Q: I read the latest Mailbag and there was a question about safety cars and virtual safety cars. I recall that in 1968 there was an attempt at something like a virtual safety car at Indy. They implemented pacer lights at the 500 that year. The drivers were to follow the lights and maintain position, meaning no bunching up. Late in the race there was a crash with Joe Leonard leading in a Lotus turbine and Bobby Unser chasing him down. Unser got trapped behind Art Pollard, who was driving for the same team as Leonard. Unser thought Pollard was intentionally slowing him down and eventually passed him. Of course, when the caution was over both turbine cars failed and Unser took his first 500. And by the way, I was at the race.
Ron Farris, Sykesville, MD
MP: I’ve never heard someone suggest Uncle Bobby skirted the rules…HA! If you wanted to lose three hours of your life, you asked Bobby about the pacer lights… Robin Miller would wind him up on a regular basis just because he liked pulling pins on hand grenades.
Q: In the August 9 Mailbag, in response to Jerry’s question about marbles, you wrote, “Yes, Firestone could make tires that are so hard that they do not shed much rubber, but then we’d have the worst competition imaginable because the cars would light up the tires under acceleration, would corner like turtles, and would brake early and forever due to the lack of grip. The racing would be terrible, my friend.”
To which I opine:
Oh. Hog. Wash.
If the cars were to light up the tires under acceleration, corner like
turtles, and brake early, then the racing would be great! You have described powerful cars that would be very difficult to drive, requiring skilled drivers to wrestle them to the front.
And without marbles, those drivers could so go side-by-side as necessary, instead of crashing into the fence whenever they strayed a few inches off the clean line.
Bring on the hard tires, my friend!
O.F., Penna
P.S.: We have not had marbles “forever.” Following the 1964 Indy 500, Firestone ran a magazine ad touting the fact that the tires on A.J. Foyt’s winning car went the entire distance and that they still had plenty of life left. No too many marbles from those cast-iron tires!
MP: Any letter that includes the words “hog wash” gets my vote as the best of the lot.
Q: While I know that the Mailbag is designed for short Q&A and not long dissertations, I found the part of your answer to the letter about marbles: “The racing would be terrible, my friend” was quite condescending, especially since you didn’t offer any data to support your claim, just the opinion that more tire spin and braking was bad. However, the second part of the answer suggesting racing pauses to clean the track (I hope not more yellow) was an interesting concept to pursue.
But I want to go back to the premise of the original question, and perhaps get a better/longer explanation of how IndyCar (and perhaps other series) arrived at the current level of grip versus tire degradation (and therefore marbles), and I how it is now considered “optimal.”
Let’s consider some facts:
First, fans see many different kinds of racing series with different levels of grip racing on similar, if not exactly the same, road and street courses, yet the quality of racing is not inherently better for series with more grip versus series with less grip. So why expect that IndyCar would necessarily be worse with less grip? In fact, we see IndyCar (and other series) race on wet circuits with significantly less grip in the course and in the tires, and that in fact can be quite good racing. Also, wet racing actually tends to level the field at times. If this was actually a feature of dry racing, why would this be bad?
Second, IndyCar, F1 and others already have tires of various grip levels available that are designed make the race teams choose between grip versus longevity. Since the grip is already being limited by design, why would even less grip be worse? Perhaps it would be more entertaining to see drivers display more of the more visible skill of “keeping the car under them,” versus the more ethereal skill of “saving tires”?
Third, for virtually all corners on street and road courses, the quickest route through a corner uses all of the available track, so when two cars enter the corner together in order to get through side by side, both cars must leave the optimal line and go into whatever marbles exist. Therefore, if the marbles are bad enough to ruin the car’s handling, not just in that corner but also for a significant time after, why would any driver attempt two-wide in any corner? They might actually try it more often if the marbles weren’t so bad.
Finally, while I’m sure I’m older than you, no, we’ve not had marbles forever. At least, not in the apparent handling-ruining way that they exist now. While it is true that the optimal racing line has always been, and will always be, cleaner and have more rubber, and therefore more grip, being offline has not always been the apparent handling-killer that it is now. This actually is the point you are making with the suggestion about cleaning the tracks more often: same effect, different method to get to the same result.
Doug, Phoenix, AZ
MP: It wasn’t written with condescension, Doug, so that’s an opinion you’ve formed that isn’t based on fact. And yes, my use of the word “forever” was imprecise. Maybe I should have written “for a really, really long time” and that would have been better? Last week’s Mailbag was almost 7000 words in length, and you’re right, this isn’t the format for written features where I present answers or views and then deliver in-depth support of those views or points. Thanks for taking the time to share yours.