Tag: RMB

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: I enjoyed the race at Thermal more than I thought I would, although I have to admit I was confused at times. For instance, at one point the leaderboard changed from laps left to time left, and then back to laps left.

Plus, the halftime stop was pointless. Why not just require a pit stop? And I could have used less “this is an amazing, expensive place” content. Enough already, I get it, it’s for the 1%. Good for them, now show me more cars and drivers.

Anyway, I think the event may have a future if it is treated as a festival, not a race. The trick would be to tailor it to TV and lean into the All Star aspect of the festival. The events should be fun, but not ridiculously silly. To that end here are some things I would add:

• Burnout/donut competition

• Pit stop competition

• Celebrity race, or even better, a team owners’ race, in Civics. I’d pay to see Zak Brown and Chip Ganassi bashing fenders, only to have Michael Andretti dive bomb them both.

• Car show and/or auction like a Barrett Jackson

• Go-kart race open to all drivers in IndyCar and the Road to Indy using a short version of the track

• Some short features on sponsors. I, for one, would like to learn more about them so I could support them.

As for the race itself the primary motivation seemed to be the cash, so why not lean into it and add some more incentives to spice up the strategies? Bonus points if the leaderboard could have a “this is what the driver earns if the race ended now” column which updated dynamically. Cash prizes awarded for:

• Most laps led

• Most passes made

• Most positions improved

• Every second of push to pass used

• Fastest race lap

The last thing is, it should not be during the season. It should be the kickoff and called The Indycar Spring to Speed Festival at Thermal.

Tim E.

MP: Your name has been submitted for the vacant “Thermal Club $1,000,000 (-500,000) Challenge Creative Director” job title.

BTW — your idea for the burnout challenge needs to become part of the Carb Day festivities at Indy right after the Pit Stop Competition.

Q: Maybe next year Thermal’s final can have 20 drivers and the last-placed driver each lap gets black-flagged during the first 10 laps. This would keep people fighting for position. If you are top 10, then you can race the entire second half of the final.

Also, is the prize money offered above and beyond Leaders Circle, or is it somehow a gimmick similar to portions of the Indy 500 purse being Leaders Circle?

Andy Brumbaugh, Chapin, SC

MP: The prize money was unrelated to the Leaders Circle.

Q: You surprised Penske didn’t end up with 50% of Long Beach? Was it even a possibility?

As for Thermal, I didn’t mind it. Tons of testing to watch, nice to see how the “other half” lives, got to see some cars I never knew existed, and a goofy little race too. Beats six weeks without any IndyCar content.

Chad Brueggeman

MP: Yeah, I was surprised. And also disappointed in myself for the failure to think of Forsythe as a possible solution to buy the other half. In recent years, I’d heard about Forsythe holding the line and being unwelcoming to Liberty Media and others who wanted to buy Kalkhoven’s half and become his “partner” in Long Beach’s ownership, but hadn’t heard or thought of Forsythe just buying Kevin’s half and ending the conversation. What an epic move.

Q: I swear I have never seen a group of complainers like I see with IndyCar fans – and I am one of them.  Everyone talks about all of the changes that need to be made for the series to be successful. A new car, more engines, more drivers, less ‘pay’ drivers, more ovals, etc.  As an experiment, I decided to do a comparison.

To me, 1991 was around the peak of IndyCar success and popularity.  I decided to look at the stats of a race I attended then, and compare it to the same race in 2023. The race at Laguna Seca. I was there, it was packed, it was a great time.

Number of entries:

1991 – 27 cars

2023 – 27 cars

Chassis – Most of the field in 1991 had a Lola (21 cars), except five cars with the Penske chassis, and a single outlier Truesports entry driven by Scott Pruett (Great guy BTW)

Engines – Two engines dominated the field in 1991 — Chevy and Cosworth. The outliers were three Judds, two Buicks, and a lone Alfa Romeo.  So 21 cars had one of two engines. Hardly anyone ever cheered for a Judd or an Alfa to win.

21 cars were one chassis.

21 cars were one of two engines.

Another point:  The qualifying spread over the field, best to 7-second spread.

2023 – Pole was 1m06.6s, slowest was 1m07.9s — 1.3 seconds to cover the whole field.

In my opinion, the 2023 race doesn’t look that bad in comparison.

I too yearn for the glory days of early ’90s IndyCar, but it isn’t the cars, engines, and drivers holding today’s series back. What it needs is awareness and marketing. That would help bring back the fans, and the fans would help to bring back the sponsor dollars. The new fans that we need to attract really don’t care that the chassis is old and there are only two engines. They want a show that delivers, and personable drivers that they can cheer for.

I’m just glad the series still exists at all in today’s economy. Appreciate what we have. I’ll gladly watch every race and I won’t complain about it.

John, Visalia, CA

MP: That 1991 Laguna weekend was a great one with the Marlboro Challenge, plus Mario Andretti sampling a MotoGP bike, plus Indy Lights and Atlantics; I was there as an Atlantic mechanic.

You raise a lot of great points. Only area where I’d push back is on the chassis and engine variety side. Part of the allure was the variety, including not-my-brother’s Truesports “Made In The USA” chassis. Beyond all of the amazing drivers and teams, there was once a deeper layer of the sport for folks to sink their teeth into, and that’s been lost.

Since we’ve been spec for so long, the cars are usually viewed as appliances. Heck, most reporters, who once took pride in knowing about the cars and how they work, have no clue what a differential does or why you’d use one style over another. A casualty of spec racing has been curiosity on a wider scale; the car has become like a bat or a ball that is largely ignored. F1 and IMSA/WEC remind us that fans still care about the cars and their differences and nuances.

Maybe part of IndyCar’s ongoing problem, which is tied to the marketing issues that have been around forever, is its old and spec cars. I go to IMSA races and speak to fans and it’s not uncommon for folks to know little about the drivers in the Ferrari 296 or BMW M Hybrid V8, but they can tell you about the turbo arrangement in the Ferrari’s engine bay, or how the BMW’s motor is derived from its former DTM engine.

And a lot of the times at IndyCar races, I speak with fans who are the opposite, and can tell me about what Pato had for breakfast Tuesday morning because they follow his every move on IG, but are largely ambivalent to the cars and technology in the series. Two American racing series with two different appeals. And I’m not saying all IMSA fans are lovers of the tech and I’m not saying all IndyCar fans are clueless about the tech. But I am saying their car/tech cultures are dissimilar, which wasn’t always the case. Back when IndyCar and IMSA (or the ALMS, which was its son) were non-spec, the cars were huge sources of fascination, and the drivers were cool, and that gave reasons to know and care about both.

The idea of a wild-looking new car being used as a hook to get more people to be curious about IndyCar shouldn’t be ignored as a marketing tool. Even if it’s spec, or single-supply, or whatever term is preferred, at least the series would give itself a chance to garner attention with something new. Whether non-spec areas of the car would be allowed is an altogether different topic.

There’s a reason why most major brands undergo packaging changes to keep their products fresh and modern If you saw a bag of chips on the shelf that looked like it was from 15 years ago, you’d probably search for something that was newer to buy. The argument for IndyCar to stick with the same packaging can be made, but since it’s barely growing its audience size or share of the sports entertainment marketplace, the reason why it should stay the same isn’t supported by the results or reality.

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: Thermal. What a joke! I turned it off at the start of the second race. Stupid idea, worse than F1.

Rich Shiroky, Toms River, NJ

MARSHALL PRUETT: Most of the comments I’ve read on social media have been highly critical of all aspects of the racing, and the other comments have been supportive of the attempt made by IndyCar to create something cool and special during a long break.

Since I doubt this event will return in the same format, there’s no need to throw haymakers at the series, but I would love to see a proper all-star race at some point. This just wasn’t it. I also hope the flamethrower that’s been aimed at the series since Sunday doesn’t scare its super-thin-skinned executive leadership into never trying something new or interesting in the future.

Granted, if history has been a guide, we should be on the lookout for a reality-bending release from Penske Entertainment that hails this as the best thing to happen to humanity. But I hope they don’t. That would be sad. It was a loss. A bad one. Accept it, come up with ideas to prevent it from happening again, and do better next time, if there is a next time. It’s what racers do.

Q: After watching that glorified test at Thermal I have a few thoughts. The NBC broadcast team should win an Emmy for best fake excitement because they actually tried to sell this garbage as an exciting race. As a fan, I couldn’t care less about how the über-wealthy live and was not even remotely interested in the venue that produced a processional of bad “racing.” There was no excitement without fans, grandstands, sponsors, etc. There was no energy at all.

If IndyCar wants us to get excited about non-points races, wouldn’t an actual race be a better way to do it? Why not Motegi, Surfers Paradise or even Argentina? I know the cost is greater, but interest would have to be, too. Thermal club is nothing but a snoozefest. Is there any way IndyCar lets this dead dog lie and finds actual races to run?

Brian Z, Phoenix, AZ

MP: If I had to guess, I’d imagine the track had some sort of stipulation in its agreement where a lot of heavy lifting was done during the broadcast to promote its existence and membership opportunities. There are many fine homes there that have leatherbound books and smell of rich mahogany, but there are also a lot of unsold lots to be purchased by new members to build more trackside mansions, so in the absence of an event sponsor like Pennzoil or Firestone, it looked like Thermal, which forked out a lot of money to make the event happen, got the title-sponsor treatment during the broadcast.

Since Thermal was the main backer of the event, it makes sense for them to be treated as such during the broadcasts.

Q: The last 10 laps at Thermal were pretty exciting, and from the interviews it sounded like the driver is going to keep that entire prize money awarded. Doesn’t that normally get split up within the team to some extent?

CAM in LA

MP: Prize monies are paid to the team, so it’s not something the drivers get directly and can keep. All depends on the team and the contracts the drivers have done with their teams. One told me it would be a 50-50 split between driver and crew, and another told me they don’t do event-specific prize money distributions; they pool all of the winnings across the season and pay an end-of-year bonus for their crew who take home whatever percentage they’ve negotiated.

Back when I was an IndyCar crew member in the 1990s and early 2000s, the average percentage I got was 1% with lesser teams, and a fraction of that with the better teams. I also recall having to get creative one year, when our little TKM/Genoa Racing team was damn near broke from the start of the season, by accepting a small salary — I think it was $45,000 as assistant team manager/engineer — with a 3% prize money take in the hope of getting to a proper number by the end of the year. My optimism for our team’s fortunes must have been higher than our team owners’ because they accepted my little strategy and it worked. Especially after we qualified second for the Indy 500 and led 18 laps with Greg Ray.

That led to a very testy exchange the week after Indy where it was conveniently forgotten that I was no longer on 1%… but they finally, and begrudgingly, paid what they owed.

If you want a driver-keeps-the-money story, our Genoa Indy Lights team put in a lot of effort to practice for a downtown pit stop challenge in Quebec in 1996 ahead of the Trois Rivieres race. We beat the Player’s team, which was a big deal; I changed the right-front, our crew chief Jon Ennik did the left-front, and our driver Dave DeSilva did a great job of launching the car, stopping for us to do the fronts-only change, and firing across the finish line.

I’ve forgotten how much it paid — maybe a couple of grand — and the promoters did hand him that wad of cash later that night at a Lights party. Dave, a paying driver whose father owned the second-largest construction company in California — built the new Oakland Raiders/Oakland A’s stadium, as well — was a sweet guy who was worth more than all of us combined, was really hyped after winning the pit stop competition, and decided it was his prize money to keep.

Whatever bond he had left with us was largely broken after that. We’d put in time in sweltering summer heat in our tiny East Lansing, Michigan shop, to practice pit stops — keep in mind that pit stops weren’t done in Lights — and treated this as the one event during the year where we as the pit crew had a tiny moment to shine. So, knowing the prize money was like pocket change to our driver, I badgered him for the next day or two, and at first, he peeled off something like a hundred bucks apiece for each of us. Felt like we were being tipped as his servers at the country club in his mind.

That was an even bigger insult than getting nothing at all, so I kept after him and he upped it to maybe $300. Ennik came to me afterwards and said, “Hey man, I wouldn’t ask him to give out any more money… he’s really pissed.” I think my response was something like, “Good, he should be pissed, at himself, for trying to s*** on us and take money that belongs to his crew.”

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: Sorry if you covered this before. Michael Andretti said that IndyCar should adopt same engine package that IMSA uses, because costs would be low and you would get more manufacturers. Is this possible? Do you agree with him?

David Tucker

MARSHALL PRUETT: We only touch on it once every three or four Mailbags, so let’s give it another rundown.

IndyCar team owners and drivers alike are really unhappy with how heavy the Dallara DW12 has become; it will reach a modern high when the series goes hybrid. And that comes with a tiny, short, narrow, and comparatively light 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 engine formula. A big component of what makes an IndyCar go as fast as it does is the absence of weight compared to a sports car or stock car.

Most of the GTP engines and pretty much all of the GT3 engines are much bigger, heavier, taller, wider, or longer, if not all five of those things at once. So if lightness is what makes an IndyCar perform like it does, the thing that will kill its performance is making it really heavy. The only workaround is to add a bunch of extra horsepower to try and offset the extra weight, but there’s a tipping point where only so much power can be added to mask that weight.

The DW12 was never designed to carry anything other than that tiny 2.2-liter motor, and the rest of the car is built around it. To consider using GTP/GT3 engines, an all-new car would be required that can accept all the different shapes and sizes. That can be done. But then we come back to the current car, with the tiny motor, becoming super-heavy when it gets all of the hybrid gear installed.

Bolting in a GTP or GT3 motor would take the weight into uncharted territory, which would only worsen the problem. More weight means a slower car, and one that hates to stop and turn.

So, yes, you could pull those IMSA motors over to IndyCar, but unless you design a new chassis that’s hundreds of pounds lighter than the DW12, and that’s not realistic, it’s hard to figure out how the insanely heavy cars would be anything other than a competitive embarrassment.

At that point, it would be easier to buy GTP cars, cut the fenders off, and call them IndyCars.

Q: There was a good demonstration by NBC reporters during the St. Petersburg race on the high amount of strength required to turn the steering wheel on an IndyCar. This is just another impediment in attracting women drivers to the series. It also is a source of wrist and hand injuries to male drivers as well. Power steering has been on Formula 1 cars for a while. How much would it cost to implement power steering for IndyCar? Safety has always been at the forefront of IndyCar. It would seem only natural that this change would fit right into this philosophy.

Dave

MP: It’s been spoken about for 12 years, and if it were easy, it would have been done already. If it’s going to happen, it would been to be designed into a new tub, and that’s a few years away, at minimum. Simona De Silvestro drove the DW12 at a higher level of downforce than we have now, and she put on the muscle needed to perform with the best in the series.

Q: Racing is back at last. Don’t panic people, it will get better. Just blame Josef Newgarden for being too good!

Recently, the Mailbag was full of grief about the situation in Nashville. I’m just glad the decisions have been taken so early — usually IndyCar is scrambling around with only a few weeks’ warning. But with regards to the notion of sponsorship packages and events planned around the city, I have an idea. Yes, it would cost money and would be a logistical nuisance for the teams, but here’s how Penske Entertainment could redeem themselves.

The World Rally Championship holds an opening ceremony in each Rally’s host city the night before competition starts where the crews are introduced — there are fireworks, a stage show, many even have the cars run a short spectator stage on the streets. Therefore, despite the rest of the action happening away in the surrounding area, it is still that city’s event.

So, how’s this? Firstly, over the summer, fill the city of Nashville with show cars, CART, IRL and IndyCar, and all in their proper old colors. Place them in shopping malls, libraries, schools, wherever to celebrate our sport.

Then, the night before qualifying, have the cars and drivers assemble in Nashville for a full-on event at the Music City Center and Walk of Fame Park. Make a huge fuss — this is supposed to be North America’s premier racing series and the crowning of our new champion. Give the sponsors their big event on Broadway (if only Travis Kelce’s girlfriend hadn’t fallen out with her old record label) with driver introductions and interviews. Just imagine the response for Josef, let alone having all the cars lined up on the street.

Then, with a proper call to start engines, have the field drive around the city and then down to the speedway, under the escort of the pace car, safety crews, local police, the most flashing lights seen in the evening since The Blues Brothers dashed back to Chicago! How cool would it look seeing the cars rumbling through the suburbs and along the Interstate? Have Davey Hamilton and others carry some VIPs in the two-seaters as well. A proper parade and then entry of the gladiators at the track before putting the cars to bed and ready for qualifying in the morning. Events at the track itself over the weekend? Well Iowa has set the benchmark for that, but make sure the city of Nashville still feels part of the occasion.

Or am I being silly again? By the way, Robin was wrong in 2014. Eddie Cheever’s Dallara was not a toilet and is still one of my favorite IndyCars of that era, along with the Team Menard eyeball scorchers and the Al Unser Jr, Robby Gordon, Gil de Ferran Valvoline cars.

Peter Kerr, Hamilton, Scotland

MP: You had me all the way up to Cheever’s car. Everything else? Brilliant. Only one snag: It would cost a lot of money, and that’s not an area where Penske Entertainment has embraced with the series.

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: I truly fear for the future of the Nashville race — its connection to downtown is crucial to the success. No matter how much shade was thrown about the dynamics of the race, the crowds were electrifying, it was a huge successful partying atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the perfect storm has set in. The Titans stadium rebuild, breakdown in management, (thank goodness for Scott Borchetta) and Nashville mayor — according to Scott, the mayor wanted to drag out three city council meetings (time consuming in a bad way), and not invest money into the race. This in my deranged mind sets the tone that this will be the last year for IndyCar in Nashville. Blessed be the fans in the future and time will tell.

Timothy S., Nashville, TN

MARSHALL PRUETT: All depends on how the Nashville Speedway event goes. If the stands are packed and there’s good energy felt by the teams and their sponsors, a stronger case will be made to return and continue at the Speedway.

From all of those I’ve spoken to from within the paddock, there’s no great sense of loss from a pure racing perspective; the loss described is focused on losing that downtown audience, the chance to make new fans who otherwise wouldn’t know or care about IndyCar if it isn’t dropped in their laps in a downtown setting and, to an equal degree, the loss of the sponsor entertainment that came with hosting them downtown all weekend.

As some teams have told me, they’re unable to get refunds on the hotel rooms, banquet halls, and whatever else they’ve paid up front to have and use to entertain their sponsors and partners in a big farewell bash to the season on Broadway.

What this change has done is kill the excitement held by IndyCar teams and those important guests they were readying to welcome downtown, and that’s a really bad look for all involved. Most of today’s teams raced at Nashville Speedway back in the day, and while it has its charms, it’s in the middle of nowhere.

The downtown-to-speedway change is going from ending its season in grand style at a party destination like Las Vegas and informing folks the event’s been moved to Reno.

Q: Loooong time reader, even looooonger time IndyCar fan. First time Mailbagger, however.

Seeing recent images of the current demolition of Fontana, it makes me mentally tally another one into the bin of old/defunct tracks from IndyCar’s history. It is, however, a good reminder that no matter how some IndyCar things seem to so doggedly resist change (despite all logic pointing another direction), some elements go yet we remain hopeful for their return. And yet others of IndyCar’s past go away and there is little to be done but accept that brutal fate, like the demolition of a track.

I tend to get somewhat wistful for those unique tracks that added their own color to the expansive palette of an IndyCar season that are no more (Langhorne, Trenton, Nazareth, Texas World). California seems especially harsh on IndyCar — Riverside, Ontario, now Fontana (and almost losing Laguna Seca a few years ago). I do fear we’re maybe less than a generation away from more permanent losses of unique tracks.

Other tracks are even not “lost” in the sense of destruction, but lost to the grip of NASCAR or similar ownership who seem to have an unspoken disdain/be anything but hospitable or supportive of IndyCar at their tracks.

I digress, I’m of an age where (it’s hurts to accept that) my opinion truly matters less all the time when looking for ways to attract the next generation of fans.

If that unrivaled versatility will be the raison d’être of IndyCar for the next generations, what tracks (current/long past,/recent past that could return) most make you shudder to think could go away permanently, never to be seen by future fans of IndyCar?

DZ

MP: If we look back at the huge rise and rapid demise of its street racing roster in the 1980s, the list of lost IndyCar and IMSA events, is long and sad.

Of the current events, I think of Long Beach, Road America, Toronto, and Mid-Ohio as the primary homes for IndyCar over a long period of time that would worry me if any fell through. Indy is Indy; without it, the series is toast, so I don’t think of it as an option for this topic. I’d add Texas to the list, but that’s gone at the moment and if we’re lucky, Milwaukee will be a winner and re-establish its place in IndyCar’s present and future.

Q: With news of David Malukas’s injury, I started thinking about how health insurance works in motorsport. Do teams need to provide health insurance to their employees?

Yael

MP: Drivers tend to be independent contractors whose services are hired through whatever LLC or S-Corp they set up, so with that in mind, drivers find and pay for their own insurance. Yes, most teams provide healthcare for their employees. It wasn’t always the case, but in recent years, with the hot market for crew members, strong benefits packages have become an enticement that can’t be overlooked.

Q: Just checked out your “A dumb idea that worked” and had to replay Colton Herta’s ride in his dad’s Reynard-Cosworth at Laguna Seca. What a sweet sound coupled with the visual of having to take your hand off the wheel to shift. The good old days!

I am old and not tech savvy, so here is my question slightly off the in-car camera subject. How do I capture that sound and turn it into a ringtone for my phone? Especially the downshifts into the Corkscrew.

Probably a simple task for today’s youngsters that get a computer on their second birthday.

Jeff, Colorado

MP: Glad you enjoyed it, Jeff. Last time I knew anything about ringtones, that Reynard-Cosworth was brand-new.

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: Not this again! The powers that be are talking about… guaranteed starting spots in the Indy 500? Two quick questions:

1. They’re kidding me, right?
2. Where has RACER been on this in the several days since this broke?

BK, Indy

MARSHALL PRUETT: Roger Penske isn’t kidding. He’s been serious about having guaranteed starting spots at every IndyCar race, including the Indy 500, for many years, and has spoken about it in print to myself and others for years, both before and after he purchased the series.

I realize “guaranteed Indy 500 starting spots” recently surfaced as an item of interest, and if you weren’t aware of it beforehand, it could have been mistaken as something new. But it wasn’t.

On the subject of “where has RACER been?”, here’s a link from August, which was the last time we wrote about the topic, which spelled out the same exact thing you’re referencing, but six months ago:

“IndyCar introduced nothing that was remotely formal or final in the meeting, but some interesting ideas were shared – and commented on by team owners – that could form the framework of a future system that is heavily modeled on the Leaders Circle program … the same number of 22 Leaders Circle contracts was mentioned, but with a twist where those 22 entries could be guaranteed to start at every race, including the Indianapolis 500.”

Also, if you’re a reader of RACER Magazine in addition to RACER.com, here’s what Roger Penske told us in May:

“To me, if you are going to commit to a full season competing in our series, you should reap the benefits and ensure that you have positions secured on the grid. That security will be a benefit to our teams and their sponsors, as well as those team’s ability to attract drivers.”

Q: I just finished reading an article about the IndyCar hybrid. While I kind of understood the overall concept and I am sure you have talked about it in previous write-ups, I now better understand the technical challenge IndyCar and Honda/GM have been dealing with. That is, implementing hybrid power on an oval.

Many if not all of your readers know that drivers basically do not lift during a lap at the 500, for example. So when would the hybrid be able to regen? Obviously a major technical challenge. The decision to keep the package as light as possible is yet another technical challenge that eventually precluded lithium batteries and pushed the direction to supercapacitors. And as you mentioned in previous articles, vendor and supply issues slowed down the whole process.

Based on my further understanding, I can understand the delays and say well done to Honda and GM for taking charge of the project. As you reported, the last test was relatively trouble-free, so that is a positive. While I look forward to its implementation, my only concern is, when should it go online? Honestly, I am not sure it makes sense in the middle of the season just to tick a box. I will stay tuned.

Glenn, Renton, WA

MP: Think of drivers running in the draft at Indy where, as you point out, they’re hard into the throttle and don’t brake. Under normal hybrid racing circumstances, there would be no way to charge the energy recover system (ERS) while flying around Indy, and only while braking for pit lane would charging be possible.

To address this, IndyCar and its ERS partners created an option for drivers to use a “fiddle paddle” as it’s often called, which is a small paddle mounted to the back of the steering wheels. Some road-going hybrids have the same exact paddle (not the same paddle itself, but the same technology) where drivers can lightly squeeze the paddle and engage the motor generator unit (MGU) to spin at relatively low RPM and harvest electricity that gets sent to the supercapacitor. If you’re cruising in your hybrid on the freeway and traffic is speeding up and slowing down as it often does, cars with that regen paddle give the driver the chance to use the paddle to manage their speed, get some charging done, and avoid using the brake — and triggering the brake lights — which can be annoying.

So, rather than having to drag the brake to trigger the MGU to wake up and spin and harvest on your IndyCar, a paddle on the steering wheel is gently engaged by drivers with their fingertips. Where this is really smart, in the context of an oval race, is for every driver in the draft, they’re almost never at 100-percent throttle. They’re having to lift to avoid running into the car they’re drafting off of, so with the ERS and paddle, drivers in a draft can use that extra throttle to counteract the MGU.

Simply put, if a driver is sitting at 90-percent throttle in the draft at Indy, and they want to harvest some electronic horsepower to recharge their supercapacitor, and they drag the paddle and the MGU want to slow the car by the equivalent of seven-percent throttle, a driver can go from 90- to 97-percent throttle and use the internal combustion engine to match and neutralize the slowing/charging effect of the MGU.

Also, if a driver wants to let another driver go past them, a harder pull on the paddle and bigger recharging moment would give them more of a MGU boost to use whenever they wanted to repass them. That’s a new strategy to look out for in 2025 when hybrids debut at IMS. And the paddle can be used anywhere; it isn’t just for the ovals. But it is particularly handy on the ovals.

At the other ovals, all small by comparison to Indy, we could see big lifts into Turn 1 at WWTR get somewhat or mostly traded by staying harder in the throttle while using a bigger pull on the harvesting paddle to slow their speeds. Lots of strategy to consider when IndyCar goes hybrid.