Q: I’m sure you’ve covered this in the past, but in regards to heat issues resulting from the windscreens, why did IndyCar go with those instead of the F1-style halo?
Jason
MP: It’s for the same reason that car and truck makers put windshields in their cars to prevent items from striking you and I in the face while driving. The halo is great, but there’s nothing stopping pieces of suspension, springs, and all manner of other small debris from being fired into a driver’s helmet in the gap between the tub and the top of the halo.
Q: It seems race control has the ability to do many things remotely with the cars, such as no push to pass on restarts. Some things are in driver control like activating pit lane speed limit.
What is the total list of electronic controls available from race control or under driver selection?
Assuming this item is not on the list, is it possible to fix the race starts by giving race officials throttle control as the cars come to start line in formation… then at the green, release throttle control for all at the same time? Clean start every time!
Pat, Indy
MP: According to the series, “We get all the data off each car but the only thing we control from race control is push-to-pass. We activate when it’s on, as mentioned, and also shut it off when a car is command blue.”
As for race control taking control of throttles and instantly returning that control to the drivers, the start of the 1996 US 500 at Michigan comes to mind with the potential for chaos as drivers at different amount of throttle input spin their rear tires and spear into each other.
Q: In the aftermath of Ed Carpenter’s abrupt breakup with Conor Daly, it seems like Daly is in high demand, subbing at Meyer Shank and Rahal Letterman (and even co-hosting SRX racing). When IndyCar teams need a sub driver, what other drivers are on the shortlist? Are proven/seemingly available winners like Hinchcliffe or Bourdais given first right of refusal, or is win history not a part of the equation?
LA IndyCar fan
MP: We’re in a weird place right now, which I’ve discussed with a few team owners, where there just isn’t much in the way of a pool of Conor Dalys waiting to answer the call and step in and perform in a moment’s notice. And that’s a change to the norm.
JR Hildebrand is about the only other recent IndyCar driver who comes to mind as someone who could drive this weekend at Gateway and do a good job, without question, who has no ties. Take some of the others like a Hinch or Zach Veach or Oliver Askew, and they have the talent, no doubt, but they haven’t driven an IndyCar in years, so they’d run at the back all weekend and leave unsatisfied because they aren’t wired to start and finish last. And then you have the situation of being race-fit, and in a car without power steering, and that can get toasty in the cockpit behind the aeroscreen, some of the tracks would be pure physical torture to deal with, which would limit their speed.
Then you have a Bourdais scenario where he’s race-fit and knows how to wheel an IndyCar better than most, but he’s under contract to Ganassi for IMSA and Cadillac, and only in the rarest of needs for the Ganassi IndyCar team would Seb be deployed. Chip wouldn’t let Seb go drive for another IndyCar team in need for an event or two because there’s no way he’d risk losing a star GTP driver to injury in a rival’s car.
So, unless it’s a Ryan Hunter-Reay, who was given time to work his way back into race shape, or Daly, or maybe Marco Andretti, or some of the rookies RLL will try out after Conor, there just isn’t much of a race-ready group of recent IndyCar drivers who stand out for team owners to call and trust. Right now, it’s Conor, RHR, and not much else.
Q: As a big basketball fan and racing fan, I have what may be a dumb question for you. Every weekend, drivers follow about the same racing line, brake points and acceleration points. I equate that to at one time it was understood that the way to win basketball games/championships was to have a talented big man and feed the big guy for high percentage inside shots. Then along comes one Mr. Stephen Curry and he changes the game, and now it is all about the three-point shot.
Could there ever be someone in racing who comes along and shakes it up by utilizing wildly different racing lines, brake points, acceleration points, etc. than everyone else or is the racing line too finite?
Steve
MP: It’s a great question, Steve. Where the worlds of racing and basketball diverge is the height and placement of the basket never changes, nor does the width or length of the court. The range and style of the shots can vary, as Stef Curry has innovated, but everyone’s aiming at the same thing, and they’re only dealing with one axis — vertical — to adjust.
In racing, we have many of the same set parameters in track width, length, and so on, but we don’t have fixed items in terms of braking, accelerating, and the line to take through those corners, as you’ve noted. But, what we have is the opposite of the Stef Curry effect where after dozens of decades of racing at Track X, the best drivers in the world have tried all manner of ways to go through Turn 1, and Turn 5, and the optimum points of braking, turning, and accelerating — all involving hitting the perfect entry, apex, and exit points — in the name of doing so in the shortest amount of time has been established.
So, the answer is no, because the optimum way around each track has been perfected over thousands of laps, with experimentation involved, by the best of the best. Now, where you do get a small amount of what you’re asking about is in the tiny variances of how 27 IndyCar drivers, for example, will attack Turn 1 at the Indy road course in qualifying. Some might turn a touch earlier, others might hug the wall on the left longer than the others, and some may use a trail-braking technique more than others, and they all go back and watch whatever in-car footage or Dartfish overlay videos or the broadcast to try and pick out the little things that a rival is doing that might deliver a 0.0010s improvement, or might improve tire life, etc.
But since this is a competition to get to the checkered flap first, and while racing wheel to wheel, braking super early, or late, or turning into the corner from the wrong side of the track, and so on, is the kind of behavior that would get you passed and get you fired.