Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll answer as many as we can. Published questions may be edited for length and clarity. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will appear the following week.
Q: Sorry if you covered this before. Michael Andretti said that IndyCar should adopt same engine package that IMSA uses, because costs would be low and you would get more manufacturers. Is this possible? Do you agree with him?
David Tucker
MARSHALL PRUETT: We only touch on it once every three or four Mailbags, so let’s give it another rundown.
IndyCar team owners and drivers alike are really unhappy with how heavy the Dallara DW12 has become; it will reach a modern high when the series goes hybrid. And that comes with a tiny, short, narrow, and comparatively light 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 engine formula. A big component of what makes an IndyCar go as fast as it does is the absence of weight compared to a sports car or stock car.
Most of the GTP engines and pretty much all of the GT3 engines are much bigger, heavier, taller, wider, or longer, if not all five of those things at once. So if lightness is what makes an IndyCar perform like it does, the thing that will kill its performance is making it really heavy. The only workaround is to add a bunch of extra horsepower to try and offset the extra weight, but there’s a tipping point where only so much power can be added to mask that weight.
The DW12 was never designed to carry anything other than that tiny 2.2-liter motor, and the rest of the car is built around it. To consider using GTP/GT3 engines, an all-new car would be required that can accept all the different shapes and sizes. That can be done. But then we come back to the current car, with the tiny motor, becoming super-heavy when it gets all of the hybrid gear installed.
Bolting in a GTP or GT3 motor would take the weight into uncharted territory, which would only worsen the problem. More weight means a slower car, and one that hates to stop and turn.
So, yes, you could pull those IMSA motors over to IndyCar, but unless you design a new chassis that’s hundreds of pounds lighter than the DW12, and that’s not realistic, it’s hard to figure out how the insanely heavy cars would be anything other than a competitive embarrassment.
At that point, it would be easier to buy GTP cars, cut the fenders off, and call them IndyCars.
Q: There was a good demonstration by NBC reporters during the St. Petersburg race on the high amount of strength required to turn the steering wheel on an IndyCar. This is just another impediment in attracting women drivers to the series. It also is a source of wrist and hand injuries to male drivers as well. Power steering has been on Formula 1 cars for a while. How much would it cost to implement power steering for IndyCar? Safety has always been at the forefront of IndyCar. It would seem only natural that this change would fit right into this philosophy.
Dave
MP: It’s been spoken about for 12 years, and if it were easy, it would have been done already. If it’s going to happen, it would been to be designed into a new tub, and that’s a few years away, at minimum. Simona De Silvestro drove the DW12 at a higher level of downforce than we have now, and she put on the muscle needed to perform with the best in the series.
Q: Racing is back at last. Don’t panic people, it will get better. Just blame Josef Newgarden for being too good!
Recently, the Mailbag was full of grief about the situation in Nashville. I’m just glad the decisions have been taken so early — usually IndyCar is scrambling around with only a few weeks’ warning. But with regards to the notion of sponsorship packages and events planned around the city, I have an idea. Yes, it would cost money and would be a logistical nuisance for the teams, but here’s how Penske Entertainment could redeem themselves.
The World Rally Championship holds an opening ceremony in each Rally’s host city the night before competition starts where the crews are introduced — there are fireworks, a stage show, many even have the cars run a short spectator stage on the streets. Therefore, despite the rest of the action happening away in the surrounding area, it is still that city’s event.
So, how’s this? Firstly, over the summer, fill the city of Nashville with show cars, CART, IRL and IndyCar, and all in their proper old colors. Place them in shopping malls, libraries, schools, wherever to celebrate our sport.
Then, the night before qualifying, have the cars and drivers assemble in Nashville for a full-on event at the Music City Center and Walk of Fame Park. Make a huge fuss — this is supposed to be North America’s premier racing series and the crowning of our new champion. Give the sponsors their big event on Broadway (if only Travis Kelce’s girlfriend hadn’t fallen out with her old record label) with driver introductions and interviews. Just imagine the response for Josef, let alone having all the cars lined up on the street.
Then, with a proper call to start engines, have the field drive around the city and then down to the speedway, under the escort of the pace car, safety crews, local police, the most flashing lights seen in the evening since The Blues Brothers dashed back to Chicago! How cool would it look seeing the cars rumbling through the suburbs and along the Interstate? Have Davey Hamilton and others carry some VIPs in the two-seaters as well. A proper parade and then entry of the gladiators at the track before putting the cars to bed and ready for qualifying in the morning. Events at the track itself over the weekend? Well Iowa has set the benchmark for that, but make sure the city of Nashville still feels part of the occasion.
Or am I being silly again? By the way, Robin was wrong in 2014. Eddie Cheever’s Dallara was not a toilet and is still one of my favorite IndyCars of that era, along with the Team Menard eyeball scorchers and the Al Unser Jr, Robby Gordon, Gil de Ferran Valvoline cars.
Peter Kerr, Hamilton, Scotland
MP: You had me all the way up to Cheever’s car. Everything else? Brilliant. Only one snag: It would cost a lot of money, and that’s not an area where Penske Entertainment has embraced with the series.