Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will appear the following week.
Q: I am amazed at the continued backup of cars trying to be the last car in line for the final run of qualifying. A simple solution is to use the oval qualifying format on street circuits and the shorter distance road courses. No draw for the qualifying order; last placed car in the standings goes first. Leave the pits, and first time by you’re green. One lap or two laps, as decided by the series, and positions determined by fastest lap or average of the two. The argument would be the air time, however with the current format I don’t envision that much of a difference in time. Crazy idea, or not?
Susan Bournoville
MARSHALL PRUETT: I have great memories of being a young racecar mechanic and sneaking away to watch IMSA GTP qualifying (when the various cars we ran were in the support series) where single-car runs were done. Granted, we’re talking about 10-15 cars, at most, rather than 27, but it made for spectacular theater once the better cars and drivers were on deck to do their single warmup laps and clock their best one-lap runs.
The year 1990 comes to mind as one where the single-car routine was particularly glorious. Future Andrea Moda F1 driver Perry McCarthy, also the future Stig, threw his privateer Spice-Chevy on the pole at Sears Point, breaking the lap record as well, against the factory Nissans and Jaguars and Toyotas and the rest. It created one of the biggest cheers across the track that I’ve ever heard. ‘Pel,’ the giant killer.
One all-out lap, driver by driver, no excuses for traffic or insufficient rubber being put down at the time of whoever’s run. I’m all for giving it a try, Susan.
Since most everything about how race weekends are run is made up, I’d love to see it used to start the season at St. Petersburg. Maybe it’s street race thing, only. Short tracks, quick laps, and if you send the second qualifier out 25 percent of the way through the first driver’s flying lap, you can cut down on wasted time and have each warmup lap mostly done and have the first driver pit at the end of their flying lap — using the alternate start/finish line prior to the final corner — to clear the track for the second driver, and so on. That would tighten up the duration, give commentators enough time to opine about the run that just ended and move into the new run.
Only thing I haven’t figured out is the qualifying order. We could go off of championship points or the results of the first practice session, or a blind draw. What I wouldn’t want is one where we start with the slowest and work down to the fastest because, no disrespect to the slower teams and drivers, but the bottom half of the field is rarely responsible for excitement in qualifying. Shake the order up, and then people would have a reason to watch the entire thing instead of waiting until the top half runs.
Q: I have two quick questions for you, which may or may not have been answered by you before. If they were, I must have missed them. Why don’t IndyCars have power steering? To make them harder to drive or because it may be too complicated to add power steering, or something else?
Second, I’ve noticed a little shark fin on the top of the right sidepods of the cars. Is that covering up some type of radiator temperature sensor, or something else? I need to know, and haven’t been able to find out in my internet searches.
Snappy Gary, Mondovi, WI
MP: Unless it was a really long time ago when the photos and videos were in black and white, I can’t think of power steering being used in my lifetime in IndyCar. It’s just not a thing here. Plus, the current chassis, the 13-year-old Dallara DW12, was never designed to carry power steering, and doing a bolt-on retrofit isn’t an option. If the series and its drivers want power steering in the next car, I’m sure it will happen. But, culturally, having to fight through downforce and high Gs to turn the car is a decades-old norm in IndyCar.
Q: There’s been some rumors floating about Andretti possibly switching to Chevy power as soon as 2025. Is there any substance to these rumors? IndyCar teams have tended to have partnerships with different auto makers across different racing categories, however wouldn’t it make sense for Andretti to be seeking to be allied with GM across all its racing ventures?
Fabian Blåder
MP: Indeed. This has been an expectation since we told folks Andretti was moving from Acura to GM/Cadillac in IMSA next year, which is the second GM alignment after its desired F1 program. And the rumor of completing the trifecta with a Honda-to-Chevy IndyCar switch has been a popular one of late.
I asked Andretti COO Rob Edwards about it last week, and he said no, there are no plans to leave Honda. Unconfirmed, but it’s believed Andretti’s Honda contract runs through 2025, so provided nothing changes, the team and manufacturer have one more year together before a formal decision is made on what happens next.
On the supply side in 2025, Chevy’s been telling interested parties that it’s full after adding two new cars from PREMA, so tacking three more from Andretti on top of the pile seems like math that ain’t mathing. But what this looks like in 2026 could be altogether different.
Q: While racing at the Brickyard 400 was better than I expected, I was not surprised to see so many fans disguised as empty seats. It had to be embarrassing for NASCAR. After the novelty of NASCAR racing at IMS wore off, the fans have stayed away in droves. Why does NASCAR keep going back?
As for IndyCar at Toronto, give us all a break. As a lifelong IndyCar fan – I’m 75 – I understand the marketing allure of street tracks. However, Toronto is pathetic. It’s a Mickey Mouse track where passing is rare and too many yellows are inevitable. The races there do the overall appeal of IndyCar a disservice.
Bob Isabella, Mentor, OH
MP: Agree to disagree. Toronto tends to present a lot passing and some crashes, which keeps it from being a snoozefest. We had both.