Q: I can’t say I’m a huge NASCAR fan, but the Xfinity and Cup races at Road America and Watkins Glen are just good racing by any standard. Having said that, the Cup race at COTA was more demolition derby than a race. While it always comes down to how hard the drivers are willing to race each other, I think there is another factor that makes this type of racing inevitable — the track.
Austin is a beautiful city and COTA is a great location, but it is a Hermann Tilke track designed for F1. For Cup cars (any cars for that matter), it is an oversized go-kart track. It needs to be reprofiled. As is, it just invites desperate, dive-bomb moves. With just a few tweaks (elimination of Turns 7, 8, 9 and make Turn 12 a fast left-hander into what is currently Turn 17) COTA could be right up there with Road America and Watkins Glen. The change would benefit all the series that race there, not just NASCAR.
I do not condone cheating, but MSR’s “tiregate” is hardly the first time a team has fudged tire pressures. If memory serves me correctly, there were a number of catastrophic tire failures at the British GP a few years back. Pirelli determined that in addition to curb strikes, the tires were intentionally under-inflated. I think NASCAR has had its tire scandals as well. Perhaps MSR’s penalties will put the entire racing industry on notice.
Jonathan and Cleide Morris, Ventura, CA
KC: It’s not the racetrack. If it was the racetrack, then every lap would have been a demolition derby, but the Craftsman Truck Series and Xfinity Series races at COTA were fantastic, and most of the Cup Series race was. So, it can’t be the track. It’s the drivers — who also admit it — making the decisions to run someone else over before they get run over. Whenever races come down to late-race restarts, whether it’s on a road course or oval, the expectation is that it’s going to get stupid. COTA got stupid.
Q: Now I know why I can’t watch a NASCAR road race involving F1, IndyCar or sports car aces with any hope of seeing any one of them do well. If you call what I see at the end of every NASCAR road race “racing,” then I have some land in Russia I would like to sell you. When crashing and intentionally running into people is a strategy and not an accident, someone needs to take a hard look at what these guys are doing.
William Schleif, Hales Corners, WI
KC: Someone does need to take a hard look — the drivers. I wrote that last week here on RACER, and drivers also admit they are the ones responsible. They are making those decisions. The belief from drivers is that if they aren’t aggressive then someone else is going to use them up. There has been chatter about single-file restarts at road courses or some other way to save the drivers from themselves, because nothing is going to change unless the drivers put into a box by NASCAR.
Q: Jenson Button was a welcome change in the F1 coverage this weekend, but there was no race day mention of his NASCAR adventure during the pre-race show or the race itself. Was there a gag order from Sky or F1?
Eddie F., Dover Plains NY
CM: There was no gag order when it comes to talking NASCAR, it’s just about at which point during the broadcasts they felt it was the best time for it.
It seems Sky just didn’t want to spend too long chatting about it on race day when it felt most people wanted F1 content, but did discuss it earlier in the weekend with Jenson on its coverage (It’s also worth noting Sky isn’t the NASCAR broadcaster in the UK — that’s a rival in the form of ViaPlay).
Q: In the cutthroat of world of Formula 1, is Zak Brown on borrowed time? His tenure at McLaren has been a disaster, and yet there is another technical reshuffle and he seems as secure as ever.
I appreciate he’s very good at bringing sponsors to a race team, but he’s CEO of the entire racing company, and the McLaren Formula 1 team is in terrible shape. Additionally, why would McLaren get so involved in various spec series with minimal brand exposure (IndyCar seems to be a Zak Brown personal pet project), zero brand exposure (Formula E, Extreme E) when its crown jewel (F1) is floundering?
McLaren is an iconic team; here’s hoping they find their way back to competitiveness soon.
John
CM: No, I think Zak’s pretty secure given how he’s moved that broader racing team forward and made the F1 team profitable. It’s a supercar manufacturer with its biggest market in North America, which is why he entered the team in IndyCar to fill a gap that F1 didn’t hit at the time. Also, it takes a long time to get to the front in F1, whereas he was able to rapidly make McLaren title contenders in IndyCar for positive brand association.
Formula E and Extreme E also fulfil sustainability targets that are important for the McLaren Group, but when you have a budget cap that means you can’t spend more on F1, is it really a bad thing to have other racing teams racing more?
In terms of the F1 team, I think it’s too early to judge the shape it’s in. McLaren was unlucky in the first two races, and could easily have scored points — the pace was there, despite the team talking itself down so much — and then Melbourne showed it with Lando Norris’ performance even before the red flag helped both drivers score.
Fifth seems a stretch right now, but if the B-spec car delivers what the team claims it will then fifth could be realistic by the season end — if not higher during such a competitive season.
Add in the new wind tunnel and simulator coming online this year and there’s real optimism that McLaren is getting closer to having everything in place to become a top team again over the next few years (which is how long it will take to actually show an impact). The F1 team’s certainly in better shape than it was when he took charge amid the Honda years.
But all that said, Zak’s not got any excuses left now if the team doesn’t move forward in the next three or four seasons. Drivers, resources, facilities and team personnel are all in place according to the latest restructuring.