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 sure if you ever watched “The Office” but doesn’t IndyCar remind you of the episode where Michael says he has a really big surprise that is going to be great to the staff, and it ends up being ice cream sandwiches? Kind of reminds me of all the drivers saying something really big is coming after their dinner.
Steve
MARSHALL PRUETT: Watched “The Office” from the start and it’s on a few times each week when I need to kick my brain into neutral. It’s worth noting that ice cream is Penske’s favorite thing, so you’re onto something here.
Kidding aside, yes, as I think I’ve written here, the series has nothing in the works that anyone is aware of that’s earth-shattering, but let’s see if the EVERYTHING IS GONNA BE SUPER GREAT IN THE FUTURE BUT WE CAN’T TELL YOU ABOUT IT sleight-of-hand routine it’s currently doing buys the series time to come up with some big new things.
Q: I went to a Milwaukee Admirals minor league hockey game last week, and during an intermission the Jumbotron played a commercial for Penske truck rental. Why wasn’t that an ad for the Road America race coming up in a few months or the return to Milwaukee Mile later this year? If I wasn’t already an IndyCar fan I’d have no idea they raced here.
Max
MP: I’m guessing it was an ad by a local Penske truck rental location rather than the big Penske corporate arm choosing to promote its truck rentals at a regional minor league hockey game? That would be my guess, and if that’s the case, there would be no reason for the local owner/operator to spend their money to promote a race they aren’t involved in.
Q: Regarding your answer to Terry from Maryland last week, the end of the Daytona 24, a “bit of a nothing burger”? Like Abu Dhabi in 2021 that resulted in the wrong man being named world champion? Like the Indy 500 in 2022 that resulted in the wrong man winning? You never know what can happen on the last lap (pressure, back marker, car failure, etc.). That’s why races have specific end points. F1, IndyCar, now IMSA, they all screwed up. Race officials have got to get it right! You Marshall, of all people, should understand that.
Bill
MP: Right. If you’ve followed my work for the last 18 years, I get out the knife when it’s warranted, give applause when it’s deserved, and when I see it, call a non-issue a non-issue. And since this was a non-issue in my eyes, I won’t fall into manufacturing outrage over a 24-hour race, which lasted 791 laps, being errantly called to stop before 792 laps were completed.
Sure, if the race was 792 instead of 791, aliens could have also landed and taken over the planet. Bigfoot and Elvis could have also re-appeared and put on an amazing concert in the infield that distracted all four class leaders, caused them to crash, and produced four different winners… if only the race went one more lap.
The amount of imaginary things we can come up with is endless, which is why I won’t join you in fantasy land. And are we seriously summoning F1’s worst-ever officiating call here? Because the Rolex 24 turned out to be the Rolex 23h58m? C’mon, man.
Q: With the recent IndyCar hybrid test, you reported that one of the car’s drivers successfully used the on-board starter. While that will be a great feature to avoid lengthy yellows for a stalled car, I can imagine a scenario where a car hits hard enough that the driver is injured or concussed, and the driver simply continues to drive in the race. I can also imagine a scenario where the car is restarted and as it makes its way back to the pits, a bunch of carbon fiber parts are littering the track. Without an on-board starter, at least the driver and/or car gets checked out by the safety team before restarting the engine. Is there any report from IndyCar how either of these scenarios will be addressed?
Andy, Farmington Hills, MI
MP: I reached out to the series for answers, and didn’t get them in time before filing the Mailbag, but if they did respond, I’d imagine they would have said things about having the ability to monitor G-forces and threshholds through telemetry and being able to determine if a crash exceeded that limit.
The series also has the ability to speak directly to its teams and relay instructions to give a driver to stay in place and wait for the safety team to arrive and provide medical assistance.
And if it’s a decent crash that falls below the concussion alarm threshold and we have a driver trying to drive back to the pits dragging and shedding broken bits, which we see in other forms of racing — more of the sports car and stock car variety — the race director can make the same call via radio for the driver to stop or to allow them to continue if the trail of Dallara DW12 parts is minimal.
Q: After Nigel Mansell won the 1993 PPG IndyCar World Series, is my memory correct that in his post race/championship interview from victory lane he gave a shoutout to sponsor Dirt Devil by saying if you need the best “hoover” (“vacuum cleaner” to Brits) to buy Dirt Devil? If so, what was Dirt Devil’s response? I’ve been unable to find that interview online.
Bob Crosby, Charlotte, NC
MP: Great question for Mailbag readers, Bob. What one driver said about one sponsor in one post-race interview 31 years ago is a mystery to me. I would have been in the paddock at the time, likely with my hands full towards the end of breaking down the awning and helping to load Atlantic cars and equipment into the transporter.