Q: I just read the first question and answer in the Mailbag last week and that sparked other questions…
With Rick Ware Racing supplying funding to the second Coyne car, was that seen as a way for RWR to get a foot in the door to IndyCar? With Dale now 70 years old and past retirement age for most of us, is he looking at the RWR tie up as a way to pass on/sell the team to a new entrant down the road?
This seems like a transitional year for DCR, where they really just took money for seats over having one really good driver in the first car and a young driver in the second car. It’s a long way from Malukas and Sato… Ferrucci and Palou… Bourdais and various…
Dave, King of Prussia
MP: Dale’s had quite a few co-entrants in recent years, including Vasser Sullivan, Kazumichi Goh and Henry Malukas, who underwrote the No. 18 car from 2022-23. Minus HMD, and in the absence of a replacement and a full-funded new driver, Dale’s had to, as you note, take the best he could find. Same with the second car, the No. 51, which has RWR’s assistance. But that still leaves Dale covering at least half of the combined operating costs.
I don’t foresee Dale selling. He’s extremely successful outside of racing, doesn’t need to sell the team, and racing is the passion of his life. Maybe that will change, but I hope it doesn’t. He’s a reminder of how things used to work in IndyCar.
Q: I understand race car weight limits, but what is the purpose of weighing the drivers? Are they included with car weight? Wouldn’t a lighter, smaller driver have a distinct advantage?
Bob Traina, St. Louis, MO
MP: Yes, which is why they weigh the drivers. In IndyCar, it’s informally called the Danica Patrick Rule. She is/was so much smaller and lighter than her rivals that yes, her absence of weight was a benefit. And because of that inherent advantage of a 5-foot-2 Danica compared to 6-foot-4 Justin Wilson, teams complained enough and IndyCar reacted by introducing driver equivalency ballast. That way, in basic terms, a 100-pound driver wouldn’t have an advantage over a bigger driver.
The equivalency system requires almost every car to ballast up to match the bigger drivers, which sets the paddock-wide standard at 185 lbs. For drivers over 185, there’s an exception where an extra 10 lbs can be removed, but beyond that, drivers over 195 lbs just have to deal with the penalty of carrying more weight around than the rest.
So, within 15 minutes of the end of the first practice session at every event, drivers must arrive and be weighed at the technical inspection trailer, and that weight is recorded by the series and used as the official weight for the event. If a driver weighs in at 150 lbs, their team needs to add 35 lbs of equivalency ballast, and so on. They might be 148 or 153 at the next race, so the number gets adjusted. That number is then used by IndyCar as the weight to factor in after draining the fuel tank and removing the drink bottle in order to get the minimum weight.
Q: First off, I just want to say that there’s some nuance to the question that your reader asked about whether the EM boards have replaced the flaggers. I am one of the Toronto corner workers and have worked Corner 1 prior to the light panels being implemented.
While you are correct that the flags are still waved, there are no longer the mirror stations on the opposite side of the track that there used to be prior to those boards. Also, many of the marshal stations where the flags are displayed have been moved to the light location, which is much further up the track than the flag locations used to be. I would say that yes, many of the flaggers have in fact been replaced by the lights.
If you look back to previous races back 2016-18, you’ll note that the flaggers at Corner 1 used to be deep in the corner at drivers left, just before the break where they can take the escape road. In addition, we sometimes even had a mirror flag driver’s right just before the turn-in point, exactly where they are looking as they make the corner.
Formula 1 and other series that use lights do not replace the flag stations with the lights. They use the lights to augment the existing flag stations. I have worked Montreal many times and it is common for the light to be controlled by the marshal at the flag station, but for the panel itself to be far upstream in a good position for earlier warning, to supplement the flags closer to the corner and in the best spot for marshals to see the incident.
In my opinion the decision by IndyCar to eliminate all mirror flags and place all flaggers at or near the light panel vastly defeats the purpose of using lights. It is my hope that after this incident they will look at the amount of time it takes to get from where the light panel and flags now are, to where the incidents are more commonly found (in this instance it takes almost four seconds to get from where the local yellow is and where O’Ward was sitting, meaning even if the light came on instantly, and even if they threw a full course, everyone in the pack down to Grosjean still wouldn’t have seen it).
The flag was out in under two seconds from when Pato spun, but the idea it took five or more is because it’s another almost four seconds for them to arrive past the light/flag.
We still have the communicator and light operator down where they used to be at Turn 1. In my opinion, they should keep the flaggers in place where they were so that more drivers receive warning. That extra one to two seconds makes a huge difference. Leave the light upstream, but keep the flaggers down at the corner.
They should look at how the FIA and F1 uses lights and flags in different locations, and see how that can work. It does add some complexity when you have an incident between a panel and the flags that requires showing a different signal on the light than at the station, but it’s something they prime us for at F1 and we manage well.
Thanks for the opportunity to make this point.
Marshall T, Toronto
MP: Thanks for the great insights, Marshall. Unless we’re going to a new road or street course, we know the two or three main problem areas everywhere we go. Apportioning more flaggers and stations entering those two or three corners, extra lights, and an extra person from race control at Turn 1, 3, and 8 at Toronto each year (and St. Pete, and so on) to be right there and trigger advance-warning flag waving and “HOLY CRAP SLOW DOWN” lights right there from those spots seems like a sharp adjustment to make, especially when we’re talking about blind corners.