enjoyed a highly successful race at Daytona, finishing one-two in GTD with The Heart of Racing’s No. 23 Vantage GT3 winning over Magnus Racing’s No. 44 counterpart.
At the other end of the spectrum, the brand-new Ferrari 296 GT3 and the 992-generation Porsche 911 GT3 were well off the pace, as was the BMW M4 GT3. To some extent, that was not surprising, as sanctioning bodies tend to take a cautious approach when setting BoP parameters for new cars. But several competitors, particularly from the Porsche camp, were vocal in expressing their displeasure with the baseline BoP for their new machinery.
Assessing the best Daytona lap time in race conditions for each marque, Porsche had reason for concern, with its best effort some 2.5 percent off the pace set by Mercedes-AMG. The Mercedes advantage was indeed considerable, with only Aston Martin coming within the 0.5-percent target window.
As a result, IMSA made some BoP changes prior to a two-day open test at Sebring International Raceway on February 15 and 16. After lap times and other data from those sessions were analyzed, additional BoP changes were implemented prior to the Sebring 12 Hours, as summarized in the chart below:
The most significant change was a 5mm increase in the Porsche’s air intake restrictor, intended to boost the 911 GT3’s horsepower and straightline speed. More air requires more fuel, so Porsche was also allotted an additional seven liters of capacity. Seven of the participating marques had their weight adjusted (five reductions, two increases) half received different fuel allotments, and Lamborghini also was granted a 1mm air restrictor increase.
The alterations appear to have been successful in tightening the competition, again based on best race lap times, with half of the competing marques within the 0.5 percent parity goal and all 10 bunched within one percent. Mercedes-AMG maintained a slim advantage over the Corvette C8.R GTD, perennially a strong performer at Sebring. Not surprisingly, Porsche made the biggest gains, moving from the slowest car to midpack; Ferrari was another to make a big jump, from seventh at Daytona to third at Sebring.
Of course, individual lap times don’t tell the whole story. At Sebring, both the GTD PRO and GTD results were heavily influenced by a series of late full course cautions, with brought fuel saving strategies into play. In that regard, Pfaff Motorsports’ victory in GTD PRO in the No. 9 Porsche and the 1-2 finish for BMW teams Paul Miller Racing (No. 1) and Turner Motorsport (No. 96) in GTD were undeniably driven by circumstances as the race unfolded.
In GTD PRO, the No. 3 Corvette, which is always strong at Sebring, appeared to have legs on the field. But an unscheduled pit stop to replace a rear shock/damper put it a lap down and the spate of late cautions came too late and too often for the team to recover beyond fifth place
Meanwhile in GTD, Kyle Marcelli claimed a surprise pole in the No. 93 Racers Edge Motorsports with WTR Acura NSX GT3 Evo and led the opening 32 laps. The No. 27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin was again strong before being forced off track in the last hour; the No. 32 Team Korthoff Mercedes led more laps than any other entry (135) but finished as the last car on the lead lap after being assigned incident responsibility for a late-race clash.
The two key talking points after the race were driver standards and etiquette, and of course, Balance of Performance. More than a few drivers were unhappy with the racing tactics demonstrated by their competitors. Corvette Racing’s Antonio Garcia, a four-time Sebring winner, called it “careless and reckless driving by a lot of guys who should know better.”
“I’d say driving standards for today were pretty sub-par from the whole field,” added teammate Jordan Taylor. “There were so many yellows early on and the end of the race was embarrassing to be part of, to be honest.”
And while the grumbling about BoP wasn’t as intense as it was after Daytona, some competitors still feel there is work to be done to achieve true parity.
“We had so much disappointment after Daytona, but it was not our fault,” said Patrick Pilet, whose fuel saving down the stretch secured the GTD PRO victory for the Pfaff ‘Plaid Porsche.’ “Then we managed to win this race by being clearly not the fastest, but just because a complete group of people believe in us, believe in hard work and give 100 percent. At the end, for sure it was a gamble, we needed a yellow to be sure to finish.”
“For sure we are closer, but not close enough,” added Risi Competizione’s Daniel Serra, assessing the latest Ferrari. “If you compare with Corvette or Mercedes, they’re flying compared to us. They’re on a different level. But we were in contention for a podium, and I was able to fight with them and see what the difference is.
“IMSA usually do a good job, so let’s see what they do for the next race.”
Last fall, NASCAR Cup Series drivers had their first drivers-only meeting with series officials after weeks of publicly complaining that they weren’t being heard or updated on safety matters. The much-needed gathering allowed grievances to be aired …
Last fall, NASCAR Cup Series drivers had their first drivers-only meeting with series officials after weeks of publicly complaining that they weren’t being heard or updated on safety matters.
The much-needed gathering allowed grievances to be aired and information shared. Since then, both sides seem to agree that their communications and relationship have gotten stronger, and the meetings have become a regular occurrence.
Now the drivers should call a meeting amongst themselves after Sunday’s race at Circuit of The Americas turned into the wild, wild west.
“It’s what we do. Are you not entertained?” Ross Chastain said afterward. “This is what we live for. I don’t live for it; I don’t love all that but look, these cars are tough. Without stage breaks, we had plenty of cautions. We had some green flag racing. I think this was your standard typical everyday NASCAR race.”
For some reason, it just doesn’t seem that way. The field put on a clinic of good road course racing for the first 41 laps of the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix. There were comers and goers, pit strategy and entertaining battles for positions.
Then one caution led to five more before all was said and done. It took three overtime attempts before everyone was put out of their misery.
“It’s brutal,” Jordan Taylor said. “Guys fight for every inch, every position, and even if you’re a second faster than someone, they’re going to push you off just to go for a top-30 finish. So, it’s just a different style of racing. Something to learn, and something to know if I ever come back.”
Taylor was one of three ringers who got more than he bargained for. Cup Series racing did not seem to leave a good taste in his mouth, nor that of Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen, given the aggressive nature of the field and the pushing and shoving throughout the afternoon. On the one hand, those three are not accustomed to being used up like they were Sunday. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if they were targeted, because the carnage was spread throughout the field.
The cars parked on pit road after the race looked like they’d just run 500 laps at a half-mile like Martinsville Speedway, not 75 laps at a technical road course like COTA.
There is nothing wrong with stock car racing being aggressive, but having races turned into a circus as it did Sunday is not a good show. And yet, it continues to happen over and over. And over and over, drivers get out of their cars and complain. And nothing changes.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
Critics would say NASCAR created the mess. Blame gets placed on the playoff format and the importance of wins and points.
Jordan Taylor joined Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen in making NASCAR cameos on Sunday, and all three were surprised by the aggressive approach throughout the field. Motorsport Images
The aero package is another point of contention. It’s too hard to pass, so drivers have to be aggressive and take what they can get.
Those are all excuses. Those are nothing more than crutches.
The responsibility falls on the individual holding the steering wheel and working the pedals. Every weekend, 40 race car drivers decide what kind of the show everyone will see.
It would be easy to say drivers have to be saved from themselves. It is, of course, a popular saying in the sport when it comes to NASCAR making decisions and those in the garage sometimes – not always – admitting someone has to decide for them.
But in this case, when it comes to what happens on the racetrack, NASCAR can’t get involved. The sport is already accused of being over-regulated, so how would policing on-track contact work?
More rules? That won’t go over well.
Leaving it up to judgment calls on what was intentional or over the line? Those will be as clear as mud, and never criticized on Monday morning.
How do you sort it out when multiple cars bounce off each other in a corner? Not everything is intentional. Sometimes, it’s just ridiculous.
On paper, it sounds great on paper to have NASCAR start cracking down and trying to control these races, but it doesn’t seem realistic.
“I don’t know if it’s good chaos or not,” said Denny Hamlin on Sunday. “We had two laps to go two hours ago. It just felt like it just kept going on and on. I don’t know what we do about it.”
It has to come from the drivers. After all the recent talk about the lack of respect in the garage, if the drivers aren’t going to come together and admit they are the ones causing the problems and ask themselves why they are doing what they’re doing, nothing will change.
But it seems like this is easy to try at least to figure out. Drivers, if you’re not happy about the racing, call a meeting amongst the guys doing the racing. After all, it’s probably best to figure it out or at least come to an understanding on your own before someone (NASCAR) comes along and decides they’ve heard enough and implement consequences that you probably don’t want.
It’s a fact of life that when one team dominates in Formula 1, top drivers on the receiving end of seemingly endless defeats get restless. The 18 drivers not sitting in a Red Bull RB19 can’t resist looking on Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez with a …
It’s a fact of life that when one team dominates in Formula 1, top drivers on the receiving end of seemingly endless defeats get restless. The 18 drivers not sitting in a Red Bull RB19 can’t resist looking on Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez with a touch of envy, which is only natural for the competitive beasts grand prix drivers must be to have any chance of thriving at the top level. Red Bull entering a second year of dominance, which followed a 2021 campaign during which it had equal-top billing with Mercedes, could have a profound impact on the driver market.
Lewis Hamilton is out of contract at the end of the season, leaving even Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff to admit he wouldn’t have any complaints if his star driver chose to leave in search of a better car – albeit with the caveat of “in a year or two”. He is expected to stick with Mercedes, although retirement or a shock move can’t be dismissed as a possibility until a deal is signed. There have also been question marks about Lando Norris, committed to McLaren until the end of 2025 but in a team that’s slipping back in the midfield. Both drivers would be of interest for any rival big squad with a potential vacancy. But there’s another established top driver who is in a difficult position when it comes to deciding the path for his future – Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc is now 25 and is arguably the fastest man in F1 over a single lap. Yet despite being a formidable performer ever since he moved to Ferrari in 2019 after a rookie campaign with Sauber, he’s won just five races. There are those who use the poor ratio of pole positions to wins (he’s topped qualifying 18 times) to criticize Leclerc, suggesting he’s simply a fast driver who can’t convert opportunity into victory. But while he has made mistakes, most infamously crashing out of the lead of the French Grand Prix last year, more often than not Ferrari has been the weak link that has given out at key moments either mechanically or strategically.
Leclerc is contracted to Ferrari until the end of next year. Usually, a top team would be determined to lock down its prize asset rather than running the risk of going into the final year with their future still up in the air. Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur has kicked this particular can way down the road whenever asked about it.
“It’s like for a wedding,” said Vasseur in January. “If both sides of the table are happy with the situation, we will continue. But it’s not the priority for today, we have a good relationship and we have time to discuss this. The only topic today that we have to focus on is pure performance and getting results.”
His point about performance referenced the team’s wider focus rather than what it needs to do to keep Leclerc, but it might equally be connected to his future. At that point, Vasseur will have hoped Ferrari would start the season strongly, provide Leclerc with a car that could win races and that a new deal would be straightforward. Nothing convinces a driver to stay where they are more persuasively than strong performance.
But given Leclerc’s 2023 results so far amount to a seventh place, a retirement and a 10-place grid penalty in a car that has a tire management problem, you wouldn’t blame him for starting to think about going elsewhere. The fact is, Vasseur isn’t trying to tie Leclerc down to a new deal because he knows Ferrari has to prove itself to Leclerc, who understands his own value well enough to ensure he keeps his options open just in case.
Ferrari would be thrilled to lock Leclerc in for the foreseeable future, but it needs to convince him that it can deliver a car worthy of his talents. Andy Hone/Motorsport Images
The Leclerc/Ferrari alliance has been a frustrating one. On his second outing for the team, he lost a sensational victory in the Bahrain Grand Prix to a dropped cylinder, then last year was robbed of at least one win by power unit problems. Engine reliability was the top priority for 2023, so it was no surprise that when Leclerc caught up with the media after retiring from third place in Bahrain, he couldn’t hide his disappointment. The optimism of the new season peeled away immediately and the Leclerc of the end of last year was back in front of us: downbeat, frustrated, disappointed – and with good reason.
Leclerc is a class act: stunningly fast, blessed with arguably the greatest sensitivity to grip in particular in traction zones and with a capacity to sit on that ragged edge. For him, lightning-fast corrections minimize mistakes and conserve momentum where for others they would cause a big moment or worse. Every now and again he falls off that tightrope, but it’s rare. That’s why he’s one of the most admired drivers in the paddock.
Mercedes is known to covet his services, and it’s a team that could potentially have a use for him in the not-too-distant future. It regards George Russell as a long-term driver, one capable of winning world championships, but isn’t afraid to put two topliners together. Should Hamilton walk away, Leclerc would be high on its list. Make no mistake, Leclerc knows there’s a potential Mercedes berth for him in the future.
The trouble is, Mercedes is no better off than Ferrari right now. What it does have is more recent success, a run of 15 titles out of 16 from 2014-2021 compared to a Ferrari team that last won a crown – the constructors’ championship – way back in 2008. But while Mercedes holds a certain appeal, it’s a sideways move on current form.
The move that everyone simultaneously wants and doesn’t want is Red Bull. It has the car, but it is a Max Verstappen stronghold. He’s earned supremacy at that team through relentless high performance and is reaping the reward of the years spent toiling in a car that could only occasionally grab victories. That in itself is a lesson for Leclerc and any other driver looking to jump ship.
The trouble for any driver eyeing a Red Bull seat is that Verstappen is under contract until the end of 2028, which is forever in F1 terms. The team is set up around him, optimized to make the most of his talents and that generally subscribes to the number one/number two model. Even if Red Bull did want to replace Sergio Perez, it’s questionable whether it would really want a driver of Leclerc’s class. As for Leclerc, while he would back himself to beat Verstappen (any driver on the grid would, many through delusional optimism, but at least in Leclerc’s case he is one of the few with the ability to give Verstappen something to think about) the circumstances wouldn’t appeal.
For Leclerc, Ferrari is the best option. The question is whether the revamped team can convince him it is capable of taking the step from occasional winner to champion. Leclerc had reservations about the old Mattia Binotto regime and is positive about Fred Vasseur’s leadership, but with rumors about top-level management intervention and the thorny issue of politics possibly undercutting the team’s potential never far from anyone’s thoughts, he likely still needs to be convinced.
For Leclerc, the frustration of years spent staring at the back of a red Bull could be solved by driving one – but how would he fit into a team built around Verstappen? Sam Bloxham/Motorsport Images
As has been the case for much of F1 history, certainly since the long-distant days when sportscar programs were prioritized at times, Ferrari has everything it needs to succeed. It has the cash, it has the resources and the facilities to be at the top in F1. Recent investment has consolidated that position, with measures such as the new state-of-the-art driver-in-loop simulator that came online in late 2021 ensuring it’s still at the cutting edge. But the question with Ferrari is always whether it can make the most of it.
In that regard, Leclerc is at the heart of one of the few teams with the potential to dominate. In current conditions, it’s one of only three alongside Mercedes and Red Bull that can do so, and he’s the focal point of the team. While Carlos Sainz is not far off, ultimately Ferrari still regards him as the support act to Leclerc’s spearhead. That’s not a bad place to be.
Should Leclerc lose faith in Ferrari, there will be no lack of rivals interested in his services. And with teams like Aston Martin well on their way to establishing themselves as ready to fight for a championship, there will be even more realistic options presenting themselves in the near future. That’s why Leclerc will likely hang on until at least early next year before recommitting himself to Ferrari.
In the meantime, he must work on developing himself. He’s clearly less comfortable, or capable, with seeing the big picture in races and calling the strategic shots as Sainz is. And given the Spaniard is an intelligent and industrious character, there will also be less obvious shortfalls for Leclerc to work on off-track. A driver can’t single-handedly turn a team into a title winner, but he can be part of the process and should at least be able to ensure he’s ready to deliver relentless performance when the machinery to win consistently is under him. He does still have a mistake in him, two major in-race errors last year at Paul Ricard and when he went off chasing Perez at Imola, so ensuring he’s rock solid and ready to thrive when he does have a title-winning car under him is essential.
And looking back to the example of Verstappen, he spent five seasons with Red Bull staring at the back of all-conquering Mercedes cars. Leclerc is now in his fifth season with Ferrari, so the hope will be that the breakthrough is close. It won’t be this year, but it could be in 2024. Patience can be a virtue, particularly in contemporary F1 where lengthy phases of domination are a fact of life.
But 2024 needs to be strong both for Leclerc and Ferrari. If next year starts like this year then Leclerc will have to seriously consider hitching his career wagon to a non-prancing horse. But that move could be as risky, if not more so, than staying where he is.
The easy solution, for both sides, is for Ferrari to fulfill its potential. It’s only if that doesn’t happen that Leclerc could throw a spanner in the works of the driver market and face a career make-or-break decision of ‘should I stay or should I go’.
Two races, zero points and a best finish of 15th place. McLaren’s worst start to a season since 2017 has been followed by a major overhaul of its technical structure. Of course the two are connected, but these changes are far from a knee-jerk …
Two races, zero points and a best finish of 15th place. McLaren’s worst start to a season since 2017 has been followed by a major overhaul of its technical structure.
Of course the two are connected, but these changes are far from a knee-jerk reaction from management at Woking. In fact, it’s a situation that has been evolving for some time.
For starters, it would be extremely harsh to judge McLaren solely on the opening two races of this season. Bahrain was a disaster, but in Jeddah the car was far more competitive despite the team warning it would be on the back foot until a major upgrade could be introduced around Baku.
On a track where rookies are more likely to struggle than most, Oscar Piastri took his McLaren through to Q3, and Lando Norris surely would have joined him if not for a surprising error in the first part of qualifying. Then came immense misfortune when light contact broke Piastri’s front wing at Turn 2 on the opening lap. The debris was collected by one other car in the pack – Norris’s – and both were forced to pit for repairs immediately.
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Despite how unhappy the team is with the car, its relative competitiveness is far from terrible. It just hasn’t had a clean enough race yet to see where it really shakes out.
But there are other, more subtle signs, that led to concerns within the McLaren Technology Centre that change was needed on the technical front, culminating in James Key’s departure.
When Key and Andreas Seidl arrived to bolster the leadership team in 2019 – during another major overhaul when various managerial and technical personnel changed, along with the organizational structure – McLaren’s 2020 car was already deep into its development phase overseen by the existing team that included Andrea Stella and Peter Prodromou. That car proved to be a good one, with McLaren finishing third in the truncated 2020 season, and COVID-19 resulting in limited changes being allowed for the following year while the new technical regulations were delayed.
If anything, it was 2021 that suggested what a good job the previous technical team had done, given McLaren was slightly more limited than its rivals in terms of the changes it could make while fitting the Mercedes power unit. Multiple podiums, a pole position in Russia and victory in Monza suggested a team with momentum.
But once the first new car under the full technical leadership of Key was produced last year, McLaren started the season in trouble and could only recover to fifth overall. The Alpine was clearly a quicker design and finished fourth overall despite being hamstrung by reliability, while Aston Martin went from being a long way off the pace to become pretty regular threat to McLaren and Alpine by the final rounds.
McLaren’s poor start to 2022 snowballed when the team struggled to develop at the same pace as midpack rivals Alpine and Aston Martin during the season. Mark Sutton/Motorsport Images
That slow development rate played a part in creating the sense that McLaren needed to bolster its ranks on the technical side. The job Stella had done previously resulted in the fast-tracking of his promotion to team principal once Seidl had made clear his intention to join Sauber by 2026, but prior to that being announced there were moves to bring David Sanchez back from Ferrari.
It had been a decade since Sanchez had left McLaren for Maranello, but even before Mattia Binotto’s departure was on the cards, the Frenchman had been targeted based on the two strong cars he had developed off the back of Ferrari’s horror year in 2020. Rumors of Binotto’s shaky position may well have played a part in sealing the deal, but Sanchez was also impressed by the investment in the technical team.
“McLaren has always had an extremely talented group of people and alongside the new infrastructure upgrades coming online this year, we have an exciting prospect ahead that I’m delighted to be a part of,” he said upon news of his move.
That includes the wind tunnel coming online imminently–- although too late for the 2024 car that is already in the Toyota tunnel in Cologne – but also a new simulator and significant investment in other personnel. Not all of them get the same level of coverage as the Key/Sanchez movement, but sources indicate there’s been more than a dozen new hires to increase the depth of talent available.
After some years of financial uncertainty, a now-profitable McLaren is maximizing its investment in all areas of the F1 team under the cost cap, and McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown expects clear returns.
“It’s important now that we ensure we have a solid foundation as the next phase of our journey,” Brown said. “It has been clear to me for some time that our technical development has not moved at a quick enough pace to match our ambition of returning to the front of the grid. I’m pleased that, having completed a full review with Andrea, we are now able to implement the restructure required to set the wheels in motion to turn this around.
“These strategic changes ensure the long-term success of the team and are necessary to see McLaren get back to winning ways. We have everything coming into place now with our people and infrastructure and alongside an exciting driver line-up, I’m determined to see McLaren get back to where we should be.”
According to Brown, that’s the drivers, the facilities and the personnel all in place. It remains to be seen if it all clicks, but having moved from a technical department run by committee to a more traditional set-up and now back again, any potential excuses are running out.
Roll back the clock to the late-1960s and early ’70s and on any given weekend you’d see a McLaren on-track, whether that was in Formula 1, IndyCar, sports car racing, or somewhere else. Fast-forward to the present day and the story is very much the …
Roll back the clock to the late-1960s and early ’70s and on any given weekend you’d see a McLaren on-track, whether that was in Formula 1, IndyCar, sports car racing, or somewhere else. Fast-forward to the present day and the story is very much the same — but at the same time, hugely different.
McLaren remains part of the furniture in F1. The brand is also back in IndyCar, but its racing activities have diversified substantially beyond that. A key component of that diversification is the founding of NEOM McLaren Electric Racing, an all-new company that encompasses McLaren’s second-year Extreme E effort, as well as its new Formula E program.
The company can trace it’s roots back to Mercedes’ ultra-successful Formula E program, which won two titles in its three years in the category (with Nyck de Vries in 2020-21 and Stoffel Vandoorne in 2021-22). But with the German brand opting to back away after those back-to-back triumphs, and McLaren looking to grow in the electric sphere, the stars began to align for all sides.
“I remember meeting Zak (Brown, McLaren Racing CEO) at the second Diriyah ePrix in Saudi and at the time he was already exploring what they could do to go towards electric racing,” Ian James, former Mercedes Formula E team principal and current McLaren Electric Racing managing director tells RACER. “I think that he felt that it was going to be a really important piece of motorsport’s future … This all became quite an attractive proposition for McLaren.
“As things progressed, we kept contact and through the discussions with McLaren and with (title sponsor) NEOM as well, who were very much a part of this journey, we had an opportunity to transition the Formula E team across to McLaren as well and the company that we set up to run that has now become NEOM McLaren Electric Racing which is fully integrated into the McLaren Racing family.
“If you take a look at the portfolio — with Formula 1, with IndyCar, with Formula E, Extreme E, and Esports as well — it presents this unique proposition for McLaren as a brand. The thing I personally find really exciting about it is that McLaren doesn’t exist for any other purpose than to go racing — that’s our focus 100% — and as long as the series in which we’re racing adds value to that whole portfolio then it makes perfect sense.”
But what is that value? Despite its growing portfolio, McLaren remains first and foremost an F1 team. There may other racing teams now under the McLaren banner and a road car business with the same name in the building next door, but McLaren is still known for one thing above all else.
“We don’t do it for the sake of it, it has to make sense,” James insists. “The automotive world is going through this seismic shift towards electrification. I think motorsport plays a role in that in terms of developing and advancing technologies.
“But at the same time, both in Formula E and Extreme E, we’ve got the sustainability angle on it which is becoming more and more important — and it’s becoming more and more important to not just tick the box, but do something which actually actually has a tangible benefit. That’s what we’re demonstrating through both of those series.”
The decision to expand has clearly been made with the head, but there’s an element of heart to the decision too, and that’s perhaps why we haven’t seen other F1 teams expand in the same way.
McLaren’s Formula E team has its roots in the factory Mercedes program, and is now run by NEOM McLaren Electric Racing – an all-electric racing division that operates under the broader McLaren umbrella. Alastair Staley/Motorsport Images
“A big part of what has happened is because of what Zak wants to do,” Gary Paffett, team manager for McLaren in Formula E and sporting director in Extreme E, tells RACER. “Zak is massively into motorsport as a whole, not into F1 specifically, just motorsport globally, and he just wants McLaren to be out there competing in as many different formulae as is possible, which is fantastic to get the brand out there.
“Other people are more specifically focused towards different formulas, but it’s fantastic to see McLaren in F1, obviously as it always has been, but now competing in Formula E, Extreme E which is a completely different direction to what the team or the brand has always been in. I think the reason for it is just Zak’s passion for motorsport.”
Paffett himself has a long history with McLaren, having been a long-time test driver for the the team in F1. He’s seen first-hand the changes that the company has undergone, but while it might be a world away from the Ron Dennis-led firm that he worked for as a driver, he says there are elements that remain firmly in place.
“When I joined McLaren it was in the days of Ron Dennis and that kind of ruling, and I was there when it started to change as well, when Ron left,” Paffett explains. “It’s gone through a massive change recently, it’s now completely different with regards to the people that are running it and it’s very much gone back to its roots with the Papaya coloring and things like that, which are kind of different to the all-silver and black of when I left it.
“But McLaren is still McLaren. It’s still the same brand, the same ambition and the same goals of winning that it’s always had. It’s still one of the most prestigious brands in motorsport history, and when you go to MTC (McLaren Technology Centre, the F1 team’s HQ) you still get the same feeling — the history is still there as it was before. So although there’s been a big change in personnel, the brand and what it stands for is still very much the same as it always has been.”
Naturally, though, with McLaren’s title drought in F1 stretching back to 2008 (or 1998 in terms of the constructors’ championship), news of McLaren doing other things can tend to invited ill-informed reactions from vocal fans who worry the company is losing focus. But James insists that nothing gets short-changed by McLaren’s additional efforts.
“We’re being very very careful in every aspect — the technical aspect and the commercial aspect as well,” he says. “I don’t see it as a conflict, I don’t see it as cannibalizing anything, it’s very much that they’re complimentary. We’ve deliberately structured things at McLaren Electric Racing so that it is a separate entity. It means that we’re not impinging on the work that’s being done on either IndyCar or F1 so that we can operate as a standalone entity and we can do it without any external influence or taking resource from elsewhere.
“At the moment there’s absolutely no distraction whatsoever across the various different series and I think it’s super-important we keep it working in that direction.”
In fact, if there is to be any impact, it’s a positive one as all branches of the McLaren family tree collaborate and learn from one another.
“Where we feel there is going to be an advantage, then we can have those discussions and make sure that we’re collaborating in a way that benefits each and every series through that,” James says. “It’s something that’s actively encouraged at the moment with Andrea (Stella) now leading the Formula 1 side of things, with Gavin (Ward, Arrow McLaren racing director) on IndyCar, myself on Electric Racing and then Zak overlooking the whole lot, a collection of individuals that are very open to making sure that we leverage those synergies, that we learn from each other as well.
McLaren entered Extreme E with the specific aim of increasing its overall understanding of EV technology. Colin McMaster/Motorsport Images
“First and foremost we need to protect the core of what we’re doing, so we can’t allow that collaboration to be a distraction, but we’ll be utilizing it in the right way to make sure that we can push things forward. I was in Bahrain (at the Grand Prix) observing, taking part in the debriefs and briefings, and just understanding how the Formula 1 side works. We’ll get Andrea at some point out to Extreme E and Formula E to see what can do there, and I look forward to getting out to IndyCar to see how Gavin’s running things.
“Every time you go out there’s something that you pick up, something that you learn and you take back, so that’s something we can implement in our series to drive drive it forward and with that kind of resource on tap, we’d be mad not to do it.”
Those collaborations grow deeper on the electric side — with both Formula E and Extreme E aligned under the same umbrella, it’s actually less about working together, and more about being two sides of the exact same coin.
“What we have done though within Electric Racing is we’ve started to look at how we can really work as efficiently as possible across Formula E and Extreme E,” James explains. “So you’ll see people here, myself included, Sjoerd (van Wijk, communications manager) as well, the mechanics, Gary as well as sporting director, we all have roles within Formula E as well and makes makes perfect sense at the moment.
Paffett adds: “Everybody here is doing multiple things, whereas I think in other worlds of motorsport you’re, to a point, kind of pigeon-holed into a kind of specific role, a very specific job that you do.
“In Formula E and even more in Extreme E, you have a role when you’re here, but that role takes on many different positions and many different tasks in the team which is great; I love it.”
The Extreme E effort in particular was introduced entirely to benefit the wider McLaren organization. At the time McLaren said it was to “accelerate our understanding of EV technology as part of our sustainability journey while reaching a new, more diverse global audience”, and one year in, the benefits are being seen across the board.
“I think sustainability is something that’s often spoken about about but not always put into practice in terms of the right things, and I think what this has given us the opportunity to do is really make an authentic difference going forward,” James says. “When we talk about sustainability, obviously there’s quite rightly a focus on environmental sustainability, but it goes much further beyond that – it includes diversity and inclusion.
“We then talk about the financial sustainability and the business case of the whole thing, at the end of the day we needed to set up something that would stand alone, it would stand on its own two feet and not be a drain on anything else and we’ve achieved that. So you start taking a look at all of those different elements and I think Extreme E, when you look into that rather than it being baffling actually makes perfect sense, and it sets us up very much with a springboard to the future.
“My personal opinion is that we’re actually going to see motorsport moving in this direction where you’re going to have to shift to electrification, that sustainability in its most authentic forms is going to be really crucial, and I think by participating in Extreme E and Formula E as well we put ourselves very much on the front foot and we’ll be ready, however motorsport evolves, over the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. I think we’ll be in a very strong position to tackle that head-on.”
Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. Due to the high volume of questions received, we can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll answer as many as we can. Published …
Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. Due to the high volume of questions received, 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: I had a few questions about some of the IndyCar driver/team pairings for this season. First, why did McLaren move Rosenqvist to the 6 and give Rossi the 7? I saw in your McLaren 2023 team preview article that Rosenqvist’s team actually is mostly the same from last year with the exception of Craig Hampton leaving, but I still don’t know why this would necessarily result in a number switch. Second, I was also wondering if it was a personal decision by Marcus Armstrong decision to not run the ovals or if it was a Chip Ganassi decision, and if even Armstrong was OK about doing the full season why they wouldn’t just enter Sato in a fifth part-time car for the ovals.
Josh, Havertown, PA
MARSHALL PRUETT: I think it would be fair to say that Rossi is a long-term solution for the team and Felix is not, so if I were in charge of Arrow McLaren, I’d make the same call and stack team veterans on Rossi’s car. I’ve also heard having Hampson was a condition of joining the team. Both Marcus and Takuma are paying to drive the No. 11 car through their sponsors, and at least for Year 1, Armstrong’s budget was not enough to cover the entire season. I hope he’ll be able to become a full-time player in 2024.
Q: Marshall, are you going to interview the drivers of the Meyer Shank winners of the 24-hour at Daytona? Just would like to know their thoughts.
Barney, Reno, NV
MP: Had lots and lots of conversations with people at the team, and none of those discussions were on the record as that was their preference. I’m confident Mike Shank and I will do a story or video or something when the time is right, but for them, that time isn’t now.
Q: The last two mailbags have had letters about IndyCar’s point system, which compels me to put my two cents in. Several years ago I wrote to Robin Miller about this. Robin had said many times that he didn’t like the system either. So I invented a system that took into account laps led and grid positions but was way too complicated. The system needs to be simple to understand. The current system awards points down to 33rd position. This is fine. I don’t have a problem with everyone getting points but the points given do not reward winners and fast drivers enough for being the highlight of the show. 25th down to 33rd all award 5 points. A driver could win the first race of the season and then be injured by an accident and knocked out for the rest of the season. Another driver could finish last at every race and end the season with more points than the winner of the first race. This is just plain silly!
In my mind the best point system ever used in racing was the system used in F1 during the 1970s and ’80s. 10-6-4-3-2-1 for 1st through 6th. If you want to award points for more positions, it is easy to do with this system. Increase the points by awarding 100-60-40-30-20-10 for 1st to 6th and then award points down to 15th with 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 for 7th to 15th. Based on this system Will Power would not have been champion last year. It would have ended with Newgarden as champion followed by McLaughlin and then Power, 648-568-567.
The current system awards one point for winning the pole, one point for being the fastest driver and 5 points for being an also-ran during the race is just plain silly. The current system awards one point for leading a lap and two points for leading the most laps. This should only apply to green-flag laps. A driver could dominate a race and lead the race almost from start to finish and get three points. While a backmarker could get one lead lap point during a yellow flag during the race winner’s pit stop and get one point. This is silly.
The top 15 system I’ve described could be amended a bit by giving the pole winner 10 points. You could also award grid points down to 6th using that old F1 system. Or award nothing for grid points. Adding laps led points would be a bit more complicated but something equitable could be figured out if it is felt that lead lap points should be awarded.
If we go back over the years and examine how this top 15 point system would have affected previous years, for many years it would not have changed things. Going back to 2008 when the IRL and Champ Car merged, and looking at each year, 10 times the champion would have been the same but five times we would have had a different champion. Interestingly, Will Power would have been champion in 2010 and 2011 but as mentioned earlier would not have been champion last year. The other different champions would have been Ryan Briscoe in 2009 and Graham Rahal in 2015.
These results do not include grid or laps led points. These changes in championship winners are only concerning results that have already taken place. In actual fact, the awarded champion would have done things differently and with this points system may have still been champion. The important message here is that the points system has to reward the drivers and teams that try to dominate.
Doug Mayer
MP: Thanks, Doug. IndyCar’s points system is swiftly becoming the Mailbag’s new weekly LED panel debate.
One team, three winners, but only one can be the champ…so let’s keep scrambling the points system to get the results we want. Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images
Q: Have the recent rain and storms affected any of the repaving of the Laguna Seca road course? Will it be ready for the IMSA race come May?
Mike Hickman, Beech Grove, IN
MP: Rain has certainly complicated A&D Narigi’s renovation schedule. Last update I got a few days ago is the adjusted plan involves paving after IMSA’s visit.
Q: Updates on Alex Zanardi are few and far between. Are you able to update us on how Alex is recuperating and his current condition? Thank you.
Bruce, Western Massachusetts
MP: Yes, they are. Am I able? Yes. Am I going to defy his wife’s years-long strategy of controlling all aspects of his condition? No.
