Q: I used to lament the early fall end to the IndyCar season but this year I added an NHRA event at the end of September — the St. Louis Midwest Nationals — to my race attendance calendar. That gave me a smaller NHRA event and NASCAR in June, Nashville IndyCar in August, and NHRA in late September. I look forward to next year’s live events already!
Ricky Krisle
MP: IMSA kicks the party off in January at Daytona, then we have IndyCar at St. Pete, and the party will keep rolling.
Q: I can’t believe Thermal Club said “and it includes lunch for three days” to help justify their $2000 GA ticket. Someone has a sense of humor, or more likely, no idea what they are saying. I am surprised they didn’t say “they can eat cake, too.”
Bill Cantwell
MP: I mean, if you paid for the equivalent of a Super Bowl ticket to watch an IndyCar test in the middle of nowhere for two days, and were treated to a non-points all-star race on the third day, and it didn’t include lunch, you’d be pissed, right? I’m mainly curious as to why the $2,000 doesn’t come with breakfast, too.
Q: I completely concur with you that Pipo Derani ran Felipe Albuquerque wide at Petit Le Mans. On the other, I think Ricky Taylor dive-bombed the 31 few years back and put both of them out of contention at Turn 6. Running your competitors wide seems to be the norm these days. You see it every weekend. I hope IMSA and IndyCar sits the drivers down before the season starts and cracks everybody across the knuckles with a ruler.
After an impeccable drive at Petit, Colin Braun should be on every team’s radar. Has he found a home yet?
Jonathan and Cleide Morris, Ventura, CA
MP: I understand Colin does have a new home for next year, which is great news, but I haven’t yet heard where. Yeah, if you’re keeping score, the 10 and the 31 have a troubled history, but do we judge bad behavior today through the lens of all the previous acts, or do we call it as it happens without the baggage? If it’s with baggage, the 31 will have a target on it at the Rolex 24 At Daytona and the 10 will have a green light to pitch it into a wall at 150mph or more. And that’s not racing; that’s motorized vendettas.
Q: I’ll pass on even attempting to try to get a ticket for Thermal. There is no way I’d ever pay the asking price of $2k per person for any race. This has all the appearances of a money grab.
Warbird Willie
MP: I can tell you this: Every IndyCar driver should wait at the specific parking lot the track has set aside for ticket buyers and shake their hands, because there’s no doubt about whether those are IndyCar most committed fans. Granted, there might be more IndyCar drivers than fans in that parking lot, but hey, they deserve all of our respect.
Q: I hate track limits. Can you explain the reason for them on a track like COTA? Also, why do they have penalized cars starting from the pit lane and not the back of the grid? I understand they are penalized, but starting from the pit lane penalizes the fans, too.
Steve Coe, Vancouver, WA
CHRIS MEDLAND: So, at COTA there are definitely corners where running wide would be quicker. The speed you could take through Turn 11 or Turn 12 and use the run-off would be a big help, and then the last two corners would be the same.
The problem is, the track is designed around the layout it has and the run-off areas and angles of barriers, etc., are part of the FIA homologation process to ensure it is safe. If you just said “no track limits, go for it” then certain places would have cars running at speeds and angles that are highly dangerous if it went wrong.
Plus, as a track that also has hosted MotoGP and NASCAR, there are very different types of racing that need to be catered for, so curbs or run-offs can’t always be made to specifically penalizing in an F1 car. I think the FIA just about found the right compromise in Austin by widening the white line slightly in a few places, although they weren’t always so hot on drivers cutting certain corners.
As for the pit lane start, it’s because you’re not racing the same car you qualified, so you’re essentially excluded from qualifying. Otherwise teams would all run very different cars in qualifying, change loads of things for the race to be better in race trim, and all line up in the same order they qualified in if you don’t mandate a pit lane start. That might sound like it’s fine, but it would be hugely expensive — that’s the main reason we have parc ferme in the regulations. Plus, if a couple didn’t make changes then you get a totally different grid and it becomes confusing for fans, and qualifying becomes almost redundant.
Q: Do you know if there’s a chance of the NASCAR playoff format being changed in 2025 when new TV deal comes? Although I’m a forever NASCAR fan, I have some issues with the current format — the biggest one is the fact that Championship 4 is just one race, which is too small of a sample size. If they want to have elimination, why not at least extend the playoffs to 12 races and making Champ 4 a three-race round? Or split 10-race playoffs into two halves: Semi-Finals and Finals? In such a case we’d still have elimination, and it’d be hard for one driver to pull away, but at least we’d be more assured that the right driver won the championship
Szymon Kunda
KELLY CRANDALL: No, I don’t believe NASCAR is looking to change the format of the playoffs. There has been no indication they feel something needs changing. NASCAR has been very happy with the winner-take-all format and how drivers and teams need to survive three race rounds. When the format was introduced in 2014, it was about making every race matter and keeping people interested in watching late in the season. It has raised the tension and stress level in drivers, who admit that it’s a system that takes years off their life. And while there is always going to be fantasy booking of how the postseason should break down, as you also suggested, for now, it seems to be full steam ahead the way that it is.
THE FINAL WORD
From Robin Miller’s Mailbag, October 29, 2013
Q: Watching CART on YouTube. Bigger, faster, better, like the Six Million Dollar Man. I’ll admit I haven’t been to an IndyCar race, but why should I go? Spending $80 to watch Indy Lights? The drivers are talented, but has it become just a job? Certainly for Montoya, NASCAR was just a job. Will he wake up in an open-wheel? I have my doubts.
There have been some good races but only good compared to what we’ve been inflicted with. While I’m ranting, IndyCar’s best ratings came with Paul Page. Get a clue.
Gene King
ROBIN MILLER: I’ll admit the cars and engines don’t take my breath away anymore but the racing has been so damn competitive it doesn’t bother me that much. But you speak for a lot of people who write in or stop me in the pits. Montoya will be very interesting to watch in 2014. No offense to Paul, but I think Nigel Mansell, Emmo, Mario, P.T., Rahal, Mikey and Little Al had a lot to do with CART’s ratings in the ’90s.