Q: Wow, all the money that RLL put into the 500… what happened? Isn’t time for Graham to void his contract? Clearly he won’t win again with his father’s team. Also ,maybe next year don’t have a fourth car and focus on the current teams.
David
MP: I hear you, but this is the same car and crew that he’s been with all season, so adding a fourth car for Takuma Sato isn’t something that would make his mechanics or engineers forget how to do their jobs. If RLL was a smaller, less capable team, I’d agree, but this is a solid program that definitely made improvements after a disastrous 2023 Indy 500, but it wasn’t team-wide.
He can win again with RLL, but with their technical director leaving, plus Eddie Jones looking to step back again — which is well-deserved — and some young/new/inexperienced engineering talent to develop, the lead time to get to a highly competitive place at every round across all three cars is probably going to be longer than anyone wants. The combo of Christian Lundgaard and race engineer Ben Siegel has been a revelation for RLL, but that’s it.
Q: My question is about Dale Coyne. The team has had poor performance this season so far and in Indianapolis. It also haven’t finalized its driver lineups although the season has started. I fear it could be the last season for Coyne. With so many teams wanted to enter IndyCar I could imagine Coyne selling the team to HMD, for example. Is it possible we will lose Coyne, the last team that was in Champ Car when the series withdrew?
Frank Lehmann, Germany
MP: Dale Coyne wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he didn’t own and run an IndyCar team, and that’s said as a compliment. This is his passion. He and his wife are lifers. They’ve made some noticeable investments on the personnel side and just need to get back to basics with Jack Harvey and Colin Braun and Nolan Siegel after Indy.
If there’s one big takeaway for the team after their speed struggles this month, it’s that showing up at Indy with cars that aren’t fully optimized for aerodynamic and mechanical drag reduction is no longer an option. It costs a ton to do, but their rivals — all bigger and/or wealthier — have taken the speedway chassis optimization game to such a high level, there’s no way to avoid being at the bottom of the speed charts in qualifying if your cars aren’t gliding down the straights with no aero or mechanical limitations.
Q: Saturday was a great day of qualifying at Indy. Rinus VeeKay was the story of the day and the coverage on Peacock was excellent. The only failure was Alex Palou not getting a chance to bump his way back into the Fast 12. Which brings me to the rules change that is needed.
Saturday is the day we want to watch the fast drivers battle to make the Fats 12. Sunday is the day we get to watch the slow drivers try and make the show. Watching Graham Rahal and others fail over and over was the only downside to an otherwise great day.
Option 1: In the last hour of qualifying, all cars get a maximum of one entry into Lane 1. Option 2: Set the field of 30 before the final hour and leave the last hour for the cars in the show to duke it out. Please pass this along to IndyCar.
Ryan Yelles
MP: Interesting ideas, Ryan. I miss the way it was previously done where the entire field had however many days of qualifying to try and make it into the show. Instead of funneling everything into pure joy (Fast Six) or pure misery (LCQ), you had an unscripted affair where teams and drivers with different agendas — some trying to go for pole and others trying to get in — that played out. The lack of structure offered more mystery and presented the potential for surprises with every run.
With the locked down format we have now, there’s no question of who’s going to be on pole — one of six pre-defined drivers — and no question of who will go home if there’s more than 33 entries and the LCQ drivers are identified, which feels a bit anticlimactic to me. You’d naturally get pole attempts and bumping attempts in the last hour, which is why I don’t see the need for special Fast Six and LCQ sessions.
Q: I write this on Sunday morning. After last year’s qualifying debacle from the Rahal team, all we heard about was focus on Indy, focus on Indy, yet here we are again. Rahal cars are 28, 30 and not qualified with Graham. But wait, the team’s one-off driver, Sato, qualified ninth. Must not be the team, must not be the cars, so what is the problem? While Sato was doing a second attempt, the announcers mentioned that Sato has been working on qualifying setup while the rest of the team was working on race setup. What? After the “focus on Indy” mantra, wouldn’t you think they would make sure the cars could qualify well before worrying about the race?
Mark, San Diego, CA
MP: You would, and while the team found improvements during the offseason to make their cars faster, it still takes people to make the right decisions on how to approach the event and where to place their emphasis during each practice session, and for the drivers and engineers to make the right setup calls. Taku and Eddie Jones, who have a long and successful history, did what they’ve shown they can do. Lundgaard, who is by no means an oval master, impressed me every day, and Pietro Fittipaldi, who is working with a new engineer, hasn’t been a rocket for most of the season, so his struggles at Indy are part of a bigger story. And we’ve covered off Graham, so altogether, we have about five different things combining to make life harder for RLL than it should be.
Q: Is it going to be a Chevy party on race day at the Indy 500? Sure is looking like it. Honda have anything for them?
Jeff, State College, PA
MP: The race is run at low turbo boost, and it’s here where Honda has a chance. I wouldn’t say it’s a great chance, but the big disparity we saw was at high qualifying boost. We’ve seen a lot of lifting in the corners in pack running, and Honda has always been really good on the fuel economy side, so going longer between pit stops and having more opportunities to play with race strategy options could be the lone area where the Hondas can tip the balance in their favor. But that’s a lot of ifs and maybes.