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: New cars, new engines, new teams, new venues, incredible fan access, etc… this year’s IMSA season was spectacular! Peacock offers coverage that is so far beyond what we ever experienced, for a very reasonable price.
F1 TV app is the best ever. Hinch made it even better. No complaints from me. OK, maybe one. A certain TV personality saying the car did a “full 360.” Is that where the nose of the car spins around and the points in the same direction it started? Is there a partial 360?
DA, Chicago
MARSHALL PRUETT: That’s a good one. A partial 360 would be a 274 or whatever it ended up being. It’s right up there with ‘new track record’ (every record is new) and ‘front nose’ and ‘front splitter’ and ‘rear diffuser’ and ‘me personally.’ [ED: You forgot ‘most unique.’] As commentators, we do our best to avoid those ‘department of redundancy department’ idiocies while on the mic, but it’s hard to get through an entire broadcast without at least once being let loose.
Q: With respect to D. Mason of Crawfordsville last week, that is not the answer to how long and how many it took to lay the bricks. That is the information for moving the dirt to build the track and putting down the first surface, which broke up so badly they then had to use the bricks. I looked and looked and could not find the answer so maybe another reader can find out for us.
Tom, Waco
MP: The quest continues.
Q: I’m becoming more and more of a midget racing fan. What motors do they run in midgets? Displacement? Horsepower?
Pete Pfankuch, Wisconsin
MP: I’ve been to two midget races in my life, with the last being in 1998, so I’m the last one to ask. Here’s an interesting link I found.
Q: During one of your Week in IndyCar podcasts aired shortly after the Meyer Shank Rolex 24 tire-pressure cheating debacle came to light, you alluded to the possibility that IndyCar officials might be paying a lot of extra-laser-focused attention to Meyer Shank cars during pre- and post-race tech. To your knowledge, did this happen this past season?
Chris Pericak, Charlottesville, VA
MP: Not that I know of, but the team paid an ongoing price for the cheating in IMSA by being moved to end of the line to load-in, last to go through tech, extended inspections in tech, and so on.
Q: So last weekend while most were worried about the Vegas GP, I was actually worried about the Macau Grand Prix, which the FIA graciously streamed for free on its official YouTube channel (and can still be watched there). The race was run only for the second time with the current FIA F3 cars after being an F4 race for three years in a row due to the pandemic. And as I watched the event unfold, and awaited the end of the very long red flag, I was hit with a very strong realization; These cars are way too fast for this circuit.
The old pre-Formula Regional cars were already really pushing it, but the faster FIA F3 cars just go way over the line. So do I think Macau should remain F4? No, but it certainly should not be using the modern F3 machinery. A certain poorly-animated YouTuber once referred to Macau as “the most farcical grand prix,” and with these cars he is not wrong. The F4 prelim race (also viewable on YouTube) allowed a great direct comparison, with the F4 cars looking amazingly zippy despite being so much slower, and actually able to do some decent battling.
So should Macau have remained an F4 event? I don’t think so. I think Macau needs to drop down to running Formula Regional. They’re a sliver slower than the F3 classes they replaced, but they should be much more suited to the track than the current F3 cars, and should be able to battle nearly as well as F4.
Whatever class is chosen, the current batch of F3 cars needs to be permanently booted from the event.
And going from the realm of something necessary and actually possible, let’s go into the realm of unlikely but brilliant and sweeten the deal by making it an open event – any FR-legal car/engine combination can enter.
FormulaFox
MP: I share the same feeling about today’s GT3 cars racing there; the speeds and crashes are spectacular, but I wouldn’t want to see them traded for GT4 or TCR. It’s one of the few truly insane circuits left where seriously fast cars compete on a professional level. If the Isle of Man TT had a little brother, that’s Macau.
Q: Who from F2/European formulas are the leading candidates to race in IndyCar in 2024?
Ralph, Indianapolis
MP: Well, considering the only true vacancies belong to Dale Coyne, I’d suggest Enzo Fittipaldi is on his radar, having recently tested the younger brother of RLL’s Pietro Fittipaldi. Enzo is also known to have options to return to F2, so there’s that to consider. New F2 champ Theo Pourchaire has expressed interest in IndyCar, and I continue to hear 2022 F2 title winner Felipe Drugovich really wants to race in proper open-wheel cars. I’d also look to Florida’s Logan Sargeant, whose F1 career might be one-and-done with Williams, as someone whom Coyne would welcome.
CHRIS MEDLAND: There’s not a massive amount of obvious movement to this end this year, despite the lack of change in the F1 ranks that’s preventing any of the F2 guys from moving up. Theo Pourchaire could be an outside bet as the reigning champion as he can’t stay in F2, and Robert Shwartzman enjoyed his test but he’s very likely going to be racing a Hypercar for Ferrari in WEC next year.
Obviously Pietro Fittipaldi has already made the full-time switch and his younger brother Enzo tested recently so looks to be on the radar, plus I think Felipe Drugovich interests a few teams but doesn’t appear ready to give up on the European ladder and a potential F1 chance in future just yet.
I believe Logan Sargeant has also received some interest while his future remains unconfirmed, but the likelihood is he remains with Williams for 2024.
Q: As we unravel this Andretti Global/F1/greedy nonsense, I’m wondering if you can describe how the FIA, FOM, and F1 organizations all play into this? Who approves what? Who has final say? And anything else you’d care to add would be appreciated.
Mike Talarico, Charlotte, formerly Riverside, CA, home of no raceway.
CM: So, the FIA hands out the licenses to race and approves whether a team is competent enough in terms of their expertise, backing, resources etc. Essentially it judges the racing operation and it’s chance of actually being able to build a serious F1 car.
FOM (Formula One Management) is the commercial arm of F1, so the two are used interchangeably but mainly to differentiate from the FIA – they are the same thing. But FOM/F1 approves a commercial contract with any new team, in terms of the share of prize money they would get, how they would then receive all the logistics support from DHL to get their stuff to races and so on.
Technically you could race without a commercial contract, but then you’d not be earning tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of prize money, would really struggle to get everything to and from each race, and it wouldn’t be a viable project.
Because the FIA opens up the process and analyzes a team’s ability to enter, only approved potential entrants get passed to FOM/F1 for commercial talks, so in that sense the final call rests with FOM/F1.