The RACER Mailbag, August 2

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.

NOTE: Thanks to everyone who sent letters in response to the recent Guest Mailbag by IndyCar president Jay Frye. Your feedback has been forwarded to IndyCar - MG

Q: What are the ramifications of disqualification from an IndyCar event once it is underway? It makes sense that the driver would score no points for that event, but what other outcomes are associated with a disqualification?

Leslie Bissell, Kansas City, KS

MARSHALL PRUETT: All depends on the disqualification. If it’s the two rookies at Iowa, they both scored points -- five apiece -- because IndyCar pays points for every position. But there’s a distinction here where they were disqualified from competing in the race which, in my best Buxton-esque Drive To Survive voice, means they were no longer allowed to participate in the race while it was happening.

That’s different than being excluded from the results, which is a post-race penalty that treats the offending team or driver like they were never there, and for that to happen, it would need to be a huge violation of whatever sorts.

Foyt’s Pedersen was parked for being too slow, so the DQ was the penalty. To his credit, he learned from his mistakes while being lapped at Mid-Ohio and didn’t put up a silly fight in the second race as the field streaked by. For Coyne’s Robb, they were the cause of the penalty for sending him without a wheel attached to the car, and then failing to tell him to stop. Robb paid the price for their errors, and if there was an unpublished monetary fine assessed to the team by the series, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Q: I have always admired and supported Roger Penske. He and I grew up a few miles from each other, although I was on the wrong side of the tracks. I admired him as a driver and then, of course, as an amazing team owner. I was elated when he bought IndyCar and IMS, and I truly believe he has saved the series.

Having said all that, I must complain about the excessive amount and length of the commercials during the Iowa doubleheader. Before I retired, I was a chief financial officer at several organizations for 40 years, so I understand the importance of revenue streams. Even so, the TV commercials, especially for the Sunday race, spoiled the entire viewing experience. From the time the green flag dropped until the checkers waived, there were 12 commercial breaks in a short race! The split screen technique does little to help, especially when the only sound you can hear is the overly loud babbling of the commercials.

Contrast that with the Formula 1 race broadcasts which run without commercials.

Penske is brilliant and surrounds himself with smart people. Can't they do something to produce a better experience for the TV race fans?

Bob Isabella, Mentor, OH

MP: Roger Penske and IndyCar do not place commercials in the NBC broadcasts, so I’m not sure what else to say here, Bob. It’s like blaming NBA commissioner Adam Silver for having too many commercials during a basketball game on ABC.

Roger Penske's influence is far-reaching, but it doesn't extend to controlling commercial breaks on NBC. Joe Skibinski/Penske Entertainment

Q: I know IndyCar is very cost-conscious, but are there any plans to expand the schedule? I saw your article about wanting more short tracks, which would be great. But is there any desire among the teams and/or IndyCar to expand the schedule to 20 or more races?

If so, I've heard a lot of negativity about Watkins Glen. It seems like a great track for IMSA; wondering whether IndyCar would be interested in returning?

Patrick H

MP: I’ve gotten conflicting messages when I’ve asked about a calendar expansion, so I’m not sure. I would say that from a practical standpoint, many teams -- but not all of the teams -- are stretched to their financial limits at the current $6-8 million it costs to run a car for a 17-race season, so the idea of taking it out to 18-20 would come with a need to increase the Leaders Circle contracts to help offset things.

There’s another item to consider with the growth of the grid to 27 full-time cars, and no increase in the size of the Leaders Circle -- it was cut, actually, by $150,000 this year to $910,000 -- with the series’ owners holding firm to offering 22 Leaders Circle contracts. Doing more races, which costs the teams more operationally, and would increase engine lease and tire lease prices due to the added mileage, would only widen the gap between the series-assisted 22 and the other five or more entries who don’t receive the subsidy.

I know, something simple like schedule expansion comes with a bunch of other factors that kill the fun… All that aide, who wouldn’t want to go back to The Glen? The track has a new president, so never say never.

Q: Instead of asking when we will race at (insert the track name), what tracks in the U.S. could IndyCar run on that they aren't racing at now? Car most likely go to? Got a favorite?

Steve Coe, Vancouver, WA

MP: If I had my say, and because I love anarchy, we’d revive the two Evel Knievel street races with built-in jumps at San Jose and Baltimore. But since that ain’t happening, Watkins Glen stands out as one that could have greater success today with IndyCar than it did when small crowds took it off the calendar after a two-year return from 2016-17. I base that on the noticeable increase in attendance for June’s IMSA race, so if the same crowd or bigger appeared, I think the track and IndyCar would be pleased.

We have the usual suspects with Milwaukee and whatnot, but if we’re looking for turnkey places, WGI is where I’d start.

Q: With the Nashville race moving to the season finale for 2024, and Laguna Seca moving to March, that leaves a big void on the West Coast. It puts Portland out west all by itself. Any possibility of Sonoma being added to the schedule? And the talks of Milwaukee replacing the second IMS road course race… that’s just typical IndyCar. Instead of expanding the schedule, they just replace venues. All we hear is they want a 20-race season, but they are stuck on 17.

AE, Danville, IN

MP: Not sure I follow. We’d have the same amount of West Coast races, but instead of two of them being stacked at the end of the season with Portland and Laguna, we’d have two stacked towards the beginning with Laguna and Long Beach, and then a late return to Oregon.

Sonoma was a ghost town on our last few visits, and I can’t see why that would change unless the track and IndyCar spent a fortune to promote it. We barely have enough people at Laguna, which is a longer drive from the Bay Area than Sonoma, so we’d probably lose some people from one to barely boost another. I’d be the happiest guy here if both of my home tracks were capable of drawing meaningful IndyCar crowds, but since that’s not the case, I’ll keep hoping Laguna recaptures more of its former open-wheel glory. Having been there for its peak CART years where it took an hour or more to get into the main gate because race traffic was backed up for miles, I hate being able to cruise in on race day with no delays.

Some significant expenditures are on the way for 2024 with the move to hybridization, and that’s not just the engines, but also some major component updates for each entry that aren’t cheap. In a year where off-season costs will spike, dialing up the running costs by pushing the calendar out to 20 would have a lot of team owners hitting local dispensaries for items to calm their nerves.

Q: I know Colton Herta is not having a great year. A lot of it is bad luck mixed in with some bad team strategy… and a few of his own mistakes. But when he’s on, he is as fast as anyone. I would love to see him in F1, not only representing American but representing IndyCar. For the life of me I don’t understand why he didn’t do a winter regional formula series to gather the required Super License points. Yeah, I’ve heard all about how he shouldn’t have to do that, but the fact is he did need to do that.

As much as I love IndyCar and think it’s more competitive, it’s not the top level of motorsports.

Ken, Lockport, NY

MP: Don’t underestimate the value of being taken seriously. A desperation move where a race-winning IndyCar driver competes in the equivalent of Little League games in the hope of making it to F1 generates life-long headlines that are nothing but embarrassing. If you have to get on your hands and knees and beg and demean yourself to get someone to marry you, is that a marriage worth having? Maybe if that marriage is to Red Bull or Ferrari or Mercedes. But would you become a joke just to marry an AlphaTauri or Alfa Romeo? Come on, man.

And if F1 meant that much to him, he could have and would have done it, but since he didn’t, we can assume his need to do F1 rates below your need for him to do F1.

As for where IndyCar sits compared to F1 since I’ve been alive, we had a brief period in the early 1990s where the CART IndyCar Series scared F1, but other than that blip on the radar, nobody with a proper sense of the past and present would claim IndyCar is the top level of motorsport, and that’s nothing new.

Coming soon to a winter series near you. Or not. Motorsport Images

Q: Do you have any idea why IndyCar doesn't make rock stars out of its drivers? F1, NASCAR, and even Formula E do it, and it seems like most of the fans eat it up.

Sanford, London

MP: It hasn’t been IndyCar’s strength for a good while, and that spans the old IRL, Champ Car, and today’s IndyCar Series. Romain Grosjean was IndyCar’s most popular driver the moment he arrived, but that was due to the crazy fire and death-threatnin’ story that went worldwide and traveled with him to the series. He’s been overtaken by Pato O’Ward, and you can thank his Arrow McLaren team and Pato’s big personality for taking him to the top.

I know some of the series’ most popular drivers have, in recent years, begged for race footage to share with their followers -- many who aren’t based in the U.S. -- to help grow IndyCar’s fan base and global footprint, and they’ve been met with responses asking for exorbitant rights fees.

Treating drivers like a profit center instead of the series’ best promotional allies who are armed with whatever they need to reach more fans to help the series is one of life’s great mysteries.

As an aside, Formula E has many excellent drivers, but like Josef Newgarden or Scott Dixon, they walk through airports and dine in restaurants without anyone noticing, and half of NASCAR’s Cup drivers would probably fall into that category as well outside of the series’ most popular regions. F1? That’s the silly part; even the worst drivers and team principals get recognized wherever they go, all thanks to Netflix…

Q: Do you see any chance of IndyCar using the green-white-checker that NASCAR employs? It seemed like in Race 2 at Iowa some teams were thinking of coming in for tires before IndyCar closed the pit lane. I know only a handful of cars were on the lead lap, but if they knew they were going to have a shot at restart that might have created some more drama and excitement for the end.

Andy

MP: I don’t. IndyCar has also said it has no interest in the GWC routine.

I’ve never cared for the approach where people can drive like idiots in the final laps with no concerns about their bad behavior shortening the race and taking away their chances of a good finish. I also like knowing a race is going to be however long a series said it would be, whether it’s capped by laps like in road racing or distance with ovals. If the Indy 500 is meant to be a contest to see who can cover 500 miles before anyone else, then it should be 500 miles long, not some vague amount that can grow to 505 or 512 and keep changing if drivers repeatedly cause mayhem. Just feels wrong to me to have endless do-overs.

At Iowa, there weren’t many, but we had enough laps to determine a winner under green and so they raced. All the cars on the lead lap had an opportunity to perform at a higher level than Josef Newgarden, but didn’t, and he won. Seems like the race played out naturally, so I’m satisfied.

Q: I am anxiously awaiting the release of "Lionheart" on HBO Max. Any idea when it will be available for streaming?

Melly, Ohio

MP: Last I heard, it was late this year or early next.

Q: I'm troubled by IndyCar president Jay Frye's explanation in his Guest Mailbag that "we don't have overtime. We don't do that."

IndyCar is trying to get the benefit of NASCAR’s overtime without implementing NASCAR’s procedure. I was never a fan of the NASCAR overtime, but it's hard to deny that one or two attempts; it works.

When IndyCar tries to reverse-engineer -- on the fly -- a green-flag finish, it appears to most level-headed sports fans that they are making it up as they go along. ‘Hey, we may go red (at a time no other series would); we may close the pits for 10 laps (?!).

What's next, one car is facing the wrong way so just have every car drive in reverse? Don't say they wouldn’t do that, because I never thought they would just, you know, not open the pits for a while, or restart from pit lane.

Luke

MP: Even if it doesn’t seem like it, the procedures used at Iowa came from IndyCar’s rule book.

Q: Can't say that Pocono was my favorite facility to attend, but I generally enjoyed the races on TV. For IndyCar however, it's associated with much trauma and heartache. Is there just something inherently wrong with the track's design or build that makes it so dangerous for open-wheelers?

Shawn, MD

MP: I bet IndyCar would put on an incredible race with today’s version of the DW12. NASCAR just packed the place, which is encouraging. The crash that killed Justin Wilson was a fluke. Could have happened in any previous era with any other Indy cars. The crash that sent Wickens into the fence and did so much damage led to some improvements as well that go beyond the aeroscreen, but it was, as you mentioned, the two severe crashes in a short span of time at Pocono, along with the jarring looks of the fence repairs, that left the paddock with no appetite to return.

There’s nothing inherent to the track’s design that I can think of that makes it dangerous. I’ve seen deaths and major physical trauma at slower tracks, so I don’t think the track layout itself is the issue.

Pocono could still host open-wheelers, but traumas have dampened the IndyCar paddock's appetite for a return. Scott LePage/Motorsport Images

Q: Regardless of the date, do you have knowledge about if the County of Monterey and IndyCar have an agreement on the sanction fee for the 2024 Monterey Grand Prix, or is that now under the purview of the new operator Friends of Laguna Seca?

Paul, Carmel Valley, CA

MP: The county is still in charge, so the new management amendment that includes the FLS working with A&D Narigi has a direct and extremely healthy relationship with the county at the center of everything. I don’t know what the sanction fee is or will be because I haven’t looked into it, but there’s a date on the next IndyCar schedule with Monterey on it early in the year, so we can assume all of the required parties plan to keep the event going with a new contract.

Q: I think IndyCar is missing the boat when Jay Frye says he’s happy with "just the 100 Days To Indy" format versus an entire season format for a docuseries. F1 gained a huge following by documenting its entire season on "Drive To Survive." It gave viewers a chance to gain insight into many drivers and team personnel. "100 Days" was great, but basically only featured a few drivers and left viewers wondering what’s happens after the Indy 500. I think featuring an entire season would encourage people to follow the races all year instead of for two months.

Joe Weiss, Spooner, WI

MP: The party line within IndyCar has been that it likes and wants to stick with the 100 Days format, so I wouldn’t expect Jay to break ranks on it. The underlying reality is if there was a major network or streamer that wanted to do a season-long docuseries, the 100 Days format would not exist.

Said another way, if Netflix rang tomorrow and said it wanted to do a full season of Drive To Survive: IndyCar, the series wouldn’t turn it down unless it was limited to March through May. It would say yes, please, and thank you.

Q: Why is RC Enerson’s name not in the conversation for a sub role for Simon Pagenaud, or any of the possible openings for silly season next year? It seems he can do a lot with a little and is impressive.

David, Texas

MP: That’s a great point, and I’m guilty as well because his name never came to mind as a sub. I’d assume he reached out to MSR, but I’d also say that familiarity is a powerful thing. I doubt RC and Shank know each other very well, whereas Shank’s been around Daly at every event for many years, and Conor was full-time with ECR through Detroit, so he’d stand out as someone who’s fresh and in the groove in a way that RC would not.

Shank has plans for Tom Blomqvist, so Toronto made sense to get a sneak peek with him. Daly at Iowa was a no-brainer, but if he wasn’t available, a JR Hildebrand would have been a strong pair of oval hands to employ. Hiring RC off one IndyCar oval race would not have been the obvious move.

MSR also met with Linus Lundqvist during the off-season -- Lundqvist traveled to the shop in Ohio, I believe -- and has kept in constant touch regarding opportunities for 2024. He’s been chasing MSR, and a few other teams, quite hard, and his persistence has been rewarded. When Simon was advised by IndyCar to skip Nashville, Shank and Jim Meyer saw an opportunity to use the event as a no-risk chance to work with Lundqvist.

I don’t know if RC has been as persistent with MSR for the better part of a year in the same way like Linus, but if it’s a road course and Pagenaud’s still sidelined, it’s hard to argue against Enerson as being worthy of consideration.

Q: I just watched "Stewart" for the fourth time and I'm amazed about the complete lack of safety in F1 racing at that time. I went to my first Indy/USAC race in Phoenix in 1965 and guard rails were everywhere -- Indy, Trenton, Milwaukee… Riverside was different, but spectators were never unprotected. These F1 guys had nothing more than a chain-link fence, a tree, or spectators/camera men to stop them from complete disaster. No wonder so many great drivers were lost in the 1960's and ’70s. Thank God all of motorsports have gone to great lengths to make racing safer.

Joe, CA

MP: Amen, Joe. It wasn’t until I fractured my wrist while crashing in qualifying at Sears Point, aka Sonoma Raceway, in 1990, where I questioned why the tire barriers atop Turn 2 stopped well short of where an idiot like myself could go headfirst into the end of those tires with the right side of my Formula Ford, and hard into the exposed earth embankment with the left side of the car. I’d driven through the corner countless times before, had seen it from all angles as a fan and spectator, but it never dawned on me that I suffered from the same lack of imagination as the people in charge of safety at the track because my crash wasn’t strange or special.

All of that rock-solid earth should have been fronted by a few rows of tires, but it took getting my hand caught and twisted in the spinning steering wheel to realize it and suggest a fix. I was lucky. Writing this on the evening of what would have been Justin Wilson’s 45th birthday, I’m further reminded how it’s the truly sad and horrific stuff that tends to lead to real innovation.

We've come a long way since the days when chain link fencing represented the high-water mark of trackside safety features, although in the case of the 1967 Nurburgring 1000Km, it did a miraculously semi-OK job of catching Andrea de Adamich's Alfa Romeo T33.  Rainer Schlegelmilch/Motorsport Images

Q: Given Hamilton’s qualifying pace at Hungary, might this signal the beginning of a noticeable upturn for Mercedes?

Aston Martin clearly seems to have gone off the boil after a very impressive start. Makes me wonder if all the effort that has gone into the new facilities has been a distraction, but what is thought to be the real reason?

I really think that de Vries' departure was premature, but we also know that is how Dr. Marko operates. I’ve read that some in the F1 community also believe that it was premature, and Tsunoda had some very positive thoughts about the detail of de Vries’ feedback. So, what is the general consensus about these latest Dr. Marko maneuverings?

Since it has come to light that there are two or three other teams other than Andretti interested in being on the grid, this makes me worried as to how all this may turn out. Are his chances looking better or worse than before? Clearly he was right about the greed factor, but I also wonder if some of the naysayers are worried about being shown up if Andretti Autosport joins?

Don Hopings, Cathedral City, CA

CHRIS MEDLAND: I’d actually say it won’t be that noticeable in terms of Hamilton and Mercedes -- the thing that they seem to do better than their rivals at the moment is be consistently third quickest, while the others generally rotate between P2 and much lower. That steady stream of points is what’s put Hamilton so close to Alonso in the drivers’ standings and opened up a buffer in second for Mercedes in the constructors’.

But Mercedes hasn’t spoken in terms of a major step forward at any stage, with a focus on more radical changes again for 2024, so I expect more of the same post-break.

Aston Martin, meanwhile, is still ahead of where it was last year. That’s the barometer to remember, after what was a huge step over the winter when the new factory will have been the biggest project. But I do think it’s a surprise how Alonso spoke of huge development potential and then it hasn’t delivered on that, so it just seems that Aston got a jump on a direction that McLaren and even Mercedes have since followed.

It was definitely premature for Nyck, but at the same time it wasn’t just about him. Marko felt he’d seen enough to suggest he wasn’t a better prospect than Tsunoda, and had two strong options in Daniel Ricciardo and Liam Lawson. The whole point of that team is to find future Red Bull drivers, not for them to just be good enough to be in F1, and I’d say it’s a move totally in keeping with what Marko has always done. It’s certainly not hurt Perez to have a bit more pressure from Ricciardo being a step closer to a return to that team.

As for Andretti, I think his chances look better than before. From little chats here and there and what I can piece together, his is the most complete and rounded setup that includes an established racing team and global automotive manufacturer. When compared to the others, it stands out as having the best chance. 

I don’t think anyone’s worried about being shown up, though. Haas needed Ferrari support to be competitive straight away, while no other team has come into F1 new in the past 20 years and been able to do that. It could well be that Andretti can be much closer or a midfield runner based on the prescriptive regulations we now have and how tight it’s made much of the field, but all the existing teams back their experience and welcome the sporting challenge. Just maybe not the financial one.

Q: Is Haas getting any closer to understanding its tire management problem? Again, in Hungary, they qualify pretty well (Hulk anyway) and start out looking pretty racy, and then they just fade and finish at the back of the field. It's got to be really frustrating for everyone involved, and it’s hard to watch as a fan. Under the cost cap rules they should have more opportunity for improvement upgrades than almost everybody else, but it doesn't look like there's any progress.

Alan, Orlando, FL

CM: Speaking to Kevin Magnussen, he says Haas does understand the issue, but putting in solutions is the harder part. There are upgrades planned for later in the year that he says the team can get a little bit excited about, but until those arrive then it’ll remain really tough. Plus, Haas hasn’t always had the best development rate -- that’s perhaps the penalty of being such a small team compared to the others -- so the gains it does make often get overshadowed by bigger steps for others.

Guenther Steiner has made it clear that he wants the team to avoid a repeat issue next season, and so is willing to give it more time developing the 2023 car to ensure it knows how to fix the weakness.

Q: With Andretti’s F1 bid still up in the air, is there a chance another team -- say, McLaren -- swoops in and gets GM?

Mark

CM: McLaren must look pretty attractive to a few manufacturers now after the recent steps forward, but as it stands I don’t think it’ll be GM that it takes. From what I’ve been told, GM has said it’s Andretti or nothing for it in F1, and if its bid is snubbed it won’t be coming back.

Whether that’s true or just posturing remains to be seen, and maybe McLaren would try and open talks if Andretti is unsuccessful, but I don’t think it’ll get anywhere before we know the outcome of that bid.

Haas understands why its cars eat tires so fast, but that doesn't mean a quick fix is on the horizon. Michael Potts/Motorsport Images

Q: So, Formula 1 is in summer break. Now what? With the spending cap, can the teams that already have gone to “B spec” cars (Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren) afford to do any more major updates? Or will there be financial pressure to move on to next year’s cars?

It seems to me that a team such as Alpine, whose season has turned to you-know-what, has every incentive to move on to 2024. However, for the three squads previously mentioned plus Aston, second through fifth in the constructor’s championship is entirely up for grabs -- and the millions that entails.

Side note: for all the dominant seasons being compared to Verstappen’s, Jim Clark’s 1965 run seems to be forgotten. Clark and his Lotus 33 had the world championship locked up so early that he could go off and run the Indy 500. He also was, like Verstappen this year, widely known for being by far the easiest on tires.

Al, Boston

CM: Most teams will have already committed to updates by now, and will be focusing on 2024 in terms of other developments. The time it takes from signing-off the design of an upgrade and getting it on the car can be a couple of months, so there could be new parts after the break that were finalized weeks ago.

But there is also learning to be had for 2024 because of the stability of the regulations, so some teams might look to develop the current car for longer because it’s performance that will also help it next year, or at the very least give it knowledge to help next season. Aston Martin insists it will be developing aggressively and it did have the most wind tunnel time of all those teams, so I expect to see new parts from all of the teams.

Good point on Clark -- he won the title at round seven of 10, and that was after missing Monaco (the second round) to win at Indianapolis. He wasn’t alone in choosing Indy due to the clash that year, but he did give up the F1 championship lead to nearest rival Graham Hill, who won Monaco. For Clark to come back and reel off five straight wins to take the title was remarkable given the reliability issues at the time -- he failed to finish any of the final three races after that!

THE FINAL WORD

From Robin Miller's Mailbag, August 3, 2016

Q: What is Roger Penske like? We fans see him interviewed, and he is always correct and professional. He is known to be loyal to his employees. He is, with great justification, universally respected within the sport. But is he liked? Do you like him? Is he witty, interesting, personable, a good fellow to have a few beers with? (Assuming he didn’t have companies and around the world to run and could find the time.)

Jenks

ROBIN MILLER: I’ve often said R.P. is the smartest man I’ve ever met, and certainly the most polished and professional in motorsports. He’s very clever and never tells you much unless he wants it out there. He is one of the most powerful people in American business because he always delivers. Is he liked? We’ve had a couple of memorable feuds (including standing on pit road at Pocono before the race screaming at each other) in the past five decades, but Roger doesn’t hold grudges -- at least professionally -- and always treated me with class, even though maybe I didn’t deserve it a couple times.

I think more people respect him than really like him because, honestly, he’s not easy to get to know and he’s always flying around the world, so it’s not like he hangs out a lot. But his good friends and employees from days gone by are his true pals, and the loyalty factor at Team Penske speaks volumes.

I’ve only seen The Captain really let his hair down a couple times and once was in Mexico City after the CART race in 1981, when he got drunk on the school bus with everyone else. Sure wish I had a camera phone back then. I could trade that video for some Penske stock.