The RACER Mailbag, June 3

Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 12pm ET each Monday will be saved for the following week.

Q: What changed from last year's Indy 500 to this year's that lead to so much competitive racing?  Last year, I remember lots of discussion about how hard it was for the DW12 with the hybrid to pass, even being third or fourth in line.  This year, there were multiple three-car battles at the front on restarts, along with side-by-side action deeper in the field, at least along the straights.

Was there a change in the rules or car specs that allowed this to happen? Is this just normal year-to-year development? Did the weather uncertainty add that extra bit of urgency?  A combination of the above? Something else entirely?

Steven, Las Cruces, NM

MARSHALL PRUETT: No rule changes. Improved second-year 500 hybrid tires from Firestone and thick air that made ample downforce were my two takeaways. 

Q: I've followed RLL for years and have read about their changes to try to improve.  Unfortunately, those changes didn't seem to bear any fruit.  But then we get to 2026. Three podium finishes for Graham (9th in points) and several good drives by Louis Foster are showing very nice gains in performance by the team.  What are you hearing during your talks with RLL drivers, owners, and team members?  From the fan side, it's good to see them making gains.

How is Schumacher?  Did he get hurt earlier this year?  Schumacher has shown speed at time. I haven't been surprised that he hasn't been dominating like some internet prognosticators have predicted.  IndyCar is a different animal than F1 and the other cars he's driven.  It takes time to adjust and learn a new car with no power steering, a significant rear weight bias, extremely limited testing opportunities, and new tracks that include ovals.  He's learning.  Here's to hoping he has a solid second half of the season.

John Balestrieri, Waukesha, WI

MP: The team has assembled a lot of engineering talent, but has more gains to make on that front. Foster’s season had been like a light switch – on and off, with no warning for when either will occur – and that’s not helping his development. He’s a special talent who needs more from his timing stand. Graham and Yves Touron, who I’ve always been a fan of, are hitting their stride. And Mick’s got Eddie Jones back, and hopefully, for the rest of the season.

Anybody who predicted Mick would dominate is an idiot. He has talent aplenty, but nobody other than Palou has dominated. You could know nothing about IndyCar and still know Mick was never going to be an impactful driver in Year 1 for a rebuilding RLL. But he should be more settled as we get rolling in the second half of the season with the same race engineer in Eddie Jones looking after his car.

GOAT training camp. Joe Skibinski/Penske Entertainment

Q: Time for the annual analysis of how much of the Indy 500 race broadcast was lost to advertising this year! And IndyCar is not making it easy on me anymore since their YouTube uploads don't cut out the segments lost to commercials.

Nonetheless, I powered through, despite the risks of accidentally missing a couple of ad breaks. I also completely removed the red flag period from the calculation because the official race time also does not count it (it was a hair over 10 minutes long and if you include it, the time from green to checkered flag is a bit over 10 minutes longer than the official race time).

And let me just say I've been surprised at how few complaints I've seen about it this year. Sure, the usual suspects are complaining as much as ever before, but in the wider picture things seem a lot calmer this year. Of course I don't see how many complaints don’t make it into the Mailbag, so for all I know you threw out a lot of complaints this year.

But enough rambling. This year's procedure: Normally I simply subtract the green-to-checker time on the VOD from the official race time, but because the ads aren't cut from the VOD anymore I had to actually add up the time for the ad breaks. There is an unofficial industry standard of not dedicating more than 10 minutes in a half-hour programming block to ads, any airtime lost to ads that is under this is within norms, though approaching it can certainly be excessive for a live broadcast with no scheduled interruptions of the action.

The official elapsed race time was 3h05m09s, so to break broadcast TV norms we would have to lose over an hour of race time – an accusation that has been levelled against past Indy 500s, but which to date has never actually been true.

I found 36m07s lost to ads, leaving the Fox broadcast as having shown 2h29m02s. Even accounting for the possibility I missed a couple of ad breaks while adding things up, there is no way I missed anywhere near half of the ad breaks, as would be needed to have actually lost over an hour of race time.

And some stats I have never included in the past because I never had to do it this way: The average time for each ad break was 2m25s, and there was an average of 10 green flag laps between ad breaks.

'Til next year! 

FormulaFox

MP: Thank you for your stopwatch service. A great ending makes it easier to ignore the shortcomings.

Q: With all the money that seems to be flowing into the sport these days from the likes of Towriss, Gelov, and Ault, I just would like to ask if any of the teams with such supporters have offered a war chest to Álex Palou’s strategist/wizard/conjurer, Barry Wanser, for his services? Andretti in particular is the richest team in the series, and Kirkwood seems like he could really contend for the title if given a better support structure. Surely they’ve got to be making some overtures to Wanser, who I think is easily the finest strategist in the sport. 

Also, the three markets below Indianapolis in terms of TV for the 500 were Dayton, Cincinnati, and Louisville. I think it’s time to evict the F-150s from Kentucky Speedway and have another superspeedway race on the calendar. I would certainly attend if it happens.

Taylor, KY

MP: Well, Kirkwood does have Bryan Herta, who’s regarded as one of the three best race strategists in IndyCar. Also, Palou is known to play an active role in race strategy with his car prior to the race, so while Barry is the head coach once the game starts, we can say that Palou is deeply involved in developing the game plan and isn’t simply receiving taking orders the entire time.

That’s the area to focus on here. Together, Alex and Barry form a strategy unit that is hard to beat, and it’s made special by their collaborative approach. I’d imagine more drivers will start taking a greater role in that regard.

I haven’t been to Kentucky Speedway in decades but would love to go back.