Q: It always amazes me why both IndyCar and F1 won’t take ideas from each to make their own series better.
Let’s take a look at why F1 won’t use the alternative start/finish line for qualifying. It’s stupid on so many levels. No. 1, it will save tires – now you’re only running two laps vs three on a quali run, and you can use those tires for a second quali. No. 2, it changes how qualifying is staged — they can make three runs instead of two in the allotted time, which makes it better racing for the mid pack teams and it will save tires over the course of the entire weekend, something F1 has been pushing for.
Having said that, why won’t IndyCar adopt the DRS and get rid of the Push to Pass on the street and road courses? DRS makes for more exciting racing and can keep the pack closer together. If you can get close enough to the guy in front of you, bingo, and increased passing is something we all want to see. And, it keeps those dreaded words out of racing: “fuel mileage race.”
Joe, California
MP: I’ve hated DRS from the moment it was introduced. Once thing I’ve never seen is DRS helping to keep F1 cars packed closely together, so I’m not sure why it would do that in IndyCar. Push-to-Pass, as it’s been used, has avoided the cartoonish passing DRS usually creates, and doesn’t necessarily equate to an automatic pass. I’ll take that over DRS.
F1 has had some of the worst racing I can recall in recent years, so I’d hope IndyCar would adopt nothing from F1’s on-track rules and jeopardize diminishing its mostly great racing. If IndyCar is looking to steal ideas from F1, it should borrow from its marketing and digital strategies, its presentation of its drivers with standardized victory lanes with video boards and the like (barring the Indy 500, of course) and make a much bigger effort to make its drivers, teams, and itself look important.
CHRIS MEDLAND: We’ve had this one a few times and I’ll admit you make a compelling argument, Joe, and I don’t have a firm answer as to why it’s not adopted in F1 other than the fact that it would take resource to invest in changes to timing beams and circuit configurations to make sure you had a reliable alternate line. I don’t believe it would be hugely costly, but it’s also far from F1’s biggest issue — the way drivers act on out-laps is the major headache, and that doesn’t get resolved by a switch to a different start/finish line.
It does make a lot of sense, but I think it’s best if it’s implemented on all tracks for ease of following for fans, and that’s why it would need a bit of lead time. I couldn’t get a rapid response out of the FIA this week given the sporting director changes going on, but I will try and confirm that it’s something that’s been looked at and find out if there’s any specific reason against that I’m not thinking of.
Q: Should we be taking recent comments from Zak Brown and Gunther Steiner disparaging the common ownership of Red Bull and the team formerly known as Toro Rosso and Alpha Tauri at face value? That they don’t like the combination from a competitive standpoint? Or are there tea leaves we should be taking a closer look at?
Namely, in beating up on Red Bull and its junior team in the press, are these team principals trying to build a compromise that would see Red Bull divest the team to someone like Andretti Global and thereby putting the 11th team issue to sleep, at least for a while?
Or would they be just as happy if Red Bull sold the junior team to anyone else? Perhaps Honda?
KC Moose
CM: No, I think there’s just a bit of posturing going on ahead of the new Concorde Agreement on two fronts — one from McLaren is partly trying to ensure Red Bull can’t get an advantage from owning two teams, and then from Haas the same but at a different rival team in the form AlphaTauri.
From what I hear, it’s a topic that actually has been quietened over the winter because of the number of partnerships within F1 that already exist (given the two teams involved, think McLaren and Mercedes or Haas and Ferrari) and Red Bull could ask similar questions, but they’re comments from rivals that are to help themselves competitively rather than aiming for any sort of Andretti compromise. You’re right that any sale wouldn’t be a bad byproduct for them either, as keeping it at 10 teams will increase their value, but I don’t believe it’s targeted at any specific outcome.
Q: I submitted an email previously suggesting American companies currently sponsoring F1 teams offer scholarships to promising American drivers in the Road to Indy series to go to Europe to race. The goal would be to develop the next American F1 driver. Marshall didn’t think much of the idea and questioned why a Road to Indy driver would want to go to Europe. If they wanted to race in F1 they should just go to Europe.
The problem, as I see it, is twofold. The U.S. feeder system just doesn’t offer enough Super License points to qualify, so drivers must go to Europe to race; and the lack of financial support for Americans to go to Europe. There appears to be little interest in having Americans in the F1 feeder series (Regional F3, F3, F2, etc.)
Let me ask the question a different way,
Does F1 want American drivers? Do the American sponsors want American drivers? If they do, what can they do to make this happen? Right now, the Red Bull junior driver program is the only path I’m aware of for a promising American driver to get to F1. For what Oracle is supposedly paying the Red Bull F1 race team they could pay for the entire F3 grid at Silverstone.
I also must believe that there are a lot of Americans that would jump at an opportunity to go to Europe to race.
I was hoping Chris could respond to my question.
Scott, Miami
CM: Yes they do, but not at any cost. In a perfect world, F1 wants high-quality drivers that hit as many of the biggest markets as possible, and we’ve heard many times how American sponsors and fans want to get behind winning drivers. The F4/F3/F2 ladder has been designed to prepare drivers for F1, so I agree that it wouldn’t be ideal to prep a driver on the Road to Indy ladder and then move them across.
In an ideal scenario, the Road to Indy program and F4/F3/F2 in Europe need to be a bit more similar. We see plenty of F2 drivers making encouraging switches to IndyCar, but not the other direction because it doesn’t prepare them for F1. I don’t believe it’s solely money that’s the issue, though (as expensive as F3 and F2 are), as there are far more avenues than just the Red Bull pathway — look at Williams bringing Logan Sargeant through, while Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin, Alpine and Sauber all have driver development programs too.
The issue there is they tend to pick up talent out of karting or in the initial junior categories, so an American would either already have had to make the switch to Europe to have shone in single-seaters, or be so good in karts as well as having a family that is willing to let them move at such a young age.
And the Super License system is a regular roadblock as you mention, too. Far more points are on offer in Europe, making drivers racing in those categories realistic targets for F1 driver development programs. Even highly talented drivers in IndyCar struggle to score the points needed given the weighting, which all limits their chances of reaching F1 if they haven’t started in Europe in the first place. So that would be the most simple change that would open doors in my opinion.