Marshall Pruett’s Tech Mailbag for October 27 presented by Axial

Enter to Win an AX90035 SCX10™ 2012 Jeep® Wrangler Unlimited C/R Edition 1/10th Scale Electric 4WD – RTR.

So for $323k, a box of Indy Lights car parts and an engine shows up at you shop door. What are you looking at for the following costs?

Regarding testing, I feel like testing in the old car was to familiarize the driver with the car and tune it to their liking. With a new chassis teams will be developing the car as well. What are the limits on testing and is it team or driver limited? For example, can Andretti put RHR in the car for a few days to baseline shock packages and give their lights drivers an advantage?

Mike Smith

Hard to say what the final number will be until more teams get their cars. In general terms, and with wheels and a few other bits not included in the price, you can expect to tack on another $50-100K to have a completed car, I imagine.

The open-wheel era I grew up and worked in had either new cars or new development items to try almost every season, and even in the junior categories; young drivers had to learn more than how to turn the steering wheel and step on the pedals. Sadly, we've gotten away from that for the most part, but the need to develop the new Dallara IL15 Indy Lights car will breed better drivers than those who come along a few years from now and have fully sorted cars to step into. There's a reason so many of the older IndyCar drivers were effective right away when they came into the series, and it's because they were more complete. Most of today's Indy Lights stars step into IndyCar with gobs of driving talent, but need years of learning to master all of the setup options to develop a car to their liking.

I don't know exactly how many days the Lights series will allow for testing heading into next season, but I imagine it will be generous. I'd think any team that can put an IndyCar driver in their Lights car to help with R&D will do so – teams need to win to keep business moving.

I have recently started reading your column so please excuse me if these topics have been discussed.

With respect to costs, why will the governing bodies not allow "moveable aerodynamic devices"? As I go back to the days of Jim Hall and his marvelous Chaparrals, it seems to me that if you use moveable wings it would greatly reduce the costs involved in testing and the manufacturing of such complex front and rear wings and the changing of things for specific tracks. You would still be able to set the wing angles and the bravest and best would still keep the wings as flat as possible in the turns. The reason they were banned was they were too good, so why not use them today?

Also, with everyone complaining about the lack of "aero grip" when you get close to another car and all teams strive to find mechanical grip for such situations, why not go back to the big tires as they used in F1 before the ridiculous "grooved slicks" were mandated? I know, the aero guys cringe at the thought of wider tires but it sure seemed like people passed a lot more when they had the mechanical grip of those big tires. It was thrilling to see Nigel Mansell make those outside passes in that red Ferrari.

With respect to the proposed 18-inch tires in F1: I never thought too much about it but in almost all series of professional racing the closed-wheel cars use as small a sidewall as possible, sometimes it looks like black paint on a wheel. I realize the bigger sidewalls allow for taking some of the load off the suspension but are big sidewalls something that only open wheeled cars benefit from?

Tom in Waco

Well, F1 has its moveable DRS rear wing, and the DTM adopted DRS, too. Jim Hall was a genius, but you also had a lot of F1 teams experimenting with moveable rear wings at the same time and some scary failures put an end to the idea. I'm sure we'll see programmable, automated aero on future racing cars, but at the moment, fears of system failures at 230mph heading into Turn 1 at Indy would keep such systems from being introduced.

Wider tires, provided the compound is soft, would provide more mechanical grip, but not enough to overcome a big loss of downforce.

Bigger sidewalls obviously allow for more material to build strength, and you also see tall sidewalls in NASCAR, off-road racing, etc., where extreme forces are being fed into the tires.

Marshall, you may have done this before, but I figured I'm not the only curious one. Perhaps you can tell us more about yourself? How did you catch the racing bug, what's your educational background, who are some of the teams you have worked for, where did the photography come from and what keeps bringing you back to racing.

Matt Fraver, Columbus, OH

Hi Matt – no problem. My dad was a mechanic and shop owner here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and when he wasn't wrenching on European cars, he was dragging me and our family around the West Coast competing in amateur SCCA races. One of my first memories was of helping him to pick rocks off his tires in the upper paddock at Sears Point – by Turn 1 – when I was about three years old in 1974.

All I wanted to do in my teens was work on racecars, and got my introduction to the sport with a family friend who ran in the SCCA Pro Super Vee series, and I was hooked after that. Skipped my high school prom to go racing, and just about every other normal thing a teen would do in favor of going racing.

That turned into full-time jobs at a few Bay Area teams, and I worked my way up the open-wheel ladder as a mechanic and eventually as a data engineer and race engineer. I also spent a brief period in the IMSA GTP series. I was a lucky boy. At that time – the late 1980s through mid-'90s, engineering was still a trade that was either learned on the job or passed down. Today in road racing, it often involves a proper college education. From there, the Atlantic/Lights team I worked for moved up to the IRL, and I spent 1997-2001 working in the IRL, CART, and also moonlighted in Atlantic as a race (or data) engineer, or team manager, or something that combined a bunch of those roles. Those were also glory years – the Lights/CART side, in particular, and adding five Indy 500s to my resume was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

I usually worked for smaller teams and liked the multitasking that came with being a David among Goliaths. At almost 31, and after spending approximately half my life on the road, I "retired" at the end of the 2001 IRL season to try living a normal life with a 9-5 job. That lasted a few years before I got the itch, and I started doing a lot of driver coaching and running little sports car teams in endurance races, in the World Challenge series, engineered in Pro Mazda, and even ran an NHRA team for about a half season. I then ran my own endurance racing team on the West Coast, and while it was fun, at times, it was also more hassle than it was worth.

I'd always had a passion for photography, bought my first camera in 1986, and took it everywhere I went throughout my career. Just as guys would take a five-minute smoke break, I'd take a few minutes here or there to find a corner and take some shots if the workload wasn't pressing. On weekends where I wasn't working in open-wheel – an IMSA event, for example – I'd make the drive to shoot. On the writing front, I'd always had an interest, grew up worshipping Nigel Roebuck's weekly column and Formula 1 reports in Autosport, and other than a short race report in a 1994 issue of On Track, waited until my 9-5 days to try and break into my current field.

I was also going to college at the time – something my then-girlfriend inspired me to do – and really enjoyed the advanced English classes. By 2006, and after having my fill of 9-5 life, my girlfriend-turned-wife gave me the green light to start looking for ways to replace the engineering job I'd taken in Biotech with something on the writing/reporting side of motor racing.

An offer from SPEED.com to turn my unpaid World Challenge coverage into paid WC and ALMS reporting work the following year has led me to where I am today with RACER.

I have a tech question but first a comment: I have been very disappointed in the unified sports car series. I preferred Grand-Am over ALMS because although the cars were not technological marvels, the two classes worked well and were easy to follow. Now with four classes, there is no continuity to watching a race as the announcers try and keep us updated on four things at once. Seems like they should break them into two races; prototype/GTLM and challenge/GTD.

My tech question is how does the series expect to keep the P2 entries when on every start and restart, they get swallowed up by the Grand-Am cars. I understand (because we are told constantly) that tire temps are a problem with the P2 cars but on a rolling start that just can't be the whole story. Seems like it's just a matter of torque or horsepower or probably both. Couldn't there be some sort of rev limiter put on the Grand-Am cars until they get through the first turn? It's ridiculous to have the pole sitter be dropped to fourth or fifth before Turn 1.

Mark

I also feel, at times, that going to fewer classes would help the series to attract new fans, but then I'm reminded of how amazingly popular IMSA was in the 1980s, and it was comprised of four classes. The ALMS also dwarfed Grand-Am for popularity, and it had four classes, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the most important race in the world, has run with four classes for quite some time. If NFL fans can watch a game and pick up on all the complexities with passing, running, kicking, defense, and general strategy, I have to believe a racing fan can grasp four classes of cars competing at the same time. I could be wrong, but that's my guess.

We saw the start/restart issue reduced at COTA and Petit Le Mans when the Honda-powered P2s were given more power and weight. It helped to speed up the warming process for their tires, and the power also improved their torque and top speed figures. It wasn't an exact match for the DPs, but it was encouraging.

With IMSA opening up GTD for full-homologation GT3 cars in 2016, what does this mean for current teams? Particularly the GT Americas cars.

Might that class be worth ending PC for? Will the budgets be similar enough to be cost effective? It seems the slower speeds and ABS/TC are a better pairing for the gentlemen drivers, and a pro-am trophy within the Prototype class would pick up the rest of the slack and may encourage some European teams to come play as well.

Andrew in Baltimore

Hi Andrew – you sent this in before the GTD-teams-to-Pirelli-World-Challenge love affair kicked off, just so everyone knows. If I had the money, and could still fit, I'd want to drive a prototype. I've raced a few sedans before, and they just never captured my imagination. Having a GT or prototype option for pro-am drivers is critical, in my estimation, and I've viewed GTC/GTD as a steppingstone to a PC/GTP Lights car more than a gateway to GTE/GTLM.

IMSA lacks a pro-am prototype solution that plugs into a global standard, and to be fair, there's no universally accepted pro-am prototype for the series to align itself with. As I recently wrote, maybe that could be LMP3 or, if they want to get creative, maybe they establish a pro-am subdivision within P2 where the cars have tighter restrictors to slow them down to match the abilities of pro-am drivers.

The old GTP Lights cars (ABOVE, Marshall Pruett archive) were as close to perfect as you could get for pro-am pilots – they were smaller, lighter, had something in the region of 300hp, were easy for the GTPs to pass, and seemed to fit the skill level of those who drove them. If IMSA can replicate that experience with LMP3s or less powerful P2s, I'm all for it. Scaring pro-ams half to death in purebred P2s would be the wrong way to go, in my estimation.

I have three questions that I hope you can answer.

1. I know that you were also a fan of the IMSA GTP series and I was wondering if you have any insight on how the last and fastest GTP cars would fare at COTA versus the IMSA & WEC cars. So, if Dan Gurney could be convinced to bring an Eagle Mark III (WFO 91) out to run laps that weekend, would it be between the IMSA cars and LMP1-H factory cars or would the GTP be faster due to different aero philosophies. I have been trying to compare performance from historical race reports, but with changes to tracks, plus 20 years of tire development, I haven't been able to figure out how these cars all stack up.

2. In reading your series regarding Simona de Silvestro's attempts to enter Formula 1, you have made mention of fitness changes she has made, increasing aerobic endurance while losing muscle mass, as the needs of Formula 1 are different from IndyCar. How hard is it to make these changes for a driver? If a young European GP2 or GP3 driver were to try and transition to IndyCar racing, could they make the fitness changes over the off-season, or would they still be at a disadvantage to IndyCar vets through their first season. Any insight into driver fitness training would be appreciated.

3. Given ongoing annoyance with IMSA from teams and fans, how hard would it be for SRO to form a GT3 endurance series, like the Blancpain, here in the U.S.? Would teams be interested if this were to come about and would PWC teams be able to adapt from sprint racing to endurance racing with their GT3 machinery? In addition, do you think a global Blancpain series could lead to a unified single GT spec rather than the current GT LM, GTD and GT3 situation that exists with IMSA, SRO and FIA/ACO?

Thank you for your answers to any/all of these questions,

Randy Mulvaney

Let's start with No. 3. Ratel's SRO organization is the global leader in short-term success, so I wouldn't put it beyond them to try and launch an American offshoot of the Blancpain series. It would be an awesome two years of racing before it crumbled. GT3 owners will have world-class endurance events to compete in when IMSA's GTD class adopts full GT3 specs in 2016, so from a practical standpoint, and knowing that the folks in Daytona Beach own or have tons of leverage to keep the SRO out of the legendary tracks, I imagine GTD will be the one option to select. GTE/GTLM is for manufacturer programs, GT3 is for manufacturer car sales – two different goals and desired that will keep a single GT spec from happening for now.

A driver can easily add or shed muscle mass in a matter of months, just like athletes in any other sport. IndyCar drivers are more wiry thank bulky when it comes to muscles; Will Power is a perfect example. He's slightly built, but he's also damn strong and, like most IndyCar drivers, concentrates on strength and muscle endurance.

On modern Michelins, and provided the car was set up to work with those tires, the power and downforce from the Eagle Mk III would destroy anything IMSA has to offer today, and I imagine it would be close to the Toyota TS040. The Toyota would lose the downforce and cornering battle, but has more power under acceleration and less drag to help its top speed. With their relative strengths happening at different parts of the track, I can't say for sure which one would be faster, but my guess is the Eagle would have a slight advantage due to being built to a far less restrictive rulebook.

So, why is it that with the aero kits coming soon to IndyCar, the series is working on taking away some of the newfound downforce by having holes in the floor? There was mention in the article that downforce numbers would approach F1 levels. Why is that bad? Seems like a needless expense.

Pete, Arnold, MD

With the release of the video of the first test of the new Indy Lights car, I noted the car is a self-starter. What are the technical/physical limitations that prevent the current Indy cars from having on-board starters?

As a TV viewer, I am tired of prolonged yellow flags, while an undamaged, spun out, Indy car is stalled, with the driver signaling for a restart. For the sake of viewership, don't you think it's time to consider mandatory on-board starters, especially if the teams can't get anti-stall to work properly. If you think starters are technically possible, please pass this comment on to Derrick Walker, and anybody else in IndyCar, who you think might listen.

Allen Lasko, Manitoba Canada

The Dallara IL15 was designed to have an on-board starter and has plenty of space to accommodate one. The DW12, obviously, wasn't designed with one and isn't overflowing with space if it was deemed necessary to retrofit the cars. Spins and stalls happen in every racing series, and whether the cars can/can't start on their own, caution periods usually come out. I'd welcome IndyCar going to onboard starters, but I don't think it's going to drastically alter the viewing experience.

I was watching Tony Cotman's preview video (scroll down to view) on RACER.com of the new IL15 and there was one item that stuck out to me. The new car features flare-ups, for lack of a better description, on the tray of the car just behind the front tires along the leading edge of the tray. Tony pointed this area out, as well as the curvature directing air into the underbody of the car as being important. He described the flare-up as bleeding air out from under the car from what has just been directed under the car. This seems counter-intuitive to me for being effective. For all series/designs that allow and use molded under trays, they seem to try to get as much air under the car without incurring too much of a drag penalty while trying to also retain the flow under the car with minimum bleed out, all in an effort to maximize Bernoulli's principle. I think back to the F1 cars in the early 80s where they had side skirts that tried to create a seal between the road surface and the underbody of the car. Is this flare-up an attempt to limit the downforce/performance of the car to keep its focus as a driver development car, and not a top-rung racecar?

Also in the video Tony shows off the extensive use of radiators and the intercooler that contribute to the car's performance. Now, obviously the DW12 is using radiators to cool the engine, but why are they not using an intercooler to cool the charge air from the turbocharger? This would seem like it would provide an obvious performance advantage, and if they can put it into the IL15's package, could an intercooler be adapted into the DW12's package? Sure, there would be a weight penalty, but certainly it would be negligible to the increase in performance? Would this be something that IndyCar would be open to allowing in the future? Even if they were trying to target specific HP numbers, could they not decrease the pressure from the turbo charger and use the cooler/denser air to make up the performance difference while potentially seeing an increase in engine life and reliability?

The IL15 is an interesting car, and I would like to see a few items brought into the DW12 (coke bottle sidepods+sidepod winglets, intercooler). Any chance we'll see such developments?

Matthew Smith

On your first question, it's a case of bleeding excess air out and around the front of the sidepods to feed and energize the air as it exits the tunnels. It's a similar principal to what you might have seen with dive planes mounted to the outer edges on a sports car's nose or front fenders.

Like you, I was amazed when IndyCar locked down its new turbocharged engine rules and left intercoolers out of the equation. I asked Chevy and Honda about it at the time, and both said they asked the series to leave them out, citing the added expense and piping complexity. Their engines would perform better with intercoolers in place, but with their mutual agreement to run without them, the performance loss is shared equally.

Indy Lights teams have an expensive conversion from old to new at the moment – opening up development items would cause a few to have heart attacks. Doubtful we'll see anything on that front in the next few years.

I've seen references to NASCAR regulations regarding front and REAR camber ranges. How do they adjust the camber on a live rear axle? Thanks – this column is a godsend to those of us interested in the black arts of racecar setup.

John

I was watching the Mid-Ohio IndyCar race on TV, and around 7-8 laps to go the TV went to an onboard looking behind Will Power. The vertical plane of the wing looks like it starts to open a gap as he went down the straight and close up upon braking. The sunlight made it stand out to me. Did anyone in the booth catch this as well and would a moving aerodynamic piece be a cause for a penalty in IndyCar or is this a regular occurrence?

Justin

It's normal to see a bit of wing flex on a high-downforce track like Mid-Ohio. All of the wings are manufactured by Dallara and come with unique identifiers that IndyCar's tech team records, so it would be a challenge for a team to make their own flexi-flyers without getting caught. I'm not saying it has never happened, but for what you're referencing, it was likely a normal occurrence.

I just saw pictures of the new Dallara Indy Lights car for 2015 and really liked the looks. I read that it will be powered by a new AER turbo 4 engine.

The new Indy Lights chassis bears more than a passing resembles to the Dallara SF14 from the Japanese Super Formula Series and its engine package seems to be similar as well. Is the new Indy Lights car essentially a reworked Super Formula car? If so, it should be a very competitive car and a real challenge for the up and coming drivers to master.

One other point about the new Indy Lights car – why can't Dallara incorporate some of its design into an updated IndyCar chassis, especially in regards to the under wing extensions to prevent wheel interlock, which are so subtle on the new Lights car. The DW12 looks ponderous in comparison to the new Lights car. And I love that there are no rear wheel guards on the new Lights car, which allows the chassis to keep its traditional open-wheel look. Please tell me that the IndyCar Series will use the new Lights car as the basis for the next generation Indy car chassis.

Rich, New York, NY

The Dallara IL15 is a brand-new design that actually uses a ton of DW12 DNA, including cockpit dimensions that are nearly identical.

I can't say if the DW12's rear wheel guards will continue when the 2018 Indy car arrives, but with an extra 40-50mph of speed to deal with on the big ovals, I'm all for any safety device that will reduce the likelihood of Las Vegas 2011-style launching.

I love open-wheel racing, and especially open wheel, though I admit to preferring going to ovals where I can see the action vs. going to road/street where I can only see one or two turns. But that is what it is, I guess.

In terms of the cars, I hope they make it less spec-based to open up some competition so the best car can win. I would love to get rid of the fuel saving option and let drivers choose to save fuel not electronics. I would also love to see much less downforce so the driver rather than physics is doing the racing, and along with that, more horsepower to challenge the drivers and provide oomph to pass, not a push to pass, but putting your foot in it. Do you see any hope for any of these, what I'll call improvements to Indy car racing?

~tere

Seems like most of what you'd like to see involves going back in time to at least the mid-'60s before rudimentary wings and electronics started to appear in Indy car racing. I'd love to see more areas opened for individual interpretation, but going backwards isn't the answer. It's a bit like saying the answer to more exciting flight is to turn F18s into bi-planes.

Everyone, drivers included, would like more power, but our command of aerodynamic knowledge and electronic advancements shouldn't be written out of the rules in a series where innovation has been its defining characteristic. Granted, they've lost sight of that in recent years, but as the world moves on, Indy car racing needs to follow.

I can't see the IndyCar Series going retro to please long-term fans.

How aware is a given race team of another team's performance potential? For example, does Red Bull have an idea of the quickest lap a Sauber is theoretically capable of running? Do NASCAR teams have this same type of knowledge? I ask because I've heard Nico Hulkenburg's name mentioned many times as someone worthy of a top ride. Since he has repeatedly been passed over for open top seats, it makes me think that the big teams are not impressed with him based on the data they collect. I've seen Cole Whitt's name mentioned many times by Robin Miller, but Whitt spends most of his days five laps down in 33rd place. Is he going to impress any of the top-level teams by doing that, even if he's racing a car that couldn't win a Nationwide race?

Also, I LOVED the section your Mid-Ohio rewind about Dixon's fuel saving. Are those segment times available to civilians?

Kyle in Raleigh

Theoretical data is something that's usually private, but with more in-depth sector data being made available to teams in many top-tier series, it's possible to parse out the potential of one's rivals. The real trick is to disqualify the sectors that are too good to be believed. A driver can blow the braking zone, go 50 feet deeper than anyone else, and if you didn't see it happen to know it was a mistake, the sector data will only show that Driver X had a monster sector up to that braking zone. The next sector will usually be slow, which helps to explain why the previous sector should be discarded.

Data certainly helps to form opinions, but it shouldn't be the only source of information. Walking out to a corner that requires exceptional driving skill is a must, and whether it's a Hulkenberg or Whitt, an experienced eye can tell what kind of car a driver has to work with and how that driver is/isn't making the most out of what they have.

The IndyCar segment times aren't for public consumption, but as I suggested to the series earlier in the year, it would be smart to make sector times and all other info available to the fans. Like Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.com, many modern sports fans like to use data to form their own opinions about players, so why not extend it to drivers and teams? Who was the best driver on cold tires at Sonoma and how did the drivers with the fastest laps on cold tires fare in the race? That info is there, and to engage the next-generation fans, I'd love to see the series open up that kind of info and ask its fans to feed the series with the most interesting user-generated data after each event.

It's something I enjoy doing, when I have the time, but I'd welcome smart fans joining in on the data-driven dialogue.

The HPD-powered Riley DP was back at Road America after having the cooling problems at Sebring. From what I understand and saw wandering the paddock at Sebring, the HPD Riley was running the same aero package as the Ford Riley, which didn't work quite right for them.

First, there are a number of air intakes on the Ford Riley. Could you identify which cools what and where the engine intake is? I could figure some of it, but couldn't get close enough for them all.

Second, what was the cooling issue on the HPD that doesn't affect the Ford?

Third, what are the differences between the HPD and Ford Riley aero and cooling packages?

Daniel, Atlanta, GA

The Riley-Ford EcoBoost DP feeds its intercoolers with big NACA ducts atop both doors. The rear brake ducts are fed from scoops mounted at the leading edge of the rear fenders.

The initial Honda DP aero package was based on Riley's Ford kit, but did have some differences (front wheel arch louvers, radiator venting).

HPD fitted its intercoolers to the Riley-Ford kit, and found the cooling was massively insufficient. Their own testing concluded too much backpressure was the root cause of the problem – too much air entering the engine bay from behind, which effectively stalled the air trying to pass through the intercoolers from the front. The Riley-Ford body was designed to work in conjunction with its twin-turbo V6 engine and its ancillaries mounted in the car – to flow through the engine bay with those items in place. Dropping a different TTV6 into a Riley chassis, with its exhausts, wastegates, and other goodies mounted differently, was never going to be a perfect match for the Ford kit.

Rather than go through the expense of a complete aero redesign, they received IMSA's approval to use one of the options they proposed, which was to move the intercooler inlets up to the out edges of the engine cover.

It wasn't the most aerodynamically clean solution I've seen, but the ram-air effect seemed to work better than what they had at Sebring when the Honda DP returned at Road America.

I noticed that JPM ran the blue PPG scheme for two weeks, and a week later Helio ran the exact same scheme. Are specific cars assigned to specific drivers or did Penske just switch the 2 to a 3 and give the car to Helio? Besides seats, are there any mechanical differences between two driver's cars on the same team?

Ryan D. Gamber, Landisville, PA

It all depends on the circuits. Teams will save a chassis for the super-speedways that have had extensive body fitting done, and those will have their liveries done in advance. Bodywork fit is still unique to each car, which makes taking JPM's sidepods and bolting them onto Helio's car possible, but not necessarily the best aerodynamic choice. With every car receiving a complete teardown between races, teams are used to having wrap companies come in and do their magic on tubs and bodywork, making the situation you mention above one that's pretty easy to handle.

Mechanically, pedal heights will be different, steering wheel height will be different, and all of the suspension variables: Spring rates, camber/toe/etc., geometries, damper build specs, and so on will be customized to each driver.

Watching the In-Car Theater, I saw different steering wheels. Each team can choose the one they want or each manufacturer has its own?

Carlos Villalobos

Steering wheel design is indeed an area of freedom for teams. Manufacturers have key items they want on every wheel, but there's no spec on the wheel design itself among Chevy or Honda teams.

I have three questions:

1. This one might have been repeated a lot, but I was I wondering about the P2 and DP BoP and what can be done for 2015. I was thinking about taking HP away and adding more downforce to the DPs but I am not sure if you can take weight away without reconstructing the engine. I do not believe P2 tires would work because then the tires would fall off towards the end. I think tire warmers are best. Plus I think there needs to be safety improvements to the DPs. A lot of drivers have been hurt lately which really concerns me.

2. Do ever think LMP1 will ever return to IMSA racing?

3. My last question comes from the NASCAR race at the Glen with that big crash that destroyed part of the guardrail and took time to repair. I have been seeing a lot of that lately across all racing. Is the guardrail more safer than a concrete wall to a point where the extra long guardrail repairs are worth it, or does Watkins Glen and maybe some other tracks need to consider rethinking it a bit more? I do understand though guardrail repairs are necessary so in case a car does hit it again, it doesn't go through it. I also understand it costs money, too, so I won't see Spa, Silverstone, and Le Mans with SAFER barriers all around anytime soon even though it is safer and takes less time to repair.

Thank you for reading and it is people like you and Robin that make me want to go into journalism in motorsport! I rarely go to see races and I really want to see racing from a better POV and go to places like Indy, like my late grandpa did in 1995. Thank you!

Denise Dieter

Hi Denise – thank you for the kind words! On your first question, we'll have to see what the new P2 coupes can do in pre-season testing to get a handle on how much BoP'ing needs to take place. As the Ligier JS P2 showed at COTA and Petit Le Mans, it's definitely faster than the open-top P2s, yet with the ongoing DP/P2 weight disparity, the cold-tire performance between the cars is still an issue.

Whether it's a guardrail made from formed steel or big cement blocks, every track needs to have some sort of deformable structure in front of those barriers to dissipate energy. Just as the Watkins Glen NASCAR crash did big damage to the barriers (and the cars involved), look at Petit Le Mans earlier this month when Sean Rayhall was hit and spun into a cement barrier that was far off the racing line. He came away with a massive concussion and his ORECA FLM09 chassis was mangled – and all because it was a straight hit into a solid object.

It's one thing if solutions were still being evaluated, but it's downright barbaric to think SAFER barrier technology has been in place for almost 20 years, yet most tracks leave a driver's fate up to the crashworthiness of the car they're driving.

1. Based on in-car video of closed-wheel races it appears that the taillights now operate in many modes: flashing and solid, both together and one side at a time. What do all these pyrotechnics mean?

2. I understand that cars with enclosed cockpits have a maximum temperature limit in the driver's compartment. How is this policed? What technologies have been deployed as a result (I assume refrigeration)? How different is the hardware on top-level racers compared to our street cars. What weight and power consumption do racing engineers claim?

Gerry

Depends on the series. The lights can be automated to do a number of things under a caution period, including blinking to alert the trailing cars that a yellow is in play. Some lights can be used or are installed as dedicated rain lights to serve as a similar beacon for trailing cars.

Some series have maximum cockpit temperature limits, but not all. For those that do, a temperature probe is installed and that data is transmitted back to the team and the series to stay abreast of real-time conditions. Most series with a limit will require the team to fix whatever's gone wrong before allowing the car/driver back out. A/C units are often derived from, or provided directly by the production side for a manufacturer's racing program. Hard to answer the last question as it encompasses dozens of cars.

Why doesn't the Indy Lights series use old IndyCar chassis instead of creating new ones? If they used the old IndyCar chassis it may encourage existing IndyCar teams to participate as they already have the chassis and parts available, and also make it cheaper on Indy Lights-only teams as they could purchase the old tub and parts at a used price.

The Lights drivers could also get the feel for driving around in an IndyCar chassis (though with a different engine) to make the transition smother.

Donald

Hi Donald – interesting question. IndyCar and Indy Lights suffered greatly by holding onto cars that were exceptionally old. They were cheap for teams to run, but if no one is tuning in, does it really matter how inexpensive the cars are to run or own? Just as fans don't turn up to watch a basketball game filled with second- and third-string players, it's hard to get fans or sponsors interested in ancient technology in a series where advancement and innovation is supposed to rule. As I mentioned in a previous answer, the series isn't as innovative as it once was, but many of us remain hopeful it will get back to that place.

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