Q: IndyCar’s delay in throwing a yellow on road and street courses could have got someone killed in Toronto.
Why do they continue to do this? If it turns out a yellow wasn’t needed, it’s easy to go back to green. Not so easy to undo a serious injury or worse.
And then we have F1. McLaren really messed this up and it wasn’t Norris’s fault. I can totally understand why they pitted him first. But ultimately it was Piastri’s on-track mistake that allowed him to be undercut by his teammate. Why should Norris have been penalized for keeping his car on track when his teammate couldn’t? Team orders suck, and this was an example of why.
John, Little Elm, TX
MP: As I was told when I asked on Sunday, the triggering of the full-course caution by race control happened after Ericsson’s impact and before Fittipaldi — the next driver to crash — was through. If we take that as fact, there was a slight delay in the time the triggering happened to when the caution lights activated inside O’Ward’s cockpit after he was hit by Fittipaldi, Ferrucci, and Siegel.
CHRIS MEDLAND: I disagree on this one, John, but you’re not alone so I wrote a entire column to outline in even more detail than I’m writing here. But the reason I disagree is because Piastri’s on-track mistake didn’t cost him a position at all (for anyone wondering, Piastri ran slightly wide at Turn 11, got dirt on his tires and had a slow lap cleaning them up), and he was still keeping a comfortable distance to Norris before the pit stop, knowing that his teammate is not going to be allowed to have a strategic advantage to beat him.
If that was a rival team that was chasing Piastri then sure, you’ve opened yourself up to the undercut, but in any usual team scenario it would have been the lead car getting priority. All McLaren did was defend Norris’ second position from Hamilton a little bit more to be extra-safe with the one-two, and left Piastri out for two laps knowing that would give up track position to Norris because they can swap them back. It was the beauty of a team having control of a race in a one-two position.
Norris knew at that pit stop that he was being handed the lead through a strategy that wasn’t being defended by his teammate’s side of the garage, so it wasn’t an earned lead. And it was a lead that Piastri had earned at the start by getting a better start than Norris and passing him.
Hindsight will be important with this one, because if there’s a real chance of beating Verstappen in the drivers’ championship then Norris might lose out by those extra seven points from Sunday, but he similarly might get closer (or even win it) with lots of help from his teammate in future races. Help that wouldn’t have come his way if he’d taken the win from that position.
Q: Last week I wrote in a question about teammate battles being very one-sided in F1 this year.
My view is that McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari have very competitive battles and RB is becoming competitive. Alpine and Sauber have had some many issues that it’s hard to make a comparison and Haas, Williams, Aston Martin and Red Bull are one-sided.
In Chris Medland’s response he said “I think it’s fashionable to criticize Lance Stroll and it’s usually justified, but not right now. That’s the closest pairing on the grid in terms of qualifying results (Fernando Alonso leads 7-5), ……… and they sit ninth and 10th in the drivers’ standings.”
My justification in calling Aston one-sided is that Alonso has scored double the number of points as Stroll, and in races where both Astons scored points Australia is the only race where Lance has finished ahead of Alonso with Alonso not directly behind him.
It could be subjective, but does anyone keep track of how often teammates pass each other on track in F1, or other series? McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari, and Alpine have had teammates fighting on track this year.
Will, Indy
CM: Don’t worry Will, you’re still right that Alonso is clearly outperforming Stroll in general, and takes the big results when they are on offer more often than not, but Stroll’s 10th place ahead of Alonso on Sunday was also the third race in a row he’s beaten his teammate. I was just keen to point out that this is a strong run of form for Stroll and as the season has developed he’s closed the gap, so it’s no longer one-sided.
I can’t find data for how often teammates overtake each other, but the closest I can find is how often each driver makes an overtake or is overtaken during the season.
This year you might not be surprised to learn that Sergio Perez has the most overtakes so far with 45, having often qualified far out of position. He’s also been overtaken the second-fewest times — 11 — with Max Verstappen the lowest on that metric, getting overtaken five times.
To tip my cap to you a bit about Stroll’s performance, he’s made the second-highest number of overtakes with 41, again suggesting he’s been out of position a lot, and then somewhat surprisingly it’s Oscar Piastri and the two Haas drivers on 30 overtakes.
The driver who has been overtaken the most? That’s a tie between Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon on 43, with both having races earlier in the year when they did good jobs in qualifying but didn’t have the car pace to hold on.
The average for the season is just under 24 times that a driver has been overtaken or made an overtake.
Q: What is the status of Andretti’s F1 bid at this time?
Dan Edwards
CM: Limbo, basically. Ever since the Miami Grand Prix and the additional interest in the situation from Washington, it has largely gone quiet. F1 had to supply certain items to show how and why it made its decision on expansion, and there has been little public or off-record fallout from that.
Andretti continues to prepare everything as if it will get an entry, but even FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem changed his tune about six weeks ago and told it to buy an existing team rather than try and become an 11th entrant.
That is an overly simplistic instruction if nobody is willing to sell (or at least not at a fair price), but it feels like momentum has slowed without the FIA pushing so hard for the grid to be expanded.
Central to the hopes now, I believe, is GM and whether it fully commits to being a power unit manufacturer in 2028. Renault potentially pulling out as a PU supplier both shows why F1 wasn’t willing to sign-off a new team without a confirmed supply deal, but also could make GM building an engine even more attractive. So if that expression of interest is turned into a full project, there’s still a chance for 2028.
Q: Why do Pro Stock Motorcycle riders wear two-piece race suits instead of one-piece leathers (many of them now airbag-equipped) worn commonly in road racing? Does this come down to rider preference, or do NHRA rules prohibit aerodynamic devices like race humps which have become standard on one-piece suits over the last 20 years?
Pete, Rochester, NY
KELLY CRANDALL: It is at the rider’s discretion, as laid out by the NHRA Rule Book which states, “suits may be one-piece design or joined with a metal 360-degree zipper at the waist.” There was nothing that I saw in the rulebook about aerodynamic devices, but it clearly lays out what is allowed when it comes to leathers and the additional protection of more leather or Kevlar.
THE FINAL WORD
From Robin Miller’s Mailbag, July 23, 2014
Q: When you hark back to the days of badass, brave racers (and let’s be frank, you do that a lot), you mention certain tracks. Of the paved, high-bank class, you usually mention Salem, but not Winchester. I watched sprints on those tracks before and after cages and they both scared the beejeezus out of me. I’m just curious — what is it about Salem that makes you pick it instead of Winchester (or Dayton, for that matter) for the badass hall of fame?
Tom Hinshaw, Santa Barbara, CA
ROBIN MILLER: I didn’t realize I mentioned one more than the other but it’s purely accidental, because all three were a wicked test of balls and skill. I can attest to that. I made my Winchester debut in 1976 and started last because it was my first time (USAC rule) on the high banks. The feature started and I passed a couple cars and thought I was going pretty quick until Rich Vogler and Johnny Parsons went by me sideways while hazing their right rear tires and disappeared. Hmm, maybe I wasn’t going so fast.