Q: A lot of great comments in last week’s Mailbag about Santino Ferrucci, as well as the article on RACER.com. I listened to Santino’s radio via the IndyCar app and was able to follow along with the team and what they had to do to get the result they did at Long Beach.
There was also a lot of talk about how well Santino was doing in the previous event at Texas, where his clutch issues ultimately resulted in a DNF. I was also listening to Santino’s radio at the Texas event, and early on he was dealing with the headrest actually getting ripped out of the car by the wind… at effin’ TMS! I was able to listen to Santino describe the situation to the team over the radio at racing speeds, and then listen to them converse back and forth about how they were going to go about fixing the situation under the next caution. And then the team telling Santino to just hang in there! And he’s just like, “10-4”! Great stuff from that team on the radio!
Bob Fay, Seymour, CT
MP: Ferrucci is a gamer. Give him a semi-decent car, and he’ll go forward and place higher than it deserves. I don’t know if it will ever happen, but the closest thing he’s ever had to a top seat was with RLL in an extra car being run as an experiment, and while there, he was an animal, so I’m left to wonder what he could do in a full-time RLL seat, or an Andretti seat, etc.
Q: Who was the bravest driver you ever worked with in IndyCar? Also, who would you rate as the bravest driver currently racing?
Jim in Michigan
MP: That one’s easy: The often maligned Greg Ray. Started working with Greg in 1994 at Genoa Racing with our Formula Atlantic program and he was absolutely fearless. Then he left for the Team Kool Green Indy Lights team, and came back to use in 1997 and on a shoestring budget, we assembled the Thomas Knapp Motorsports/Genoa Racing IRL effort and we did some decent things for being a tiny Indy Lights team masquerading as an IndyCar operation. I put most of that on Greg, who delivered a couple of performances in qualifying for the Indy 500 that were breathtaking. Never had to question whether Greg was giving 100 percent or was going to attack everything in sight. I wish he was more fondly remembered by the sport.
Today, it’s Pato and Josef. O’Ward reminded us of that at Long Beach — twice — and Newgarden is the absolute last driver you want to see in your mirrors because he’s going to get by and, he’s not afraid to scare the crap out of you (see Penske’s Newgarden vs Penske’s Pagenaud at Gateway for the win) while doing so.
Q: Question about RLL: I am a huge fan of Graham Rahal and was hopeful to see a turnaround this year. But so far just a few top 10s and they don’t seem to have anywhere close to the pace of the other teams. Is this a case of them trying too hard to be a three-car team and should they have kept it at two so they are not stretched so thin in some areas?
Eric
MP: Drop Graham into an Andretti/Ganassi/Penske car, and he’s winning races and fighting for a championship. Three is a good number, so I don’t see any issues with the size of the team. They rolled the dice in going with a new engineering structure during the offseason by hiring a new technical director with no IndyCar experience, so that was always going to require some extra time to get settled and make gains.
What I’ve been wondering of late is whether we’re in the midst of that early jelling process and should give them more time to hit their engineering stride with all of the changes (new/old engineer on Graham’s car, new engineer for Harvey who was Graham’s engineer in recent years, plus the new TD), or if they’ve simply missed the mark again and what we’re seeing is a slightly better version of the team that faceplanted to open the 2022 season.
Having just gotten home from the Indy Open Test, I had to look and see where the four RLL cars ran because I couldn’t recall seeing any of them featuring towards the top 10. Placed 23rd, 26th, 28th, and 32nd. If they don’t have a strong Barber race and Indy 500, it’s going to get ugly.
Q: When you were in Long Beach, were you able to speak to Evi Gurney or anyone else at AAR about the Dan Gurney autobiography? If so, what’s the latest update?
Rick Johnson, Lynnwood, WA
MP: Yes, I spent a few hours on Wednesday with Justin Gurney and Kathy Weida and Terry Malone, and it was marvelous. On the topic of the book, nothing new to add, other than it’s still being assembled and the great John Zimmermann is assisting Evi and the boys in the process. Got to see and hug Evi on Sunday; it was her first trip to Long Beach since Dan died, and she got to visit with Kathy and Justin and her granddaughters.
Q: Regarding Alan HummeI’s post from the April 19th Mailbag about the issue of not being able to understand the commentators. I had the same frustrating problem and always blamed the sound technicians. A few Mailbags ago, in the comments section, someone mentioned the problem could be the TV sound settings are set to surround sound, but the setup does not include surround sound speakers. I checked my TV setup and sure enough, it was set to surround sound. I turned off surround sound. Problem fixed! Now I can hear the commentators just fine!
Brandon
MP: Thanks, Brandon. Also, I’m going to tell Diffey there’s a letter in the mailbag where people say they turn on surround sound only when he’s speaking…