The RACER Mailbag, November 30

Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. Due to the high volume of questions received, 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: Jay Frye said recently that 20 races would be the ideal length for an IndyCar season and date equity is important. We also know the series only wants to go to venues/cities where they are wanted. My question is, why can't Mexico and Argentina help fill in dates in February (dare I even suggest these dates as doubleheaders?). Maybe a prime time Saturday night race before the Super Bowl? The fans have been complaining for many years that the off-season is far too long and the series doesn't like to race overseas – or admit it sucks at marketing. Ironically, if IndyCar did this, nobody would know about it.

Rob, Rochester, NY

MARSHALL PRUETT: There’s no reason a trip or two to Latin America can’t happen. Considering how one of IndyCar’s two most popular drivers (Pato O’Ward) is Mexican, one of its two most recent champions is both Spanish and shares the same mother tongue as O’Ward, and one of its team owners in Ricardo Juncos is from Argentina and spends most of his days trying to get IndyCar to return to his homeland and race, we have more than enough reasons to hold at least one race in front of an enthusiastic Spanish-speaking crowd.

Q: With the COVID and Robin Miller's passing, I never did hear if there was a memorial service, toasting to or anything else to remember Bill Simpson. Did I miss it, or was it done privately?

Dave

MP: Yes, I seem to recall there was a private gathering.

Q: So I didn't win the $2 billion Powerball drawing, but if I had, I was wondering what it would cost to set up my own IndyCar team.

Let's assume a two-car team running full a full season. What would my capital outlay be to buy all of the equipment (cars, transporters, shop equipment, etc.), and what would be the operating costs for everything else (engine leases, tires, salaries for crew and drivers, travel, etc.)

Fred, St. Louis, MO

MP: Having recently spoken to someone who is interested in doing exactly what you’re describing, set aside $20 million as a solid starting point to cover everything, but it could be less, if you wanted to do things on the cheap, or vastly more if you wanted to win a championship. Are you leasing an outfitted shop, buying one, building from scratch... lots of variables. The going operating budget for a season ranges from about $6-11 million per car.

Q: Seeing the autographed start sheet in the November 16 edition of the Mailbag jogged my memory about a question I have had for some time. Please forgive the rambling introduction...

In the late 1970s my brother and I were getting into motor racing, but still being in our mid-teens it required the help (indulgence) from our parents to get to most events.

We had been to a couple of Grands Prix when it was announced that "The Indy Cars are Coming" to Britain. Mum and Dad agreed to go to Silverstone for the first of the two races. My brother and I were keen to see just how much more open the paddock was compared to F1 and get as many autographs in our programs as possible. One driver had us stumped, though: George Snider. There was a gentleman often behind the Foyt garage who looked just like the photo in the program, but the name embroidered on his jacket did not say George and every time he was asked he said he was not George Snider.

Eventually we did get George's signature but my question is, does George Snider have a twin brother, or was the man himself playing a joke on us?

Mark Jones, Chester, England

MP: I’m not aware of George having a twin, but since you were able to get George’s autograph, and I assume that took place in person, was he the same guy who said he wasn’t George? That’s the part of the story that confuses me, but I want to know.

This may or may not be George Snider. David Phipps/Motorsport Images

Q: I believe Roger Penske said that IndyCar doesn't compete with F1 for audiences, but I believe he may have lost touch with us common fan folk. I've been an IndyCar fan for 45 years and am the only such fan in my neighborhood here in NC. When I mention upcoming IndyCar races on TV to my neighbors, they think I'm talking about F1, even amongst the sports fans. So from what I've seen over the past 10 years, IndyCar does compete with F1, if nothing more than in name recognition and exposure (and to the untrained eye of my non-interested neighbors, the cars look the same). I've even had people ask me "aren't they the same?"

IndyCar needs more viewers and F1 has them (and we should try to take them away), when the cars look similar and the racing is better in IndyCar. Oh, and don't forget, Mark Miles runs Penske Entertainment, so do you really think he's going to have a change of heart on marketing when it also sucked under his direction as the IndyCar "boss"?

Randy Mizelle, NC

MP: It ain’t Miles. Prior to the sale, yes, Mark was the top executive, but not since. There’s a handful of people who run Penske Entertainment and their names are either Penske or they’ve been long-term employees of people named Penske who’ve been tasked with making all the major decisions. Prior to the sale, the Hulman George family mostly left the running of IndyCar to folks like Miles and Frye, etc. Since the purchase, a new Penske-based layer of leadership and decision making has been positioned above those folks.

Think of it like a corporate takeover where everyone from the CEO on down reports to the new owners. There are quite a few people who were retained when PE bought the track and series, and some of those folks wield a decent amount of power and influence, but not in the areas where IndyCar needs the most amount of help.

I’m not familiar with the R.P. quote you’ve cited, but I do know what I read from NBC in a press release that went out two days after the IndyCar season was over: “The 2022 NTT IndyCar Series season… averaged a Total Audience Delivery (TAD) of 1.30 million viewers across NBC, USA Network, Peacock and NBC Sports digital platforms, marking the most-watched season for the IndyCar Series since 2016.”

NBC said IndyCar had a year-to-year audience increase of five percent. And if it wasn’t obvious, the average of 1.3m viewers across 17 races is heavily skewed by one race, the Indy 500, which had 4.62m viewers. On an annual basis, the 500 pulls the average to something north of 1m per race, but it paints a false portrait of true average race viewership.

And here’s the press release ESPN fired off right after the F1 season ended, which said: “The 2022 Formula 1 World Championship season has ended as the most-viewed ever on U.S. television, smashing a record that was set just one year ago. The season averaged 1.21 million viewers per race across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, a 28 percent increase over the previous U.S. television record of 949,000 average viewers that was set in 2021. The 2022 season also became the first in U.S. television history to average 1 million or more viewers per race. In addition, more female and younger viewers watched F1 races on U.S. television than ever before.”

So, I’m sharing these numbers for a reason, and that’s to illustrate two things. Thanks to the Indy 500’s big audience, IndyCar’s 1.3m average is bigger than F1’s 1.2m average. But if you look at F1’s most-watched race, it was 1.4m. Simply put, F1’s average of 1.2m isn’t the result of one big outlier like the Indy 500 to give a skewed impression of how many people are watching the average IndyCar event.

F1’s average is the one that should cause concern for IndyCar because comes from more people in America turning in for every round.

From F1’s 22 races, 12 averaged between 995,000 to 1.445m viewers, the majority of which aired on cable with ESPN. Most of IndyCar’s races are on network with NBC, and yet, its audiences are smaller than what F1 tends to get on cable...

On average -- real average -- a lot more F1 is being watched in the U.S. than IndyCar, and if you keep in mind that most F1 races start while most of us are asleep, there’s clearly something big happening here with F1 viewership right now.

Given the choice to wake up at the crack of dawn and watch Red Bull win almost every anti-climactic race or to get plenty of rest and watch some of the best racing on the planet with IndyCar, our favorite series is losing the fight. Pretending we aren’t losing the fight is a fine way to get knocked out.

Q: As someone who was there in the trenches, Marshall, just what was the atmosphere like in the original Indy Racing League of the late 1990s? Was there a siege mentality among the teams and drivers with all the crap getting thrown at them from all directions, was there a lot of cooperation going on during the seasons, or did it just feel like any other series?

In my autograph collection dating from the late 1980s to the late 2010s, I’ve probably got more of the drivers of the original ’96-’02 IRL than any other series, including your old driver Greg Ray before he went off to glory at Team Menard. The IRL teams and drivers genuinely appreciated the support from afar with so many personal replies to my letters, starting with Buzz Calkins only a couple of weeks after he won the opening race.  Now of course, the Ebay sellers have ruined all of that for us IndyCar fans on another continent.

How insane were those two "Rollerball" races the League held in front of those empty grandstands at Dover Downs? The carnage that took place there make even the Nashville street races look tame! How big a loss was the "Mickyard" at Walt Disney World, and could we see a temporary oval tried again? I know the crowds there were helped along. but it always looked a very racy short track. How are Dick Simon, Fred Treadway and Ron Hemelgarn to name a few these days?

I loved the old IRL as much as I loved CART. They both thought they were doing the right thing at the time.

Peter Kerr, Hamilton, Scotland

MP: The IRL had its charms but in those early years, it was a breakaway league that was short on major driving talent and high-caliber teams. Most of that semi-pro stuff started to decline, and decline quickly, when Chip Ganassi showed up and destroyed the field at Indy in 2000. The arrival of the best CART team showed how big the gap was between them and rest of the IRL field. It wasn’t pretty. It happened again when Roger Penske rocked up at Phoenix in 2001 to start preparing for his assault on the 500.

I remember being at the Phoenix event in particular -- working on Davey Hamilton’s crew -- and seeing the Penske Dallaras roll out of their transporters and thinking about how everything that made the IRL unique was about to change.

As I’ve mentioned before, our TKM/Genoa Racing IRL team that debuted in 1997 with Greg Ray was the group that ran Mark Hotchkis and Dave DeSilva in Indy Lights in 1996. In every way, we were a glorified Lights team; our chief mechanic, Troy Stevens, was the only one of us with Indy 500 experience, and I think he did one or two 500s with a really small team years before. That was it. And despite our collective lack of IndyCar knowledge, we were rather decent and gave the Menards and Treadways and Panthers a hard time on occasion.

Take our same group, drop us into CART in 1997, and we’d have been confined to the back row. Having spent many years working on Atlantic and Lights teams, which ran with CART, there was no question as to which series was light years ahead of the other. There was no siege mentality I can recall. Not when most of the IRL races were so poorly attended. The old line of: “CART, where all the fans know the drivers’ names. IRL, where all the drivers know the fans’ names,” was both funny and somewhat true.

Some of the events like Dover and Charlotte were interesting, but less so when drivers or fans got seriously hurt or killed. An awful lot of free tickets were given away for WDW. That, too, was an interesting venue; we haven’t used a temporary oval in forever, so I’d use that as a guide.

Of the three owners you mentioned, I spoke with Hemelgarn earlier in the year while doing our feature on the craziest Indy 500 car of my lifetime, the 1982 Eagle Aviation DW2, and he was just as awesome as he’s ever been.

Q: Looking to the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans, all Hypercar/LMDh entries will be online (or have gone belly up) with likelihood of customer teams, and GT3 is in full effect. Have you heard anything on expanding the number of pit lane garages to accommodate more than 62 entries? Given current construction lead times, imagine planning/funding/bids would need to be in the works.

Kyle

MP: From a conversation with ACO (Le Mans track) president Pierre Fillon a few months ago, they are thinking about garage expansions, but we don’t need 100 cars in the race. I’ll happily trade a half-dozen LMP2 entries and lose some of the forgettable GT entries for more LMDh/GTP cars and stronger GT3 efforts.

Q: Has there been any discussion about one of the ovals in Mexico joining the IndyCar schedule during the coming years? The home crowd would be in for a treat as Pato O'Ward has shown he is talented and exciting on ovals.

An IndyCar Fan

MP: No, and I can’t think of any ovals that would meet IndyCar’s safety expectations, which is probably why the only thing I hear from IndyCar involves competing on a Mexican road course that meets FIA Grade 2 standards.

The fans with the signs spelled "Pato" wrong, but there'd be plenty of support for an IndyCar race in Mexico.  Mark Sutton/Motorsport Images

Q: Does anyone in the IndyCar paddock stay in touch with Cristiano da Matta? A real talent -- I wonder how many CART/Champ Car titles he would have won if he hadn’t jumped to Formula 1.

A real feel-good story about Cristiano: I was watching "Wind Tunnel" when Dave Despain announced his accident at Road America. Dave let viewers know that in lieu of flowers and gifts, Cristiano’s parents asked the public to make a donation to the "Hole in the Wall Gang" instead. I was really moved by this gesture and donated what I could afford at the time.

Many months later, I received a card from Brazil. Brazil? I opened the card and inside was a signed note from Cristiano thanking me. I was dumbfounded -- how cool and thoughtful? I keep the note in my copy of "Driven" by Jesse Alexander.

Jonathan and Cleide Morris, Ventura, CA

MP: That’s a great story. Few drivers were as loved as Shorty. Haven’t seen him in many years -- probably when he was competing in the ALMS -- and he’s just one of those people that make you smile the moment you see them.

One of my first major assignments from SPEED came in early 2007 when I was dispatched to the new Eagle Creek road course in Texas. The great Grand Am team owner Bob Stallings offered to give Shorty his first run in a proper race car after his big crash, and that’s what he did -- brought the Bob Stallings Racing Riley-Pontiac DP out for him to test and had Alex Gurney there to help with any coaching that was needed.

Shorty didn’t need it. He was a rocket within a few laps and it was so cool to be there and see it happen and send back interviews and footage of it all for Sunday’s "Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain." I found that footage last weekend on an old hard drive. I’ll chuck that up on my YouTube page when I get a chance.

Q: When you look at NASCAR, Formula 1 and IndyCar, IndyCar is the most entertaining series yet the least popular, by far. Formula 1’s planned U.S.-based formula series has me thinking. Would IndyCar be better off as a Liberty-owned series?

I want IndyCar to succeed but it seems like it’s going nowhere. Something needs to change. I don’t think a new car or a third manufacturer will fix the problem. Deep down I’m hope you read this and tell me IndyCar is fine, the future is bright and I have nothing to worry about.

Mark, Lockport, NY

MP: I’ve had the same thoughts about whether IndyCar would be in better hands with Liberty Media, and when it comes to the marketing and promotions side, yes, yes, and yes all day. Liberty has zillions at its disposal and a willingness to spend it on its open-wheel series, which is the exact opposite of what IndyCar’s experiencing.

But if I’m Liberty, and Roger Penske’s willing to sell me the series, I’m thinking more about killing my U.S. open-wheel competition than building up an old American series that would take money and eyeballs away from F1. For that reason alone, a sale to Liberty would scare the hell out of me.

Q: So glad to be able to see Tony Kanaan one more time at Indy. Is there any plan for him to get some extra seat time, maybe at Texas? What car number would he be driving?

Skip, Summerfield, FL

MP: With the team’s expansion to three full-time cars, I doubt they’d push to four before the 500, so I’d be on the lookout for T.K.’s McLaren program to focus solely on the Speedway. I don’t know what number he’ll use, but it will be new since 5, 6 and 7 are taken.

Q: We seem to always hear $6 million or $7 million to run a single car for the IndyCar season and about $1 million for a one-off entry at the Indy 500. If you break down where that money goes specifically to run one single race, considering that the engine and car already exist, how could it be that much? Is it hotel rooms? Is it tires? Is it engineering? And if it really does take that much money, how does anyone ever make a profit -- or do they?

Greg in Chicago

MP: It’s the one race of the year where teams can generate a decent profit, so the actual costs are different from the sale price for a seat. It’s crept towards $1.5 million, BTW. Think of it like the crazy once-a-year prices the Super Bowl’s broadcaster charges for commercials since the audience size is so much bigger for that game. An Indy-only engine least will cost $300,000 or so. A tire lease is around $75,000.

Consider the expenditures for a hospitality bus, a hospitality suite, staffing, consumables for the car, food, lodging, etc., and you start to grow the costs. And then there’s the part that is often overlooked: Post-race rebuilds. Factor in the servicing and rebuilds with the drivetrain, suspension, and the chassis -- all the bumps and knicks and bruises that occur over 500 miles -- and the price reflects a need to return the car to a state of race readiness after the event.

It's easy to spent just over $1 million to do the Indy 500, and that’s why we’ve seen the price move to a place where teams can clear a few hundred thousand, at minimum, for their effort.

Q: Just got our Iowa ticket renewal info. Outrageous -- ticket prices went up 60%. How do they expect anyone to afford the weekend tickets? Last year was $496 for two tickets. This year is $796 for the same two tickets.

They just lost that money from us, and I hope others follow. I understand the concerts, and adjusting for inflation. But this is treating IndyCar fans like trash. Get your big dollars from sponsors and TV deals. You’ve got to make it affordable for fans.

We went to four races last year and my 30th 500 this year. We are the fan base, and this stinks.

Outraged in Milwaukee,

Patrick

MP: I’m told the increase in the caliber of music acts is a big contributor to the price hikes. That one surprised me a bit because I can’t tell much difference between the four bands last July and the four for next July; they’re all really big acts, but apparently, Ed Sheeran and Carrie Underwood are ginormous and charge accordingly for their services.

The main issue here is if you went out to the parking lots at Iowa, you’d see lots of Fords, Chevys, Toyotas and a sprinkling of Audis and Acuras, but the new ticket pricing for 2023 is made for the Lexus, Porsche, and Ferrari crowd. And who knows, maybe there’s an untapped audience of wealthy IndyCar/music fans who’ve been waiting to take over Iowa Speedway.

If so, IndyCar’s got a windfall of cash on the horizon. But if that audience isn’t there, the event’s going to fail -- at least as an IndyCar date -- if those prices aren’t fixed to align with the spending capabilities of the regular IndyCar fan.

Q: I love IndyCar racing on ovals. I love the Iowa Speedway, so much so that when its future was in doubt I made the six-hour drive to watch a Ty Gibbs parade in the ARCA Series just to say that I got to see a race there live. When the news of IndyCar's return last year came, I immediately went to work on getting tickets. Between the races, concerts and the midway activities we had an incredible time, even taking a couple extra days to see other Iowa attractions.

When I hopped on the computer to start my ticket renewal process I was pretty shocked to say the least -- our tickets from last year had more than doubled in price. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that you can't expect them to bring in the top-notch acts that they and have the ticket price be the same as it would be at your local short track. Even the tickets at last year's weekend were already more than most of the tickets for the 500.

I'm just bummed out. Instead of going for the whole weekend we're only going on Saturday, and it's going to cost more than what our whole weekend did last year. It was such a cool event last year and had a lot of positive momentum that I hate to see it all come to a halt, because I've seen plenty others express their displeasure and aren't even coming back for one day, let only both days. I'm not even angry, just really disappointed.

Mitch from Michigan

MP: You speak for an awful lot of people who I’ve heard from, Mitch. This is IndyCar going full F1 on its fans and turning up its prices -- bear in mind that Penske Entertainment is the co-promoter with Hy-Vee -- to a level that feels more like the Miami GP or upcoming Las Vegas GP where you’ll need to sell a kidney to afford tickets.

The problem, though, is this isn’t Miami or Las Vegas. Or a popular event like Long Beach. Or a beloved one like Road America. It’s Iowa Speedway. In July, which is like taking a trip to the surface of the sun. And you’d need to be a giant country or pop music fan, with a lot of disposable income, to justify the crazy increase in pricing.

And what if you couldn’t give two farts about Ed Sheeran, Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney, or the Zac Brown Band and just want to watch a pair of IndyCar races? That’s the part I can’t get to make sense.

If Iowa fans are mad now, wait until they find out that someone at IndyCar booked the Zak Brown Band by mistake. Mark Sutton/Motorsport Images

Q: I have an idea for IndyCar that perhaps you can pass along. There’s no differentiation with chassis and no individual development allowed apart from few things like dampers and gearing or whatever. The series is getting stale without any development technologically. How about an idea where teams can differentiate between each other to modify more areas in the car? This is nothing new -- Jay Frye originally stated this would happen -- however, none of the new areas have been opened by IndyCar. I know this is going to increase the budget for teams and as usual the haves will benefit from this development and have-nots won’t have this luxury.

My suggestion at this point is to open areas for development by IndyCar, but limit it by only certain amount like maybe a million dollars like F1’s implementation of cost-cutting. Of course, that’s for the whole team’s spending -- in this case, IndyCar can allot $1 million towards development for teams to be used in selected areas that IndyCar can open up.

Shyam

MP: IndyCar reads the Mailbag each week, so your idea is being received directly. I hear you and love any reasonable pathway to restore individuality to the series. It’s what I grew up with and am so thankful for having for the majority of my career on the team side. That even filtered down to the junior formulas, BTW, until spec cars became the norm.

Realistically, different aero is the only way to make one DW12 stand out from another, and that’s among the great bottomless budget pits in racing. Teams wouldn’t get far on $1 million. First, there needs to be an appetite from the majority of IndyCar teams to open up a new area (or areas) of development, and I can only come up with a minority who would say yes to the proposition. Within that minority, there’s a tinier minority who can either afford to pay or would be willing to pay for it.

IndyCar has a decent number of team owners who are exceptionally wealthy; most of them also shy away from dipping into that wealth to pay for their racing teams to exist. That would mean new areas of development would require funding from big-spending sponsors or wealthy drivers, and since both are in short supply, we have a great idea with no way to fund it across the entire paddock.

Q: The mere mention of anything American combined with Formula 1 brings out some real venom from some diehard F1 fans. It could be Andretti Autosport, Colton Herta and now Logan Sergeant. For some reason it seems to be very important for them to tell us it will fail... and these are American fans. I don't get it.

Any thoughts?

Bill, Buffalo, NY

MP: None whatsoever, Bill. F1 Twitter has reached the limits of toxicity. As much as I wish IndyCar was the beneficiary of a "Drive To Survive"-type boost in popularity, I’m also wary of what else it could bring, like the slapdickery that’s emerged with F1 Twitter since DTS debuted. This might be the biggest Catch-22 that we have in racing.

Q: With the holidays approaching there was recent discussion of racing books. I remember before the Big Eagle died, Dan Gurney was working on a book. Has anything been mentioned recently about the status of the book? If I remember correctly Dan's widow, Evi, was going to finish it. I firmly believe it will be a great read about a racing icon for us older race fans.

Randy Miles, Waynetown, IN

MP: Continuing to work on captions for the book’s many photos, as I was last told by AAR’s Kathy Weida. Unrelated, I’ve loved seeing my wife and Evi shared kindnesses with each other in recent years. When my wife got sick, the Gurney family and Evi in particular were as sweet as they could be, with Evi sending Shabral scarves and flowers early in the cancer fight. And then Shabral started sending Evi flowers on major holidays, on Dan’s birthday, and for Thanksgiving last week. We all need love and some cheering up every now and then. So amazing to watch these two do that for each other.

Q: Out of Christian Lundgaard, David Malukas, Kyle Kirkwood, Devlin DeFrancesco, and Callum Ilott, who do you think will have one of those sophomore year breakout seasons like we saw with Palou in ’21 and McLaughlin last year?

Josh Crawford, Havertown, PA

MP: Great question that would be easier to answer a few months from now when we’ll know the identities of all their teammates and race engineers. Lundgaard jumps out first since he’s dealing with no changes other than car colors and a car number. After that, Ilott could be scary if his upcoming teammate adds to the team. More to come on the rest.

Q: I think there is another view on the changes that the series made to the IndyCar NXT prize funding. While it may not benefit the individual NXT series winner, it seems like it’s in the best long-term interests of IndyCar overall. This assumes the money to spend is a fixed amount right now -- if the economics change in the future, that could change things.

I look at this this way: If I’m an NXT team owner with an investment in a team, I would want the series to pay more prize money to the team as it is now doing rather than to one individual driver. This way this money can be invested back into the car, team and series. Regarding drivers moving up to IndyCar, it seems as if the pool of talented drivers and where they come from has changed. Of the prior 10 Indy Lights champions, I think only three are currently in IndyCar. Does this mean that the prize money was wasted on the other seven? Certainly two, Josef Newgarden and Pato O'Ward, are talented enough to have moved up regardless of the prize. Many of best recent "rookies" are coming from other series (McLaughlin, Palou, Ericsson, Rosenqvist, Grosjean, Lundgaard, Ilott).

If I’m a team owner in IndyCar or NXT, I would tell Penske Entertainment to invest more of the available money in the series and teams, and let me worry about how I choose and pay my drivers. I’d be very surprised if the team owners weren’t aware of the change in the prize money distribution. Why is this not the right way to look at the redistribution?

Anthony, Detroit, MI

MP: Because it’s wishful thinking. Prize money is paid to the top four finishers, with the lion’s share going to the winning teams. From 14 races last season, 14 were won by HMD Motorsports or Andretti Autosport. So, two teams, who are already in IndyCar, banked the majority of the prize money.

And heading into 2023 where HMD is fielding half the grid and Andretti has a quarter of the grid, we can reasonably expect the same two teams, who own 75 percent of the field and have the best collection of drivers, to get most of IndyCar’s money once again. This does nothing to help the other NXT teams grow and move upwards to IndyCar.

If IndyCar wanted to make a difference, it would create a Leaders’ Circle program and split the prize fund among all full-time NXT entries, because without that equal share, the rest can look forward to table scraps.

I loved the days of IndyCar teams fighting over the top driver to emerge each year from Indy Lights, but that’s been a rarity for quite some time. A champion with a meaningful advancement prize over $1 million to offer opens doors. A champion with little more than prodigious talent to offer is a lonely, rideless person.

You say you’d be surprised if Lights team owners/team principals weren’t aware of the change. Funny, that’s IndyCar’s party line. Be surprised. The first I learned about the bait-and-switch was after the banquet in September when those very same owner/managers reached out and said they were stunned to learn Linus Lundqvist was being given $500,000 and nothing more. IndyCar loves to cite a mid-January communication it sent to Lights teams where it wrote the champion would receive $500,000. Nobody said a thing about it back then because the belief was another $700,000-plus would be identified at some point with free tires or a free engine lease to make good on the series’ promise of $1.2 million or more it made to the owners/managers at the Chris Griffis Test.

So, in reaction to the absence of ultra-talented Indy Lights drivers with a decent budget to offer, IndyCar teams have turned to Formula 2 drivers who all have at least $2 million to give. Lundqvist, Penske Entertainment’s first Lights champion, with 500,000 theoretical dollars to spend, has zero teams talking to him because it’s too small of a scholarship. If he’s lucky, an IMSA team will pick him up and put him to work in sports cars and that $500K will stay in Penske Entertainment’s bank.

If NXT is going to become a place where it’s acceptable for supreme championship-winning talent to be overlooked if they don’t come with $1 million or more, which is what’s happening with Lundqvist, there’s no reason for that talent to waste its time in NXT. At that point, NXT becomes little more than a boarding school for the rich who can buy their way into IndyCar.

Lundqvist climbed almost all the way to the top of the ladder, only to find that somebody had taken away the final rung. Image by Penske Entertainment

Q: Any update on Chip Ganassi Racing? Alex Palou is the only remaining spokesman for the American Legion program of last year's three, with Tony Kanaan going to AMSP and Jimmie Johnson becoming part-owner of Petty GMS. It makes this Legion member wonder how the #BeTheOne message will continue to be spread in 2023. Will it be at the expense of increased member dues? With the IndyCar fans that mostly never served here at RACER demanding during the season for more funding from whatever source the Legion hierarchy there at the National Headquarters in Indianapolis was using to fund the sponsorship, where does that leave the individual annual dues-paying members or young service members that don't want anything to do with the veteran fraternal organizations because of the bars, the smoking or the gambling?

And for Kelly Crandall, is there a possibility of the Legion's sponsorship following Jimmie to Petty GMS?

Michael Phipps

MARSHALL PRUETT: I think your wallet is safe, Michael. I’ve heard about a variety of IndyCar teams trying to grab the American Legion deal…all without success. Last I heard, we’ll have an ongoing relationship between the American Legion and Palou’s No. 10 car.

KELLY CRANDALL: I have not heard of any partnerships or sponsors for Johnson in his limited races with Petty GMS, and there were no details given during the initial announcement earlier this month about what’s in store. According to the team, nothing has been finalized and conversations continue about 2023.

Q: We've seen some crossover of successful drivers in one series over to another in the past -- Mario in IndyCar, F1, and Daytona 500, Nigel Mansell from F1 to IndyCar, etc. Sadly, this is all too rare nowadays. I would love to see Daniel Ricciardo in the Indy 500, but seems like that's never happening. Curious to know who you all would want to see attempt crossing over to compete in F1/IndyCar/NASCAR, either past or present drivers?

Kyle, Westfield, IN

MARSHALL PRUETT: I’m by no means an expert on NASCAR, but I do love Ross Chastain’s scrappy nature and he’s obviously blessed with a ton of talent, so that’s my Cup pick. I’m sure there are plenty of F1 drivers who would do well at Indy, but the only one I’d want to see give it a go is George Russell. The kid lives to fight and his passion for racing really comes through when he drives and speaks. He’d fit right in.

Beyond that, the drivers I really want to see at Indy and in IndyCar in general are all found in IMSA. Colin Braun would be a revelation at the 500. Instead of messing around with more unproven F2 drivers, go get Ricky Taylor, Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron and win some races.

CHRIS MEDLAND: I’d obviously love to see Lewis and Max have a go at IndyCar as the obvious ones, but I also think the younger generation out of F2 -- George, Lando and Alex in particular -- would all fare pretty well after strong showings at that level more recently. I think Max in any car would be pretty fun, to be honest, so a NASCAR entry for him would be cool to see. He drives so much even in his spare time I think he’d cross over pretty successfully.

Carlos Sainz in a rally car would also be mega, to see him follow in his father’s footsteps, and if I had to talk about past drivers then I think Jenson Button could have transferred some of his strengths to aspects of NASCAR, but otherwise it would be Senna or Schumacher doing as Nigel did and transferring to IndyCar. I’ll admit it’s only really the current top-level drivers that I want to see do it because all too often we see drivers only take a look after their F1 careers, and I wish more F1 drivers raced other things (if only the calendar would allow).

KELLY CRANDALL: Lewis Hamilton got a taste of NASCAR when he did the ride swap with Tony Stewart at Watkins Glen years ago, and I’d love to see him get behind the wheel at a road course as Kimi Raikkonen did with Trackhouse Racing. Daniel Riccardo is another one from the F1 world that I’d love to see cross over. His personality and love of racing would be a big hit with NASCAR fans, I believe. From IndyCar, come on, Will Power! I was at an event with Will a few years where he said that Roger Penske told him that he needed to win the big stuff in IndyCar (the 500 and a championship) before he could try NASCAR, and well, he’s done that. Josef Newgarden, Colton Herta, and Graham Rahal would also be on my list.

Q: Although I try to follow racing pretty closely, I am unaware of many details about the new NASCAR Next Gen car. Who actually designed the car? Were any of the race teams actively involved in the detail design? Who constructs the base vehicle that is delivered to the teams? Does the car arrive almost complete, or is it relatively bare and the teams finish it by installing approved components? Are major chassis repairs performed by the teams, or by an independent company?

Bob from Tennessee

KELLY CRANDALL: NASCAR worked in partnership with its teams and OEMs to design the Next Gen car. David Wilson told RACER before the design unveil in May 2021 that the process of designing a new car included some “tense conversations” since everyone had different ideas, “but the starting point was refreshing in that we said, ‘Let’s not just take a baby step here, let’s take all the pent-up frustrations that we're shouldered as an industry for decades really and fix all of it.’”

Each OEM designed the look of their car. Once the prototypes started being built for testing, Richard Childress Racing came into the picture as the organization that worked with NASCAR to get the car on the track. The chassis (front/center/ rear and body mounts) are built by Technique Chassis, which is in North Carolina and local to teams. That is what gets delivered to the teams, and from there, all the other parts and pieces have to also be delivered from the supplied vendors, and teams put their cars together. All repairs have been approved by NASCAR, and parts and pieces need to be recertified and approved by NASCAR at the R&D Center after teams have made repairs.

Q: Capital is the name of the game for every driver aspiring to secure a seat for a season. But Cameron Das had the roughest season after winning the Euroformula Open Series title in 2021. Even with a small field he had to compete against, he is officially in the record books as the first U.S. driver to win an open-wheel series in Europe. He came a long way after winning the United States Formula 4 championship in 2016, but had a monstrous drought in between before his championship run. Das had his sights on Formula 2, but funding came up short. I hope he does not become another Sean Rayhall, who had to retire from open-wheel and sports cars before getting back into regional series.

It is very sad to see another U.S. talent on the sidelines, but will Cameron recover from his sabbatical season?

JLS, Chicago, IL

CHRIS MEDLAND: I’ll admit I’m not sure about Cameron’s plans for 2023, but the fact he didn’t race this year doesn’t bode well. The Euroformula Open title was great for him but did come in his fifth year in the series and he just doesn’t have momentum -- even less so now -- to keep climbing, so he’d need a big budget to progress further. Big budget tends to come from sponsors who want to be part of the journey, but there are other drivers with more momentum that are making a strong case for that backing such as Jak Crawford, who came in and outperformed Das in Euroformula Open for quite a lot of 2021 despite not doing the whole season.

I admire how Cameron has tried to keep his name out there with some excellent content via his Instagram feed, though, creating videos providing tips for racers as well as showing incidents from his own career. He’s built up a good following on there and it hopefully provides a new avenue to put his driving skills to good use that maybe wasn’t available to others in the past.

Q: What does "lack of overall engagement" mean regarding Mick Schumacher? Is it in regards to sponsor engagement, driving, debriefing?

Isaac

CM: It was regarding Mick’s connection to the team personnel he was working with regularly. According to sources, there just wasn’t the time and effort put in with his car crew and the wider team in that first season that might have helped the relationship click more, but also perhaps buy him a bit more time when the going got tough.

Did Schumacher struggle to build a rapport with his crew? Glenn Dunbar/Motorsport Images

Q: As the 2022 motorsports season fades to black we are left to wonder how to fill the dark winter days and nights before the 2023 season begins. How about an exercise in conjecture and speculation? Where would McLaren F1 be today if they had managed to hang on to Sir Lewis back in 2012? And conversely, how would Mercedes have fared without Hamilton?

Let the head games begin.

David

CM: I honestly don’t think McLaren would be in a much different position. I think that team was on the decline (which is something Hamilton could feel at the time) and it would have continued to be. It feels like the team would have followed a similar path because instead of having Fernando Alonso unhappy at the Honda partnership it would have been Lewis, the only difference being that Hamilton would have been even less patient after having been with the team so long up to that point. Perhaps the difference would have been an even earlier clear-out at McLaren for that reason, and you end up with a different boss than Zak Brown based on the timing.

With Mercedes, I think it would have struggled to be as dominant as it was for so long, because as good as he was I don’t think Rosberg would have delivered to the same level that Hamilton has for the entire time. He showed he could push him close but 2016 took everything out of Rosberg, and I think Mercedes would have needed a different headline driver at some point two or three years into its dominant seasons. That might have opened the door for Ferrari to take advantage in 2017-18.

Thinking about it, it might well have meant Hamilton joined Mercedes in about 2016-17, so would have been a couple of titles down on his current tally. Rosberg would probably be a double world champion and there would be another Mercedes driver -- Kimi perhaps after leaving Lotus after 2013? -- who would have won at least one title too in the first part of the hybrid era.

Q: Qualifying for F1 sometimes looks horrible due to some cars going so slow or almost stopping. (Vettel was certainly upset on the radio about the Red Bulls.) There is going to be a big accident at some point. A couple of suggestions: A minimum speed and/or teams not sending all the cars out in a pack. Please don't tell me it gets too crowded out there; 20 cars on a 2-4 mile circuit should not become a parking lot.

Next, I hate the moon-style hubcaps. The BBS-style wheels they use are classic but covered up. I'm sure it's for aero and brake efficiency,

T.C. Davis

CM: The thing is, in a competitive environment everyone wants the best track position and conditions, which come right at the end of the session when the track is rubbered in the most. Plus with the fact you have to refuel in the garage, with the time it takes to do two runs you’re almost all on the same schedule, so teams not sending cars out in a pack just isn’t going to happen.

I agree on minimum speed or minimum out-lap time. It’s the same for everyone, and if you don’t get your tires in the right window then that’s on you. Plus, cars are better at following in this era, so will be less impacted by a car ahead, and that minimum speed limiting how much space a driver can create would mean teams do have to think a little more about timing when sending the car out, perhaps slightly addressing your other suggestion.

Regarding the hubcaps, you’re right that it’s for aero reasons to control the flow around the edge of the car and stop more disturbed air being fired out around the wheels that would disturb the car behind. To me it’s a necessary evil that has helped the following improve this year, so hopefully that can stay and just be made to look a little nicer.

Q: Chris, after reading your article about ESPN’s viewership over the F1 season, I wondered how many people (like me) in the U.S. watch F1 TV instead of ESPN. Does F1 provide that information?

Tom Hinshaw, Santa Barbara, CA

CM: I spoke to F1 and they’re collating it all at the moment and will share in the coming weeks, so check back for the answer in a future Mailbag!

THE FINAL WORD

From Robin Miller's Mailbag, 24 November, 2015

Q: I see a lot of requests or suggestions from IndyCar fans to reduce the downforce and increase the horsepower. Didn’t CART do this in the last few years of the 1000hp engine war? If memory serves me right, the rules package kept reducing the size of the wings and at one point, they were running superspeedway wings at the short tracks and drastically reducing the underwing tunnel exits at Michigan and Fontana. During those races, the passing become non-existent. I’m not a mechanical engineer, but perhaps someone (Mike Hull?) has the downforce data from both eras and could weigh in on this? I would hate to see the close racing that we have go away just to watch a parade on the short ovals.

Matt Fraver, Columbus, OH

ROBIN MILLER: Mike Hull was kind enough to respond: “First, in total agreement that the close racing is full of entertainment. The skill set to race close is also dependent upon the trust that drivers have for each other. The cornering speeds of the cars can be altered by IndyCar tweaking of the aero package, as we have seen, to effectively change the race balance. If they get it right (and they normally do), it’s still really good two-abreast racing. If over-downforced in combination with tires that maintain grip for an entire run, you will see what happened at Fontana.

In 1999 when we ran the speedway wings at short ovals even with the big tunnels, we were at exactly half of the downforce level we have available now. The mid-corner speeds were significantly reduced but the lower drag of the wings meant the speeds at the end of the straights were higher -- going over 200mph into Turn 1 at Phoenix in testing -- (in testing, we are at 185mph with the current car) -- with only a small amount of downforce to try and handle the corner. The CART races in this low-downforce spec at times became processional as with the additional loss of downforce by being greatly affected by the wake of the car in front. There was not enough grip to make a pass even with almost twice the HP that we have now. The only way this low-downforce level of racing would work is if the level of grip was so low that tire degradation became significant (like we have now at Texas) with the result that the difference between new and old tires creates the overtaking opportunities.”