Q: It’s such a shame that American fans of the highest level of North American sports car racing are treated to commercial-free coverage for the first seven hours of one of the biggest sports car races in the world, only to be subjected to the total shift in coverage once it moves to network television.
Between the non-stop commercials, cutaways to random interviews, pointless vignettes, or some other promotional segment (all under green flag conditions, mind you), it seems like we get about 15 minutes of actual racing footage for every hour of coverage. Then you throw in the mind numbingly bureaucratic system that is the IMSA yellow flag procedures… it’s just so difficult to watch.
American motorsports fans just deserve so much better.
Brent
MP: Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Brent.
Q: In terms of the weather in Qatar, it seemed to be a wrong place/wrong time situation. I don’t recall an IndyCar race where so many had physical trouble with the heat, other than in 1953 where 10 starting drivers needed relief and Carl Scarborough died from heat exhaustion. Do any other races come to mind that were this bad?
Don Hopings, Cathedral City, CA
MP: Some might have been close in recent years, but not to the point of extremes where a life was lost. The Cleveland Champ Car race in 2004 was just brutal, as I recall, where the wealthiest people on the property must have been the ice vendors; I had my World Challenge GT crew working 30-minute shifts so half of them were in the transporter where the air conditioning was cranked to the max.
We also had a test day at Fontana in 2012 or 2013 where the same kind of situation damn near melted everyone; it was something like 100-105F from the morning onward. And then there was a mix of high heat and crazy humidity at Houston in 2013 or 2014 where it was pure misery for all involved. Iowa in 2022 was the last the-sun-is-trying-to-murder-us IndyCar event that comes to mind. I believe I drank almost two gallons of water per day during the HyVee doubleheader.
Q: Wondering if any of these scenarios are behind the Andretti/Grosjean separation: 1) Andretti got Grosjean to sign a deal to hedge bets that he would sign elsewhere like Palou, even if they did not intend to keep him under a contract with only one party’s signature. They could immediately sign it and then sue for damages if he signed elsewhere. 2) AA signs him intending to keep him, then learns it’s losing DHL. They then don’t sign his deal and walk away. 3) AA signs Grosjean then has immediate second thoughts due to his lousy mid-season performance.
Interested to see how this plays out.
Bill, Fresno, CA
MP: The first season of collaboration between Andretti and Grosjean was mostly an unhappy one, so when things made a big turnaround to open last season, there was a genuinely positive feeling throughout the team and the No. 28 Honda entry. It’s due to the strong and warm start to 2023 that both sides decided they wanted to do an extension to keep working beyond the end of Romain’s 2022-2023 contract. Then the poop hit the fan in May and kept hitting it in June, and your third scenario, which we’ve written about many times, kicked the extension from sixth gear into neutral, and it was never re-engaged.
Q: What’s the deal with Andretti and his LMP3 program? One race they are there and the next one they are not. I’m sure it can’t be funding?
Mel, Green Valley, AZ
MP: It’s Jarett Andretti’s program, run by his uncle, more than it being an Andretti Global program in and of itself. Jarrett added an Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 to the program this year, so the LMP3 car was put to use in the four endurance events and the GTD Aston was pressed into service at three standard-length rounds.
Q: Could you give me the “Cliffsnotes” on Formula Fords? I saw them mentioned last week in the Mailbag, and Googled some images of them. Do they competitively race anymore? Were/are they high speed? Is there any downforce on them? To me they look very dangerous. I love going to IndyCar at Road America and geeking out at the beauty of the Vintage Indy cars. Are FFs similar in speed to older Indy cars, and just lack the downforce? Sorry if this is a stupid question.
Chad Brueggeman
MP: Of course! For three decades, Formula Fords were the global standard as the first step on the junior open-wheel ladder. They are/were powered by 1.6-liter four-cylinder Ford engines, which were readily found in many of Ford’s entry-level road cars, and made about 110hp. Tons of race car constructors — big and small — built FFs which had tubeframe chassis and fairly open rules on shapes and sizes and aerodynamics. As long as it had a 1.6L Ford “Kent” engine and complied with the formula’s basic requirements, it was good; the four-speed Hewland Mk. 9 gearbox, crafted from a VW Bug transmission case that was rotated 180 degrees, was the standard unit.
Wings and ground effects were illegal, so you had little cigar-shaped FFs that had good but not overwhelming grip from their tires, and at something close to 1000 pounds, the power-to-weight ratio was nice. FFs are all about the driver, not the car’s extreme performance or technology attributes, so the emphasis was on the driving.
Countless F1 and IndyCar champions got their starts in FFs, where learning racecraft and the basics of chassis tuning were a big part of the education. They’d do 120-130mph at a lot of tracks, and yes, there’s a smaller subset of FF racing here today with modern cars; many have converted to Honda power because there aren’t many Kents left in junkyards to draw from. England and Australia are the two biggest places where FF racing takes place today.