A message from Robin; a Mailbag from Marshall. Presented by Honda Racing/HPD

I think this is the first time since I started doing the Mailbag that I’ve had to take a break. The thing that amazes me the most, in all the years that I’ve done it, is how connected the fans stay during the off-season. You think, ‘OK, we’ll have a Mailbag for seven months and then turn it off until the racing starts again because nobody cares,’ but that couldn’t be further from the truth. IndyCar might not have as many fans as it did in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, but the ones we have are as passionate as ever, and absolutely dedicated.

And they are switched on – I get some pretty cool questions. OK, we have a few that are a little repetitious, like the questions about Milwaukee and Michigan, and I thought it was pretty funny when Mark [Glendenning, RACER.com’s Editor] touched on those a couple of weeks ago. But those people care – they just want to go back to tracks that were good, and watch some IndyCar racing.

As for me… I’m done with the chemo – that only took two days. Now, I’m in the recovery phase. They give you such a massive dose, and it’s such killer stuff, that it has a lasting impact. It’s weird to be completely devoid of energy. I get nauseous. I get dizzy sitting at the computer. When I went into hospital I told the guys at RACER, ‘Oh, I’ll be back doing the Mailbag in a week,’ but right now I’m having trouble concentrating and summoning the energy to even do that. And that’s my next goal in my recovery: to feel well enough to do the Mailbag. They tell me it takes a few weeks to recover from chemo, so we’ll just play it by ear.

What has been really great is all of the support from everybody. Race fans are so passionate, and so opinionated. They can be funny, they can be cruel, they can be mean, but deep down they have the same passion for IndyCar racing, and the same love for the sport, that I do. And it seems like a lot of people really do have a place in their weekly routine for the Mailbag. That’s pretty cool, knowing that they care about it, and that they don’t want some old geezer like me to die.

So I’ll be back with you soon. Until then, Marshall Pruett will help to keep the Mailbag engine running by answering a few letters each week, starting today, until I’m ready to get back into the seat. Keep the letters coming to the usual address, and thank you again for your support.

Robin Miller

Q: Conor Daly tweeted, “There are no full time rides available anymore.” Have all of the full time rides been announced? It seems to me like we are missing one or two announcements.  I know Colin Braun is still working to be a third RLL car for whatever they can put together. What about Juncos and Carlin?

Ryan in West Michigan

MP: We’re still waiting for Coyne to confirm its line-up, which was meant to happen three weeks ago, then two weeks ago, then… At least Dale hasn’t lost his knack for making things interesting. Everything I know says it’s Bourdais and Ferrucci, as we’ve reported. Max Chilton will be back at Carlin, and we’re waiting to learn if it will be for the full calendar. It’s been suggested he might go for the old ‘Mike Conway Plan’ and drop the ovals, but I’ve had others tell me it was just a thought Max had, and nothing more.

Carlin’s planning on at least two full-time cars, if not three, so the number jumps to 23-24 right there. Juncos Racing will be back again, but it’s too early to say how many races will be on its schedule. At least for what I think we’ll have at St. Pete, 25-26 is where my expectations fall.

Q: I'm from St. Louis and have been going to the Indy 500 since 1995 with my own tickets. My dad and uncles took me to my first Indy 500 in 1986. I was hooked after seeing Bobby Rahal win in the Budweiser car that day. When Gateway opened back in the ’90s, I went to all of the IndyCar and NASCAR events. Meeting Mario, Greg Moore and all of the other IndyCar stars at my hometown track was amazing. I'm really excited for what Curtis has done for the track, and the last two IndyCar events have been outstanding! I've brought friends with me for my seven tickets and the race has made them IndyCar fans.

My current Gateway tickets are in the top row which are $55 adult and the junior tickets are $25. I called the first day that tickets went on sale to secure the top row in a great section for the 2017 race, and renewed those seats for 2018. Our seats are fantastic, and you can stand up the whole race if you want to and not bother anyone. However, Gateway has made changes to the seating structure for 2019 in an effort to improve the experience. They are widening the seats and going from 19 seats in a row to 14 in the middle sections of the track. My seven seats in my row are 13-19, and now I'm getting bumped from my top row spot to another section further towards Turn 1 and am now four or five rows from the top. For me to renew, I'm not able to get the seats I had, and if I want the same section my tickets are now $100 which include a program, soda and hot dog that I do not want. Furthermore, the junior price seat also cannot be used in this section anymore.

I get why they are trying to improve, but this decision has negatively impacted some loyal supporters of this track and we're getting a bad deal. My friend's tickets are in a different section and he's not returning either due to the price increase. I'm afraid this will hurt the crowd for next year’s race and beyond.

Cary Leimbach

MP: You aren’t alone. Between similar emails that landed in the Mailbag on price hikes and other fans who’ve told me about the higher-than-anticipated ticket prices at the two new races for 2019 (COTA and Monterey), it’s clearly a concern to raise.

The best I could ask in the case of you and your friends, in knowing how Curtis Francois and his team at Gateway are genuinely trying to, as you wrote, improve the fan experience, is give the track a ring and see if there’s something similar that might be offered. It might sound hokey, but sometimes picking up the phone, kindly expressing your disappointment, and asking how they can help get you back to a similar place of happiness can deliver positive results. I visit some tracks each year where I know for a fact that they wouldn’t give a fart about your situation. Fortunately, Gateway isn’t one of them.

On the COTA and Monterey side, and maybe this will be something Robin or I write about in a separate column, it looks like the costs of paying the sanction fee to the series has been passed on -- by an uncomfortable amount -- to the paying customer. We want every track to make a profit and keep IndyCar coming back, but if the price to spectate is too high, it’s hard to see how some venues will stay on the calendar beyond the terms of their existing contracts.

Don Whittington, 1982 Indy 500. Image by IMS

Q: I just read the RACER story published in your absence (hope you’re doing well!) about the drug smugglers who migrated from sports car to IndyCar in the 1980s. My question: Can someone please make this into a movie? I mean, this would be a crazy story to tell. I don’t know a whole lot about this, but this would be like "Talladega Nights" meets 'American Made.’

What’s even more amazing is that a lot of these guys were successful drivers (Lanier won IMSA in 1984, the Whittingtons won Le Mans in 1979). I’ve watched some videos claiming the Whittingtons would also cheat and put nitro bottles in their cars at the 24 Hours of Daytona and cheated the fueling system at Le Mans. The point is, these are some incredible stories and I would love to get more of them. However, racing movies don’t seem to do all that well or people aren’t interested in them or whatever, so I doubt Hollywood is looking at that sort of thing. In the absence of a movie, do you have any recommendations of where I can read or learn more about that time? Always looking for more racing history!

Max Camposano, Bethlehem, PA

MP: Hi Max -- if only I had the budget to make it myself… The great thing is I’ve had far too many people to count say the exact same thing in recent years. My friend Nate Adams, who did the Paul Newman and Willy T. Ribbs racing documentaries with Adam Carolla, would love to make this exact narco-racers film, and I have to believe, with Amazon Prime and Netflix and Hulu and so many other streaming platforms forking out dollars to make documentaries, the right person will make the right pitch and it will get done.

Speaking of funding, John Paul Jr., who was in the Robin story you referenced, has a new book titled “50/50” that’s available. Written by Sylvia Wilkerson, all of the proceeds go directly to JPJ’s medical expenses as he battles Huntington’s Disease.

Q: We, (family), have a theoretical argument going. Mario, A.J., Parnelli, Rick Mears, Al Unser Sr. all on Rascal scooters for 10 laps. Who wins? Who crashes who? Can we get a TV deal to broadcast it?

It's been a good season and glad to know you got your oil changed, some new pistons and no cracked block. See you for 2019!

Sincerely,

John Balestrieri

MP: If it’s an oval, it’s Rocket Rick, all day every day. If it’s a road course, the G.O.A.T. takes it by a mile as Mario inches closer to A.J. on the all-time wins list. If it’s a street course, Super Tex might not win the sprint to Turn 1 at Long Beach, but something tells me he’d forget to brake (wink wink) and take the rest out from behind like a ‘bulldozier.’ And finally, if it was on dirt, it’d have to be ’Ol Rufus, right? But I half-wonder how the kid from Bakersfield, with all that Baja experience, would work the cushion. I also think that if Mears got alongside Parnelli to take the lead, he’d look over, realize the 85-year-old could still drop him with a right hook, and kindly ease off the throttle before the finish line.

And yes, of course it would be televised on NBCSN as Robin would do the first Grid Scoot and attempt to interview his heroes while trying to figure out the electronics on the Rascal going the wrong way -- and backwards -- on the track. This needs to happen.

Q: Longtime fan of the Mailbag, we've missed your insight, humor and curmudgeonly-ness, get well soon! I read the recent comments in RACER from Giedo van der Garde and Stefan Johansson about drivers and Formula 1, and I wonder if F1 is unwittingly positioning IndyCar as the viable alternative to itself as a top-tier series? When you look at the recent talent transfer from F1 and the junior ranks in Europe to IndyCar, combined with the savvy veterans who still bring it every weekend and whup up on the young pups, it's an exciting and eclectic mix of talent and personality that IMO is unequaled in the racing world.

Add in the competitiveness of the series, where almost anyone can win on any given race weekend, the fact that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to do IndyCar and its developmental ladder versus the GP3/GP2/F1 path and that it revolves around the largest single-day sporting event in the world, it looks pretty darn attractive if I'm a driver and, at the end of the day, drivers want to race competitively and not be a video game player... sorry, I mean reserve/simulator driver. I don't think we'll ever return to the glory days of CART in the pre-split 1990s, the world has changed and racing along with it. But perhaps we're at the beginning of a sort of renaissance for IndyCar, where it becomes the recognized alternative to a Formula 1 product that is technologically advanced but, with all due respect, has become uncompetitive, unfulfilling and out of reach for talented drivers, aloof to fans and just plain boring? A penny for your thoughts (or a beer at St. Pete)?

Chris, Sarasota, FL

MP: Hi Chris -- the good thing is IndyCar has been the alternative to F1 for decades, so that aspect is fully established. What’s new is the reverie for the cars and bodywork and general happiness involved with modern IndyCar. I know Alexander Rossi’s success here has not been overlooked in Europe, and what I’m hoping for in the very near future is to have a seriously good F1 driver join IndyCar on a full-time basis. With Rossi, who had respect but no race results to offer in F1, his ascension at home has been more about growth and maturation into a front-running IndyCar driver than being a finished product when he arrived.

In Marcus Ericsson, we have someone from a similar place on the F1 grid coming over, and if he struggles, it won’t be a surprise. But if he’s near the front, it might harm IndyCar’s reputation abroad (and I’m not singling Marcus out; I’d say the same about any driver saddled with an underperforming F1 team). If more quality drivers are going to choose IndyCar over F1, they’ll need to see it’s a badass challenge to play with the Dixons and Newgardens and so on. If an Ericsson can mingle in the top five right away, it might come across as too easy, and therefore, not worth consideration.

The perfect scenario would have Fernando Alonso racing here in a part- or full-time capacity and finding that IndyCar’s best are no joke. If, in competitive equipment, he shoots to P1 at St. Pete, Barber, etc., and our finest drivers are left fighting for second, it wouldn’t be a total surprise, but it would also be a rather humbling affair for the series.

Not as good as Dario, etc. Image by LAT

Q: Hey Robin, first off I hope you had successful surgery and quick recovery. Also happy birthday! You made it to the Golden Years.

Yourself and Marshall seem to be puzzled about why Dixon hasn't made it. There's a simple reason. Daniel Cormier, the UFC Light/Heavyweight champ who's considered the all-time best, still has one more person to take down: Jon Jones. Until then, he'll always be 'what if'. Scott Dixon's Jon Jones is Dario Franchitti. And yes, Dixon may have dispatched every opponent in his long career except him. Unfortunately for Dixon, he could break all the records and still won't be considered the greatest.

There's a reason why Mario, A.J. Foyt and recently Dario joined that list of legends. What do all three have in common? It's not that they share multiple championships and Indy 500 wins. It's that all three have had their names drop by bands/rappers. Throughout history all the greats have been immortalize through music. Mario leads the way with over 20 songs that make reference to him. A.J. Foyt has one, and in 2014, Dario joined that list when two rappers from Virginia made a song about him. Dixon, and even DJ Willy P,  are envious of Franchitti.

Kevin, NJ

For readers wondering some of the songs:

Mario (a few of his)

A J Foyt

Dario

MP: Thanks for the videos. The world will never hear the words “baked ziti” without it being followed by “Dario Franchitti.”

On Dixon, it’s an interesting angle. It’s worth keeping in mind that Dixon has been an incremental talent. With each teammate, and after working with them for a few years, he added the things that made them better or unique to his arsenal and gotten stronger. Dario won three straight titles when he joined Ganassi and was definitely a better and more complete driver than Dixon. By the fourth year, and fifth year again, Dixon was back to leading the team. Dario had some hard luck to start the 2012 season, and missed out on the final race of 2013 with his crash, but Dixie was well on his way to his third title at that point.

As for whether Dixon will be considered the greatest if he breaks all the records, that’s one of racing’s finest offerings: we’ll all get to argue about who’s right and wrong and refuse to believe our driver is anything other than the eternal king of motorsports.

Q: Robin, do you agree that Bobby Rahal hiring McDonald and Phillips, plus strong consideration of a third car, means that he is absolutely committed to moving up to the top tier alongside Andretti, Ganassi and Penske? We know that Graham Rahal and Takuma Sato are very skilled, but sports teams now need to be deep with talent behind the scenes to be title contenders.

Rob Joseph

Chandler, AZ

MP: I think Bob and his partners have always been committed to moving up to the top tier. Look at all of the crazy engineering talent they’ve placed around Graham, and now Takuma. Piers is both skilled and charismatic, which can only help RLL improve in planning its future and making a tight-knit group even stronger. It’s been a while since RLL had a new person, in a senior position, to come in and ask, ‘Why do you do it that way?’ about every possible aspect of how the group competes, thinks, and organizes itself.

That’s not to say RLL has been doing anything wrong, but if you have the right person asking the question, you often come up with a bunch of ideas on how to do things even better.

If they asked this (very bad) former team manager to offer a few suggestions, I’d recommend reverting back to Graham’s engineering line-up from 2017. Moving Eddie Jones over to Taku’s car ended up impacting Graham’s momentum more than expected. Shifting Tom German over to Sato’s car might be the perfect change-up to form a better two-car assault.

The other improvement that would benefit the entire team is getting Colin Braun in a car and testing ASAP. In terms of chassis feedback, Graham has lots of direction to offer, Takuma is not as vocal, and with Braun -- a guy with tons of experience developing prototypes and stock cars -- you have a truly gifted individual to add further direction on where RLL needs to focus its efforts.

We’re talking refinements here, not significant overhauls, and that’s what it will take to give the rest of the teams a much harder time.

Q: I was reading our local newspaper the Advertiser-Tribune today and it contained a story about you. The article stated that Roger Penske has agreed to allow the use of one of his clean white rooms for your procedure. In addition, Chip Ganassi will be providing his personal plane to fly in the Chief Surgeon, A.J. Foyt. The pit crew from SPM will be the surgical assistants. Finally, it stated that you will be recovering under the care of Scott Dixon and his wife at their home.

With all these good friends looking after you, I know you will be back on your feet soon. I look forward to seeing you at St. Pete this year and I will introduce myself to you and even ask for a selfie with you.

Oh, my daughter and her fiancé are huge fans after I took them to last year’s race. We had a ball.

Behave, my friend

Kevin Carrigan

MP: Kevin, you’re a star. Unfortunately, we have two giant issues with the Advertiser-Tribune’s story. First, while A.J. did commit to performing the surgery, he left the knives and scalpels at home in favor of a shotgun. The good thing, though, and it’s only because A.J. cares for Robin so deeply, he brought his own Sharpie to draw the bullseye. Who said Foyt isn’t a sweetheart?

Fortunately, the #MeToo movement caught wind of the recovery plan, and for the sake of dear Emma Dixon’s sanity, and to prevent Miller from getting fired for the 37th time, we’ve moved the bed to the home of German racing reporter Wolfgang “I have two questions” Monsehr, whom Robin loves to pieces.

You're still missed, Milwaukee. Image by Abbott/LAT

Q: Robin, did your readers see the interview and quote from Emerson Fittipaldi in the November Car & Driver magazine? When asked: Which did you prefer, ovals or road courses? Emmo said "Ovals were a new challenge. I thought they would be easy, but they were not. One mile ovals were incredible -- dozens of cars on the track, some lapping backmarkers after six or seven laps. I had never done anything like it, the most exciting driving I had ever experienced." Clearly the one mile track most referred to is The Milwaukee Mile. Some people and commenters on here make fun of us who still promote IndyCar returning to Milwaukee. Beyond the historic relationship between Indianapolis and Milwaukee is the great racing enjoyed by drivers and fans. Will you please keep Milwaukee in mind positively as in the memory of great racers such as Emmo? The Milwaukee Mile is still here ready and willing for a race, whenever that day comes.

Bob

Milwaukee Mile

MP: (I’ve got nothing to add here, but c’mon, you didn’t think we’d pass up a chance to include at least one Milwaukee Mile email this week…)

Q: Robin, in MP’s last podcast Craig Hampton talked about inerters. I would love to see an article breaking down why these new open rules are costing so much and what is going into them. I searched online and found some info in the off-road racing world, but not a whole lot out there. As a avid fan would love to know more what they are doing in the area.

Also gonna make a trip to Indy this year for first time. Not coming for race. I actually just want to come for qualifying weekend. I think bumping could be something this year, and honestly want to see the speed of the cars. Where is the best place to stay? We plan to have a rental car and see some of the other sites around area too while there.

Tristan Wood

MP: Hi Tristan -- great idea for another article. Inerters and all the rest make for one of the only aspects of a modern IndyCar that have become ‘top secret’ items, so I’ll have to see what folks are willing to share. As for where to stay, it’s hard to answer without knowing your budget and likes. Don’t hesitate to drop Robin another email with more details and we’ll help with some suggestions.

Q: So the SPM seat goes to Ericsson. I know it’s hard to evaluate F1 drivers who drive at the back of the grid but is he really the best person to fill that seat? Does he bring sponsorship money? I guess we’ll see how good a driver he is once he starts racing. Any thoughts?

Jim Doyle

Hoboken, NJ

MP: In what I’ve heard from a few good sources, the ‘P’ in SPM, Canada’s Ric Peterson, was open to funding a significant portion of the second entry if another high-caliber Canadian driver could be found while Robert Wickens is rehabilitating. Without a Canadian, I’m told, it would be on the team to find a paying driver to fill Wicky’s void. (I’d have tested bad-fast Canadians Scott Hargrove and Daniel Morad right away, but that’s me.)

That’s apparently what happened with Ericsson, who definitely brings a budget, but I wouldn’t cast him in the typical ‘pay driver’ model where his dollars stack higher than his talent. He’s fast, and experienced, and hasn’t been prone to making big mistakes in F1. Those who’ve covered him tell me he could be a nice fit alongside Hinch, and while I don’t expect Marcus will perform like Wickens 2.0, I don’t think we’re talking James Jakes 2.0, either. Let’s face it: Anything less than Wickens is a downgrade, so barring Simon Pagenaud returning to the team, a five-year F1 veteran with sponsors in tow is a strong Plan B.

Q: Any recent word on John Andretti? Always thought him to be a really good guy, and I'm hoping and praying for the best.

Thanks:  David Lind

MP: Hi David -- John tells me he’s still fighting the good fight -- more days stuck in second and third gear than flat in sixth -- but that’s not unusual with cancer.

Consider the ongoing battle he’s in, and how he continues to raise money to help others, and if you’ve been searching for a charity to support, or just want to follow someone who brings nothing but positivity to the world, John’s a multiple world champion in that regard.

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