700 replies to this topic

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Andreti stavlja kvalifikaciono krilo!

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Cirkus!

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Njugarden se skrkao, opet zuto...

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Opet zuto za obaveznu zamenu guma

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Sato izazvao jos jednu masovku...

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7 bolida na stazi (+ Karpenter i Hildebrand koji su se vratili nakon opravki i rade krugove da prestignu one koji su ispali). Farsa.

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Gotovo pod zutim, Pauer ispred TK-a i Pazenoa.

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Ovo je uz VN SAD 2005 jedna od nafarsicnijih trka koje sam ikada gledao. Totalna Naskarizacija, a nakon zadnjeg restarta je i stil trkanja licio na Naskar sa dve kolone red po red jedan pored drugog.

 

Jedino dobro sto se niko nije povredio.

 

Mnogo sam razocaran.

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Power wins Texas wreckfest
Saturday, 10 June 2017
By Marshall Pruett / Images by LePage & Levitt/LAT


Team Penske's Will Power dominated an ugly night of constant crashes, blistered tires and respect-free driving at Texas Motor Speedway. The 2014 series champion took the checkered flag under the final yellow of the event with his No. 12 Chevy as only six cars were left on the lead lap and only nine were running at the finish. Ten of the 22 starters ended their nights against the walls.

• Final box score

Chip Ganassi Racing's Tony Kanaan, who was directly involved in two of the crashes that depleted the field, recovered from receiving a stop-plus-20-second penalty and being two laps down to take second in his Honda-powered entry. Power's Penske teammate Simon Pagenaud took third on a night where Hondas were strong early but had no answer for the Penske Chevys as the sun fell on the horizon.

"It was very intense," said Power, who led 180 laps of 248 laps, earned his 31st career victory, and moved up to fifth in the championship standings. "I'm so stoked; shows you how good that Chevy engine is. This feels awesome. I wanted to win here in Texas and we did it. We're coming, we're coming."

Pagenaud didn't have enough to challenge Power, but did his best to play the role of tail gunner in the final laps.

"It was very much pack racing," said the defending series champion. "I was trying to protect him, which worked out really well. It got a little crazy at the end."

Graham Rahal and Gabby Chaves drove clean races, barring the lap where Chaves hit and nearly spun Rahal on the approach to Turn 3, as the two protagonists survived to take fourth and fifth. Marco Andretti, who lost a lap during a long pit stop to replace his rear wing, fought his way back to sixth on a night where stupidity and aggression were seen on a regular basis.

Only CGR's Scott Dixon and Andretti Autosport's Takuma Sato, who were directly behind Power with five laps remaining, had a chance to challenge for the win. But a silly error by Sato – one where he dropped his left-front tire onto the grass on the front straight for no reason – triggered the last caution of the evening which ended the race behind the pace car.

With Sato's car in the midst of a spin due to driving off the pavement, his broadslide allowed the Andretti car to hit Dixon's left-rear wheel guard, which caused Dixon to spin. Dixon's CGR teammate Max Chilton, left with nowhere to go, plowed into the points leader, and thanks to Sato, second and third place were out of the race, Chilton's chances of a top five finish were lost, and Conor Daly was left sitting stalled in the Turn 1-2 complex. Daly was eventually restarted but lost a lap and was credited with seventh. Chilton, who eventually made it back to the pits for a new front wing, lost three laps and fell to eighth.

Although four cars were involved, the last crash of the Rainguard 600 was nowhere near the biggest.

That honor went to the three-car sandwich of Kanaan on the inside heading to Turn 3, James Hinchcliffe in the middle, and Hinchcliffe’s Schmidt Peterson Motorsports teammate Mikhail Aleshin on the outside.

Hinchcliffe, charging hard out of Turn 2, had plenty of room on entry to Turn 3, but as the trio got close to their turn-in point, Kanaan crept high and hit the Hinchcliffe’s SPM Honda, which then hit Aleshin’s SPM Honda, and both SPM drivers were headed into the wall.

As a result of Kanaan’s right turn on the approach to the corner, both the two SPM cars, both Dale Coyne Racing Hondas, the Andretti Honda of Ryan Hunter-Reay and the A.J. Foyt Racing Chevy of Carlos Munoz retired on the spot. The Ed Carpenter Racing Chevys of Carpenter and JR Hildebrand were also damaged in the eight-car pileup, but both would eventually return, albeit many laps down.

Due to the widespread carnage from the Lap 152 crash, IndyCar officials made the choice to go red to conduct the prolonged cleanup. The incident was especially unfortunate for DCR drivers Tristan Vautier and Ed Jones. Vautier, who shocked the field by qualifying fourth, drove like a rabid dog, leading on multiple occasions, and Jones, in a new oval comfort zone, was rarely far behind.

Incensed by what took place, Coyne walked over to Kanaan, who was sitting in his car under the red flag, and gave him a piece of his mind before an IndyCar official escorted him away from the No. 10 Honda. Asked if he felt Kanaan deserved the criticism, Kanaan’s team owner Chip Ganassi placed the blame squarely on the SPM drivers…

The race started with pole-sitter Charlie Kimball enjoying a brief taste of the lead as Vautier shot to second and the Penske duo of Power and Newgarden moved forward. Ragged passing and a torrid pace was slowed for the first time on Lap 38 as Alexander Rossi bounced between the Ganassi duo of Kanaan and Dixon on the entry to Turn 3. As the unwilling member of the Honda crunch, Rossi found himself making side contact with Dixon on the low side, then rebounding into the side of Kanaan and spinning backward into the wall with the left side of his Andretti car.

“It’s unfortunate because the car was getting good,” said the Californian, who was unhurt in the crash, and watched the same exact scenario play out 114 laps later in Turn 3. “To have that happen so early is unnecessary and unfortunate.”



The field pitted under yellow on Lap 42, and more drama happened when Hinchcliffe leapt out of his pit box but couldn’t control his spinning rear tires and oversteered into Helio Castroneves, who then ricocheted into Sato. Hinchcliffe’s car was undamaged but Castroneves and Sato needed new front wings, which dropped both drivers to the back of the field. Complicating matters, Kimball’s car sat motionless on pit lane as an oil leak ruined his day.

Prior to the clash, Newgarden, Power and Scott Dixon beat Vautier out of the pits, but Newgarden and Ed Carpenter Racing’s JR Hildebrand were moved to the back for speeding.

The return to green on Lap 49 saw Power lead Vautier into Turn 1 and again, the Frenchman refused to play a waiting game as he challenged the Australian for the lead. Hinchcliffe paid a visit to pit lane for a drive-through penalty for the incident he caused and was swallowed up by the leaders when he returned to the track.

Lap 91 drew the next yellow when the Penske 1-2-3 of Power, Pagenaud and Castroneves lost the Brazilian, who tagged the Turn 2 wall hard with his right-front corner. Castroneves had been complaining of a vibration with the No. 3 Chevy. Like Rossi, Castroneves was uninjured in the wreck.

“Unfortunately, I felt a vibration four laps before the incident,” he said of a suspected tire blister, which plagued many drivers on Saturday night. “The right-front tire gave up. It was a big hit.”

The green flew again on Lap 103 and went right back to yellow as Ed Carpenter spun without making contact after Vautier drifted down and lightly touched Carpenter’s right-front wing endplate with his left-rear wheel guard. Carpenter stopped for fresh tires and started a charge back.

A quick yellow for debris allowed drivers to breathe on Lap 139, just moments before another round of pit stops were needed. Chilton stayed out, which allowed the Briton to lead when the green flew on Lap 148. The strange decision meant Chilton’s worn tires were no match for Power, who drove past with ease, and then the Lap 152 wreckfest brought out the third red flag in four events.

After the crash, only 11 of the 22 cars that started the race remained. Thirty minutes later, drivers started rolling on Lap 155 to warm their cars up, and with rampant tire blistering causing concerns, the series announced an unprecedented mid-race change of plans. After consulting Firestone, IndyCar implemented a 30-lap limit on green-flag running before a competition yellow would wave and all drivers would be required to take on four new Firestones.

The series also required the field to pit before going to green after the red-flag resumption and start the stage with new tires. Once the NASCAR-style procedure was completed, Power led Dixon, Chilton, Pagenaud and Kanaan to the green flag on Lap 160.

Kanaan pitted on Lap 162 at the direction of IndyCar for his penalty, and Carpenter, whose team worked a miracle to fix the car, returned on Lap 165. Hildebrand would emerge later in the race.

The competition yellow hit at Lap 190 just after Newgarden broke from third place and made a solo stop to replace his tires; Team Penske’s attempt to grab an advantage by pitting just as the yellow was about to come out was negated by IndyCar, which called Newgarden in with the rest of the field. Despite falling to the back and having to do another stop, Newgarden only dropped from third to eighth due to the extreme attrition.



A drag race from the pits saw Dixon beat Power to the line to take the lead, and behind them, Pagenaud, Sato, Rahal, Chilton, Chaves, Newgarden, Daly and Andretti followed as the only cars left on the lead lap. Dixon led the field to green on Lap 198 but it didn’t last long as Power and Pagenaud went past.

Newgarden, who tried to go around Dixon in Turns 3 and 4 using the third lane – going three wide on the high side, which nobody had tried in those corners – promptly lost the rear of the car on the dirty, unused track surface. Newgarden hit the wall twice before coming to a rest in the infield grass, but in a nice twist from last year’s bone-breaking Texas crash, he was unhurt.

“Third lane was not the right idea,” he said. “It’s my fault. I’ll put that on me.”

Lap 210 had the depleted field resume the race with Power leading Dixon and Pagenaud and Power, with Dixon and the charging Sato pitting in sequence on Lap 226 for the final competition caution and tire change. The Lap 230 restart had Power holding off Dixon with Sato close behind.

Sato made things easy for Power with five to go after he summoned the last yellow, and in light of the hyper-aggressive driving and often careless maneuvers that left so many cars dangling from the wrecker’s hook, at least there were a handful of Chevys and Honda left to cross the finish line. Power was the class of the field, made no mistakes, and should hold his head high after a spotless performance. Pagenaud and a few others can say the same, but not as many as one would expect.

 

 

 

RACER's Robin Miller talks Texas after the Verizon IndyCar Series made a mess of its visit to the 1.5-mile oval.

 

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More heartbreak for Dale Coyne Racing at Texas
Saturday, 10 June 2017
By RACER Staff / Image by IMS Photo


What began as an awesome show of force by the Dale Coyne Racing tandem Saturday night at Texas with both cars running in the top six ended for both Tristan Vautier and Ed Jones in the multi-car crash on lap 151 crash.

Vautier was inside when a sandwiched James Hinchcliffe pinballed off Tony Kanaan and teammate Mikhael Aleshin and turned into Vautier, sending Vautier hard into the outer wall. Jones was situated behind that pack and was hit from behind by JR Hildebrand and spun when he slowed to avoid the wreck.

"There was nothing I could do, honestly," said Vautier, who was credited with finishing 19th, to NBC Sports. "They tangled in front and Hinch started spinning and I had nowhere to go. Just a bummer. We were very fast and we could have fought for the win."

Vautier, who was named to drive the No. 18 Honda earlier this week when Esteban Gutierrez wasn't cleared to race on the fast Texas oval, challenged for the lead for most of the night. It was the Frenchman's first race since 2015 when he took over Coyne's car for Carlos Huertas and ran the final 11 races.
 
"More than anything I wanted to finish the race for my return," he said. "I think I raced this way all night, I raced hard but I really had the checkered flag in mind and I wanted to have a solid finish.

"I'm kind of pissed off. I really wanted to see the end of the race. I think we can be proud, we represented [Sebastien Bourdais] well who's recovering – get well soon, Seb – we really did our best. I think we showed a lot for this race, but I'm a bit sad it ended this way.

"At least I showed everything I could tonight, I gave it all, I raced really hard. I'm happy we maximized everything, It's just a shame we were taken out by something out of our control, and the team really did not need another crash because of all the crash damage they've had."
Rookie Jones, who worked his way up to sixth after starting 19th, had a front-row seat for the initial crash.

"I got hit from the rear, that spun the car around and put me in the wall backward," he told NBC Sports. "Nothing I could really do about it, I tried to avoid the incident and got caught up.

"I had a lot of fun [tonight]. For me it's the most comfortable I've been on an oval from the get-go. It was a new track for me yesterday, I just had so much fun racing out there. A lot of the guys were really respectful running side-by-side but there were a certain few who didn't respect the others and that's what caused that incident."

Still smarting from Bourdais' massive Indy 500 qualifying crash, DCR could be facing an uphill battle to repair its cars.

"It's a big hit for Dale," Jones lamented. "Dale's put in so much effort into this team and the car's been so strong everywhere, and to have this damage is painful. But this team's been knocked back so many times in the past and have come back stranger every time, so I'm sure we're going to be back and even better."

When IndyCar threw the red flag, Coyne quickly walked over to Kanaan's car in pit lane and leaned over to have words with the Chip Ganassi Racing driver.

Kanaan was issued a 20-second stop and hold for blocking and avoidable contact.

Gutierrez remains in contention to complete the season for Coyne, but Vautier said he thought Kenny Habul, owner of his full-time IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship team SunEnergy1, would accommodate if necessary.

"Kenny is such a great person, he supports me way beyond my commitment racing full-time racing for him in USA, so he just wants to see me succeed. Always pushes for my career. So if I got the shot [in IndyCar] he will help me out and free me for the races that conflict, but the team might be set."

 

Kanaan shoulders blame for Texas pileup
Saturday, 10 June 2017
By Marshall Pruett / Image by Michael Levitt/LAT


If there was any doubt about who was to blame for the eight-car smashfest Saturday night at Texas Motor Speedway, James Hinchcliffe would like to enter Exhibit A, a certain driver of the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda, into evidence.

"Tony Kanaan," he declared on the NBCSN broadcast after his Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Honda and SPM teammate Mikhail Aleshin slammed the Turn 3 wall. "It's a shame, he's the most experienced guy at this kind of racing and unfortunately Texas isn't what it was – it's gone back to what it used to be, what we got away from."

Kanaan, whose car was unknowingly steered right into the path of Hinchcliffe on the approach to Turn 3, set off the chain of events on Lap 152 that took out almost half the field.
 
"I got a run off of [Turn] 2 and if you look, he's two, two-and-a-half car lengths to our left and he turns me right into Mikhail [Aleshin]," Hinchcliffe added. "We were three-wide and either his spotter didn't tell him we were three-wide or he didn't care, which I find hard to believe. He just goes right, right, right...I don't know if he notices the corner's left."

Video evidence notwithstanding, Kanaan's team owner Chip Ganassi offered an earlier opinion that both SPM drivers were at fault. Hinchcliffe was unamused.

"I think it's adorable," he said, dipping into his well of sarcasm. "I wasn't the last guy to the three-wide – if he wants to play that game Mikhail probably should have lifted being the last guy to the party, but Tony turned right into a left-hand corner."

At first, Aleshin appeared to testify for the prosecution, but also might have entered Hinchcliffe as Exhibit A for Kanaan's defense. His summation could be interpreted both ways.

"I just didn't understand what was going on, because I gave space to them," the Russian said. "I think that something was going between James and Kanaan. And in the end what we [SPM] have is two great cars that ended up in the wall. It's just dumb, it's stupid and I'm very disappointed. We just lost this opportunity because of some idiots."

Ed Carpenter, who also had his race ruined as a result of the Lap 152 crash, took the stand and corroborated Hinchcliffe's testimony.

"The replay I saw, I think that was Tony's fault – you can see the dotted lines, he's just driving up the track," he said. "We talked about lane integrity and giving each other space. I have as much respect for Tony as anyone, we've been in this series racing together a long time but, the replay I saw, I know he wouldn't like it if he was raced that way, so he'll probably think different when he sees the replay."

With a clear conviction against him, Kanaan asked for forgiveness from those who were impacted by the Lap 152 transgression.

"I guess I moved up, and I really have to apologize to Hinch," he said. "I'm definitely going to go see him if he wants to see me or I'll call him. But yeah, and I guess it was a close call. I moved up, and we hit. I'm really – it's sad. I don't do those kind of things. I race people clean, and I want people to race me clean.

"It was definitely an honest mistake. You never – especially in a place like this, you don't crash people on purpose. I've been around it way too long to do any silly things like that, and if I did, it was really a mistake, and I apologize for it."

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Texas crash damage estimated at $1.8 million
Monday, 12 June 2017
By Robin Miller / Images by LePage, Abbott & Levitt/LAT, IMS Photo


Tristan Vautier's car was lying in a crumpled heap – minus the entire right-side suspension, its gearbox shattered along with a damaged tub and Honda engine – a promising night of running up front wiped out in seconds. A few feet away sat teammate Ed Jones' Dallara – its left-side suspension and bodywork wadded up.

"One car totaled and another one crashed all because of one guy driving like an idiot," a Dale Coyne mechanic said, referring to Tony Kanaan, who Coyne confronted during the red flag following the carnage.

Outside the Texas Motor Speedway garage the Schmidt Peterson crew had just finished loading the battered machines of James Hinchcliffe and Mikhail Aleshin – both spattered into the wall when T.K. got into Hinchcliffe to trigger the melee.

"Gearboxes, headers, exhausts, all the wings and maybe the engine on one of them," said one of the crewmembers. "A lot of money."

About 100 yards away the Andretti Autosport crew was assessing the damage to Takuma Sato's car. The 2017 Indy 500 winner was running third when he clipped the grass and spun into second-place Scott Dixon on Lap 244 – putting them both in the wall and also collecting Max Chilton and Conor Daly.

Three of the four corners on Sato's car were written off – almost identical to the wounds of Alexander Rossi's Honda after the 2016 Indy winner said he was squeezed into Kanaan and then the wall by Dixon on Lap 37.



"The bodywork alone on Rossi is probably $30,000 and they're both hurt pretty bad," said a mechanic for Ryan-Hunter Reay, whose driver was put into the wall during the biggest wreck of the Texas crashfest. But the DHL Special was only moderately wounded compared to most.

Even the race winners, Team Penske, came out in the red because Helio Castroneves and Josef Newgarden both crashed hard in separate incidents that virtually destroyed the three-time Indy winner's car after the right front tire went down on Lap 91 and hit the outside and inside walls.



"Can't say for sure yet but it's pretty bad," one Penske crewman replied when asked to access Castroneves' damage.

With 12 of 22 starters eliminated by accidents on the high-speed oval it had to be one of the most costly races ever in terms of monetary damage. RACER, with input from Dallara and some team managers, conservatively estimates the amount to be $1.8 million.

So besides Will Power, the real winners on Saturday night were Dallara, Xtrac, Aerodine Composites, Cosworth, Honda and Chevrolet because they will sell all the replacement parts to the IndyCar teams.

"We had a few teams approach us after the race to tell us what they needed and we haven't heard yet from Andretti and Carpenter but they wanted to make sure our truck was back on Monday morning so they could come over," said Sam Garrett, the quality control leader for Dallara.

"We saw a lot of sidepod and suspension damage and a bunch of radiator inlet ducts plus the main planes and under-wings. And when you have a lot of right-side sidepod damage it usually means electrical boxes and harnesses are also damaged. I know Dale had some tub damage so we'll work with Aerodine on that and it looked like several gearboxes took big hits."



While it's impossible for RACER to pinpoint the exact total crash damage, here's some CliffsNotes to help, thanks to Garrett and the team managers. Dallara sells an underwing for $9,500; the front and rear main planes (wings) go for $7,000 but with all the additional widgets hanging off it that comes to $25,000; uprights run $5,000 apiece; radiator inlet ducts cost $2,700; and wishbones (upper and lower) are $2,500 apiece. Honda and Chevy sell sidepods, end plates and wheel guards – basically the aero kit is $80,000 if bought complete but more expensive if pieced together. An Xtrac gearbox could be as much as $80,000 if backed into the wall and destroyed but not quite that costly if some of the internal parts can be salvaged.

The electrical system is roughly $100,000, with harnesses going for $25,000; Cosworth sells them but Honda is thought to try and repair damaged ones for its teams.

And if you back your engine into a wall then it goes back to the manufacturer and you get billed for whatever components were broken in the accident.



"Scott's crash wasn't too bad but it was still $100,000," said Mike Hull, the managing director for Chip Ganassi Racing. "The bigger ones like Helio and Vautier had to be at least $300,000 and obviously it was a very expensive night."

Everyone but Ganassi (who is sending two cars to Watkins Glen) was originally scheduled for an open test on Wednesday at Road America, but now there will only be six or seven cars there.

"You don't plan for giant crashes and I'm a little nervous we have all the parts we need but I think we'll be OK," Garrett said. "The good news is that we have two weeks before the next race."

 

Teksaski masakr motornom testerom...

 

[Rad-oh-yeah?]

MILLER: Terrible trio of decisions show at Texas
Monday, 12 June 2017
By Robin Miller / Images by IMS Photo; Levitt, LePage & Abbott/LAT


James Hinchliffe was mad at Tony Kanaan. T.K. wasn't real pleased with race control or some of his critics. Chip Ganassi was critical of Hinchcliffe, while Dale Coyne confronted Kanaan during the red flag. Alexander Rossi wasn't too happy with Scott Dixon and Dixon was furious with Takuma Sato. Josef Newgarden was mad at himself and the fans at Texas Motor Speedway were a bit miffed the Texas race finished under caution.

Since everyone is pissed off about someone or something, allow me to vent about three things: pack racing for peanuts, having grass on an oval and a stupid schedule that more and more mechanics are finding intolerable.

 

PACK RACING FOR PEANUTS

Whether you watched Texas on the edge of your seat or with one hand over an eye (or both), it was a return to those old IRL days of everyone being jammed together side by side and row after row.



The drivers predicted it would be a pack race after the Texas test and Firestone did its best to try and come up with a tire that wouldn't blister on the new pavement but might also degrade like the 2016 show.

That didn't happen and the tires kept blistering, which is an anomaly because Firestone most always gets it right.

And the drivers treated the 1.5-mile oval like it was bumper cars – crashing more than half the field to the tune of an estimated $1.8 million.

Winner Will Power was asked if it was fun, or did he prefer something similar to 2016?

"I like tire degradation so at least you can work on the car and the driver is more involved and I think there needs to be a bit of that to create some separation because it gets pretty intense," said Power, whose 31st victory tied him with Paul Tracy and Dario Franchitti for ninth on the all-time list.

"If we were doing this every week, people get good at it and understand it, but when you just do it once ... I know it was wild behind me. But when you're leading and driving around wide open in a pack race it's the easiest day of your life."

IndyCar looked pretty amateurish with less than 10 cars still on four wheels at the end, and a lot of people were curious why there wasn't a red flag so the race could finish at speed, but I figured race control didn't want to chance having nobody left running for the first time in its history.



One prominent owner was advocating not returning to Texas after Saturday night, while another said it's not the track – it's the downforce package that needs to be fixed. But what really needs to be examined is why risk decimating your field and fragile budgets for the pittance you run for at these speeds?

The most insulting thing about these guys hanging it out at 223 mph for two hours plus and seeing all the money the owners lost is the pathetic purse. Power earned $30,000 while Tyron van Aswegen pocketed $38,000 for finishing tied for 31st in the PGA tourney at Memphis. Tony Kanaan got $20,000, Simon Pagenaud $15,000 and fourth-place Graham Rahal got a handshake and a ham sandwich.

And don't start all this "any racer would trade places with those IndyCar drivers" because that's a load of crap. This is the top echelon of open wheel racing in this country and they raced their asses off for peanuts, or nothing. IndyCar should be ashamed.



 

THE GRASS IS NOT GREENER

When Greg Moore lost his life at Fontana in 1999 after sliding through the grass, being tripped by a service road and then thrown into a wall, a concerted effort was made to remove all grass from ovals and replace it with pavement – at least at many tracks on the backstretch.

But grass is still prevalent on the front straightaway at Daytona, Fontana and Texas, while Indianapolis has it between the pit lane and groove in Turn 1 and all through the north end of the Speedway.

In 2015 at Fontana, Ryan Briscoe flipped wildly because he dug into the grass but, fortunately, was able to walk away unscathed.

After Friday qualifying at Texas, Ryan Hunter-Reay and I discussed how insane it is to have all that grass bordering the dogleg on the front stretch. That night, during NASCAR’s truck race, a truck got knocked into the grass and flipped violently before landing upside down. Again, the driver was OK.

Then, nearing the end of Saturday night’s Crashfest 600, Takuma Sato dropped his left-side wheels in the grass, lost control, collected Dixon and they both smashed into the wall.

Now nobody has tried to make the walls safer than Eddie Gossage at Texas, and I get that tracks like his want the nice manicured look grass affords them along with displaying the race’s sponsor. But for common sense’s sake, just pave all that and use a big decal. Get IndyCar and NASCAR to chip in if that’s what it takes.

And there is no excuse for IMS having grass anywhere there’s a racecar. Just that little strip in the south chute upset Helio Castroneves’ car last month and if somebody ever gets knocked into the grass that borders Turns 1-3-4 it could be catastrophic.

 

THE SCHEDULE MUST CHANGE

Like my annual rants about the Indy 500 purse and the puny purses in the Verizon IndyCar Series, the schedule and how it treats the mechanics is another sore spot that must get some relief.

Follow along. IndyCar races at Barber in ‘Bama on April 23 and goes cross-country to Phoenix four days later for an April 29 show. Two days later there is an open test at Gateway. May begins with a road race on the 13th, followed by a week of practice, two days of “qualifying,” and another practice on Monday. Carb Day is Friday and race day is May 28th. The cars must be turned around for Detroit, which is a three-day show June 2-3-4 that features a doubleheader (including qualifying at 10 a.m. on Sunday for a 3:40 p.m. race).



Most of the teams drove back to Indianapolis and arrived around 2 a.m. and were back in the shop by 9 a.m. because the trucks left for Texas on Tuesday. As documented, the Texas race was pure carnage, which just doubled the workload for the mechanics that got home at 5 a.m. Sunday. They did get Sunday off. All but Ganassi (Watkins Glen) were supposed to be at Elkhart Lake for a test on Wednesday, but now only six or seven cars will show up.

Then, if nothing else gets torn up, they might get their first weekend off since March. But, following Road America on June 25, they all have to drive to Iowa for an open test.

It’s ludicrous to work people this hard, so if IndyCar insists on making Detroit the race after Indianapolis, then move it back a week and give the teams a chance to rest up a little bit. In-season testing also needs to go away.

And don’t tell me it’s no big deal because they only work seven months a year, because some of them get laid off during the winter and none of them get the percentages and bonuses that were offered when the purses and point funds used to be big league.

A lot of good mechanics have left IndyCar during the past few years and a lot more in the current paddock have just about had it. They’ve been grossly overworked and it’s only June, so that’s a dangerous precedent with an Indy car.

I just want IndyCar’s schedule-makers to spend a weekend tailing these guys so they can appreciate that things need to change. If not, it’s long past time the mechanics formed a union because, trust me, they would have some leverage.

Edited by Rad-oh-yeah?, 12 June 2017 - 21:06.

[Rad-oh-yeah?]

Carpenter: Drivers, not cars, need to change to avoid oval carnage




By: David Malsher, US Editor
3 hours ago


Ed Carpenter says that lack of driver discipline, not IndyCar’s technical package, is to blame for last Sunday’s wreck-filled race at Texas Motor Speedway.

IndyCar’s only owner/driver saw the cars of himself and teammate JR Hildebrand torn up in the eight-car shunt on Lap 152, before rejoining several laps down and salvaging 11^th and 12^th place. But Carpenter says that the RainGuard Water Sealers 600, which saw only six healthy cars finish on the lead lap, would not have featured so much carnage had drivers not been allowed to move their cars around so much.

“I don’t think the type of racing that was the problem,” Carpenter told Motorsport.com. “It was the moments here and there that caused issues.

“Back when we ran more oval races prior to 2012, the rules were a little bit different with regards to blocking and there wasn’t language about being able to move proactively but not reactively. You just weren’t allowed to do that at all.

“So I feel that if we simplified the rules and eliminated blocking from oval racing that I think it would sort out some of the problems. In my opinion, there could have been some calls made for blocking or not maintaining your lane. In the drivers’ meeting before the race, there was a lot of talk about maintaining a lane, and being disciplined to where you give other people room to race.

“The phrase ‘pack race’ gets thrown out but to me that wasn’t what I’d consider a pack race, although obviously people have different definitions. I feel like that if penalties had been called on people driving like that before that accident, it could have calmed things down. But furthermore, I think if we could home in on what the rules are for that type of racing, and define better or more simply what is or isn’t allowed, it would make it simpler for Race Control to make a call against drivers who overstep those rules.

“Give us less wriggle room to make defensive maneuvers, and take space away from the other car and you’d have much fewer incidents.”

Carpenter believes that the latest race’s critics had their views colored by the biggest shunt of the night, when Chip Ganassi Racing’s Tony Kanaan collided with James Hinchcliffe’s Schmidt Peterson Motorsports machine, sending it into a spin, with disastrous knock-on consequences.

“It’s always interesting after races like that because they can go either way,” said Carpenter. “Last year after Texas, there was a lot of talk about how exciting it was – and it was – and to me the racing wasn’t all that much different to this year. There was a little more tire dropoff, so there was a little more dropoff in overall speed from the start of a stint to the end, but I was surprised to hear so many guys describe this year’s race as a pack race.

“The track was still difficult to drive, everyone was lifting quite a bit in Turns 1 and 2 unless they had totally clean air. So I think if the big accident hadn’t happened, I feel like the tone of some of the feedback would have been different. And from a lot of things I’ve read and seen on social media, the fans seemed to enjoy the race a lot.

“So I don’t think a whole lot needs to change. Obviously teams don’t like tearing up that much equipment but at the same time we do need to make sure we’re putting on entertaining races, and I think it was entertaining. So now is not the time to overreact and change everything, although there will be changes for next year because the cars will change.”

Carpenter won the 2014 IndyCar race at Texas Motor Speedway, on a night when tires degraded heavily over the course of a stint, and he and 2017 winner Will Power proved the only drivers able to minimize this. Despite a far greater degree of separation between the cars, afterward there were few complaints that the race wasn’t exciting. However, Carpenter says that returning to that technical package isn’t easy.

“I don’t know that there’s a proven formula where we can say, ‘We need to do this with the tire, we need to do this with the aero,’” he commented. “Texas Motor Speedway did a really nice job with the reconfiguration and with the repaving. The track is more challenging, there’s a bigger balance difference between the two ends of the track. But any time there’s new asphalt, when you do get rubber down and it does grip up, it is harder to get that tire fall-off. The tires aren’t worked as hard. Similar problem at Phoenix; the tires just don’t fall off.

“Like I say, I don’t think that’s the main problem. I think the basic tone coming out of the race shouldn’t be a negative one; it was exciting racing. It was just that one big accident that ruined the night for some teams and drivers.”