Q: What a great race at Sebring. IMSA has come a long way. The only way it could have been better would have been if the winning Acura was the No. 60.
Rain Man, Cocoa Beach, FL
MP: The GTP paddock is less fun without Meyer Shank Racing.
Q: I have been an IMSA fan since going to my first Camel GT race at Sears Point Raceway in 1978. I really enjoy the races and the fan experience is fantastic; that’s why I keep going back. Sebring was the fourth endurance race I’ve been to in the last year, and I left slightly disappointed after seeing another race littered with multiple FCYs in the last hour. It has happened repeatedly at Daytona, Sebring and Road Atlanta during the last few years, so I believe it is now the norm.
I don’t like these late-race restarts because they devalue the teamwork, strategy and effort on display all day long when the outcome boils down to just 20 minutes at the end. Maybe I’m alone with this opinion, however I am curious if the teams, drivers, or journalists have similar views on the subject? And if so, any ideas that could mitigate this and give us several non-stop hours of green flag racing to the finish?
David Abel, Danville, CA
MP: It’s a great point. I have a similar reaction in the final minutes of important NBA games where, with a big win on the line, the intensity of play increases and the amount of fouls also increase and tend to ruin the flow of the game. Admittedly, I’m not sure how such a thing would be prevented since drivers are warned, penalized, and reprimanded for bad behavior, but rarely does it result in a widespread change in how they act when victory is in sight. Unless IMSA decides to start disqualifying cars on the spot — like a referee throwing a player out of the game — to set the tone early or halfway through its endurance races, I’m at a loss for how it might get its drivers to ignore the devil on one shoulder and embrace the angel on the other.
Q: It’s the Thermal Challenge this upcoming weekend, then a month break. I hate these month breaks, I wish they had something in-between like an indoor kart race similar to the Elf Master Kart class that F1 did in the 1990s — everyone has the same kart and let them rip.
Have it in Indianapolis at the Fieldhouse — indoors, plenty of room, seating, and most teams are based there. Invite the feeder series, make it a fun time for the drivers, make it a norm in between big gaps or offseason. It might not bring a big crowd, but at least something is going on and it would be fun
Paul H., Westlake, OH
MP: We do have the Indy Open Test from April 10-11, but I hear you. It’s not like the big void in the schedule is new; Penske Entertainment has known about it forever since it’s the entity that created the calendar. Thermal takes a six-week gap in racing and, as you noted, cuts it to four weeks, but yes, you do wonder what could be conjured up during that one-month window of relative inactivity to avoid such a big early season momentum stall.
Q: A recent trip through Texas got me thinking about the CART downtown Houston Grand Prix held in the late ’90s. Crazy to think CART was big enough back then to close the downtown area of the nation’s fourth-largest city for an IndyCar race! What are your memories of the event? And do you think IndyCar will ever return to Houston?
JC, IL
MP: Great city, track, and cars! Team KOOL Green teammate Dario Franchitti and Paul Tracy getting into each other is my most lasting memory, along with the qualifying performances with the big Honda motors and those Velcro Firestones around the little point-and-squirt layout; Houston was something to behold. The second iteration around the old Astrodome/Texans stadium was one I also enjoyed, but it was wider in many areas and lacked that street fighter feeling the first layout had.
If someone in Houston wants to pay IndyCar a lot of money to return, I’m sure it will happen.
Q: After watching the F1 race live and IndyCar on-demand/replay on Peacock, I think that was an all-time “I need a mulligan” weekend for TV directors.
During the F1 race it felt like every pass was shown with replay instead of live, and they didn’t show Danny Ric having a 40 second pit stop.
The IndyCar race telecast deciding to interview Bon Jovi (who is the “Livin’ on a prayer” guy, for people under 35) on lap eight instead of commenting on the race was also very weird.
The commercials on the Peacock replay clearly weren’t in sync with where the commercial breaks were during the broadcast. Announcers were being cut off mid-sentence and when the commercial was done the announcer would be midway through a different sentence
Is this something the series talk to their broadcast partners about, and can somebody tell me it will get better?
Will, Indy
MP: It’s not something I hear about on a frequent basis, Will, so I’d lean towards giving them that mulligan. Let us know if the same thing happens during the $1 Million Challenge broadcast on NBC.
Q: Huge IndyCar fan for more than 40 years. Lots of optimism from fans around the future of IndyCar. However, in the last 60 days,
1) Honda threatens to leave;
2) Some team owners become upset with the sport’s direction; leading to subsequent impromptu meetings;
3) Nashville’s change of location after the big promotion of a downtown event;
4) Thermal Club ticket prices
I’m optimistic and believe the series has a lot of upside, but I don’t remember this much drama in the opening few weeks of a year. You have been around a long time and have a good sense of what’s really going on. Are topics such as the above “normal” and we just don’t hear about them, or are we in a world where these concerns are more public now, or are there a lot of owners who are anxious about the future?
Tom Miller, Greencastle, IN
MP: Roger Penske is one of the world’s best in many areas, including auto sales, race team creation and management, and property management and development as we’ve seen with IMS. I don’t know if history will also include “leader of a beloved racing series” among his supreme talents. There’s still time for that to change, of course, and almost everyone in the paddock hopes he’ll do meaningful things to move the series forward.
The team owners who self-organized did so after waiting four years for Penske Entertainment to turbocharge the series’ popularity and prosperity. And yes, without question, COVID took the first two years of his series’ ownership to the brink, and those owners gave him a pass, as they should have. But the COVID pass expired, at least in my conversations with those owners, about halfway through 2022 and I don’t recall hearing it mentioned in 2023 as an excuse for the series’ stagnation.
So with the issues you’ve mentioned, and others, like not going hybrid as planned, the video game vendor everyone told Penske to avoid, which failed as they were expected to, plus $2000 tickets for a non-points race, and some other things I’m likely forgetting, you can see how team owners would lose patience and lose their willingness to sit back and hope Penske Entertainment does as it was expected to do when it bought the series.
Throw in the big spike in costs to go hybrid, and yeah, there’s some serious concern in the paddock — and with some owners more than others — about whether their favorite series is headed for better days or steaming towards an iceberg.
The dysfunction I recall from the CART/IRL days was mostly of the made-up variety, more squabbling over control than centered on grand failings by CART.