Q: A few addendums to Michael S.’s nice letter on Rex Mays (July 10 Mailbag). It’s nice to use Google and Wikipedia, but do so with caution as there is so much misinformation on U.S. motorsports history out there, especially on the latter. Rex Mays was from Riverside, California, and started racing there, in a stripped-down Model T on a dirt oval at the end of Tequesquite Avenue. He moved on to race at Los Angeles’ Legion Ascot Speedway.
It wasn’t just Mays, film stars were regulars in the stands and the racers were huge stars, amongst the best known and most popular figures in 1930s Los Angeles, and up and down California (they also raced at Oakland, Fresno, San Jose and San Diego). They’d race at Legion Ascot 30 or more times a year, many of them at night. Mays was the 1934 and 1935 AAA Pacific Southwest champion. Many Legion Ascot grads made it to Indianapolis. The road course mentioned was the Vanderbilt Cup at Roosevelt Raceway, and yeah, it was a pretty big deal. The story goes that the two American drivers that impressed the European contingent were Mays and Bob Swanson.
There is a book, “Pole Position: Rex Mays”by Bob Schilling, that aside from needlessly scapegoating a fellow driver in Mays’ fatal accident, is quite good. As far as Halls of Fame, Rex Mays is in five! And as far as race names, it was always the Rex Mays 150 or 200, much like the Phoenix race traditionally being named to honor Bobby Ball, so why not the Rex Mays 250? And, yes, Milwaukee honored him for crashing his car to protect Duke Dinsmore, who’d been thrown from his car in an incident moments earlier. The late 1960s USAC races at Riverside International Raceway were the “Rex Mays 300s.”
Jim Thurman, Mojave Desert, CA
MP: Thanks for continuing the thread and education on Mays, Jim. I recently found a couple of Milwaukee Mile programs from the 1970s with great art on the covers. Both honored the Bettenhausens.
Q: How come after every oval race writers and reader commenters always say “Hopefully IndyCar learned something from this year’s race and will make changes to make next year’s race better”? And then next year comes and everything stays the same. Phoenix and Texas stick out in my mind the most, and of course we lost both.
Bob Gray, Canoga Park, CA
MP: It’s not every oval race, and not by a long shot. And what else would someone say or write when they wield no power to make those changes, but hope that the people who do might listen or read and decide to take action?
My father called it “yelling at the refrigerator.” You can yell at the thing all day, but since you lack the ability to make it change or function in a different manner, all you’re doing is expressing a concern or critique and having faith the message won’t be a complete waste of time. Despite the effort, most of the time, you’re still just yelling at the refrigerator, which will be the same tomorrow, and the next day, and so on.
Q: Unsure how much of this is worthy of publication, but there is confusion over the terms “beacon,” “loops,” “transponder” and “transmitter” now. Regarding either P2P and ERS activation, the subject terms seem to have been used differently by various sources.
The IndyCar web page that describes T&S operation is here.
The diagram at the top shows a “transmitter” in the nose of the car, but the text description below calls it the ‘transponder’ in all cases. That is what the scoring manufacturers call them, and to my knowledge, it’s what every other series from karting through the major pro series call them. The transponder transmits the unique code for the car to the T&S system via “multiple detection loop antennas” connected to trackside decoders. That page also notes, “The system also features two-way communication availability through the car transponder. This allows IndyCar timing and scoring the ability to send information to the car’s on-board system as well as read information from it.” Thus it makes perfect sense that P2P activation at the S/F line loop on the lap after a restart and ERS deactivation/activation at pit in/pit out loops would be handled through the transponder/loop system.
However, and as is regrettably typical, the IndyCar rulebook uses different and confusing terminology. Rule 14.19.8.2.8 includes “beacon receiver” in the list of chassis sensors. That term is used only in that rule; it occurs nowhere else including the glossary.
In other areas of the rules, the term “timing transponder” or simply “transponder” is used when describing operation of timing and scoring, but in Rule 14.19.15 regarding P2P activation, the book states “An indicator to enable push to pass will be sent via CAN communication from the timing and scoring beacon on board the Car to the team data logger. This signal must be passed on to the ECU unmodified and uninterrupted during all road and street course events.” For some odd reason, that rule does not use either “beacon receiver” or “transponder” but the context certainly means the series means the transponder.
From an electronics/radio viewpoint, a “beacon” transmits a constant radio signal. It does not receive a signal — analogous to a lighthouse sending out beam, but not receiving a signal back. The EM Motorsports device that sends allowed telemetry data to the system that distributes it to the teams would be considered a transmitter, not a “beacon receiver,” so I am left to assume the “beacon receiver” in 14.19.8.2.8 can mean nothing other than the T&S transponder.
In your recent piece regarding the problems with ERS activation out of the pits at Iowa, you describe the operation as, “As IndyCar fans learned during April’s push-to-pass ordeal involving Team Penske, the series enables or disables the push-to-pass system on road and street courses from race control by sending signals through the timing and scoring beacons, which communicates through each car’s MyLaps transponder, and instructs the McLaren engine control unit to turn push-to-pass on or off.”
Thus you appear to use the term “timing and scoring beacons” for the scoring loops in the track, when the only instance of that term in the rule book notes that’s “on board the car.”
Several of my more technically-minded fan friends now question some of what teams said with respect to the Penske P2P situation. Other teams apparently claimed they used “the beacon” at those tests to keep P2P active for testing, and one guy on a forum claimed “teams usually take their own beacon to tests to do that” (said fan often makes wild technical claims that turn out to be false — imagine that.)
The rest of us don’t think that is logical. How could teams individually transmit a signal to their own car on track to activate P2P via the embedded scoring loop? Seems to us that having multiple systems tied into the same loops would not be workable.
To the rest of the group, the Penske explanation of using modified CLU code for testing made sense as it was a direct route to the desired result. However, we question why the OEM engineer doesn’t simply load special test-only code to the ECU that allows full-time P2P to completely bypass the CLU.
If we understand the big picture correctly, every car must have its ECU code reloaded by the OEM engineer at the beginning of every race weekend that includes both the layer controlled by the series specific to that race event and the layer developed by the OEM for operation of the engine. If that is correct, any non-race-compliant ECU code would thus be overwritten automatically and the “Penske problem” would never occur.
What actually happens at a private test for a single team or group of teams? Rule 6.9.4 states “An Indycar-approved private test facilitator(s) must be present at all on-track tests”, but that seems to mean an official, not the whole T&S system. Do teams have their own package that allows them to interact with their own car(s) via the embedded loops and associated decoders at each track? How do teams get section times at private tests?
Sorry for the length of this but as with any system, it’s confusing unless one knows the real answers.
Steve Jarzombek
MP: More than 850 words on T&S nomenclature and whatnot must be a new Mailbag record. I’m sure my use of terms has been wrong, imprecise, etc. Depending on the track and series, a single, master beacon might be used at start/finish, and you might also have multiple beacons placed around the track to create segments if the track doesn’t have its own that are built in. That’s more of a testing thing than a race thing.
Yes, teams bring their own beacon(s) to tests. Multiple beacons can be set wherever to create segments. Teams can also use the Cosworth software to create virtual beacons/sectors in the data, which is a practice that’s been around for at least five decades. Yes, the rules require an IndyCar presence at every test. Teams do not have to setup a test-day T&S system for everyone to use, but it happens almost every time when multiple teams are present.