Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers will be despatched to mailbag@racer.com. We love listening to your feedback and opinions, however letters that embody a query usually tend to be revealed. Questions obtained after 3pm ET every Monday shall be saved for the next week.
Q: I’m actually involved for the well-being of IndyCar. No passes on observe with any vital outcomes. Palou, apparently, is unstoppable, and I’d relatively see a distinct driver as champion this 12 months, however that’s in all probability not taking place. Has the hybrid system created the lack to go on road and highway programs? Asking for a good friend. You recognize it’s fairly unhealthy when the FOX “second of the race” was Ferrucci’s save after getting a bit unfastened!
Dan, Arizona
MARSHALL PRUETT: There are a number of components, and going hybrid is an enormous a part of the issue, however not all the downside. There’s 4 contributing components.
First, it’s the load of going hybrid that’s having a detrimental impact. The vitality restoration system itself isn’t some evil factor that kills wheel-to-wheel motion. It’s the load. I understand this won’t matter to some, however IndyCar may yank the ERS items from the automobiles, change them with 100 kilos of rocks to match their weight, and we’d be having the identical dialog.
Tires are one other large contributor to the issue. The silly-soft road course alternates principally soften in the event that they’re pushed too exhausting, so drivers have needed to deal with them like large liabilities and drive to a particular tempo to stop the meltdown and whole lack of efficiency. These tires have robbed the flexibility for drivers to assault, which has dulled the wheel-to-wheel motion.
The highway course alternates at Thermal reacted in an identical method, nevertheless it was the observe floor, relatively than the tires themselves, inflicting the large drop-off in efficiency. So drivers as soon as once more needed to follow a particular and considerably decreased tempo to maintain the tires from boiling over and giving up.
Barber was the primary race of the 12 months the place each tire compounds may take all of the abuse they got with out surrendering. However since there wasn’t a lot to separate the efficiency between the primaries and alternates, there have been no large gambles taken on race technique; all people was flat out, and with no cautions, the leaders have been operating at comparable speeds — Palou apart — and that’s not when nice passing takes place up entrance.
Tons of passing occurred behind the leaders, however that’s not what makes for memorable races. No person watches an NFL sport and spends the following day raving in regards to the nice blocking within the trenches. It’s the massive touchdowns, lengthy runs, game-changing hits and interceptions that we will’t overlook. And that’s been lacking.
Circle again to the load once more, and the way the automobiles simply received’t tolerate the identical form of over-aggressive passing makes an attempt — like they did earlier than the 100 kilos of hybrid — with out shedding management, and you’ve got a newly flawed recipe.
Weight, plus tire compounds, plus comparable paces, plus no cautions and the passing alternatives these restarts convey, and a few or all of these components have mixed from race to race to create the product seen in the course of the 4 opening races.
I can consider one one that isn’t complaining in regards to the present high quality of racing in IndyCar. Chris Jones/IMS Photograph
Q: It’s with a heavy coronary heart and far guilt that Huge Possum is taking pen handy to put in writing this however the fact will out as somebody as soon as stated.
Huge Possum is a confirmed die-hard IndyCar fan – attending his first 500 in 1956 – and lots of, many, many, since. Little Possum has interned with a number of IndyCar groups on the Speedway whereas on his option to a Purdue Mechanical engineering diploma and was passing tires over the wall throughout pit stops for McLaren and Félix Rosenquist one 12 months.
So Huge Possum tuned in to the Barber race Sunday – no extra should be stated about that – and after Barber he was the NASCAR race at Texas.
Huge Possum shouldn’t be a diehard NASCAR fan, doesn’t usually watch, however does kind of observe it – favourite driver was the Silver Fox, David Pearson, arguably the very best of all time – Texas was packed – and hush my mouth, nevertheless it was a significantly better present than the IndyCar race he simply left. Vehicles have been operating nearer collectively, cooler and extra pit stops, with many of the subject coming in on the similar time and a pleasant show board of who beat who out of the pits, crashes, yellow flags, restarts and the winner was not decided till the final 4 or 5 laps, and it was fairly shut. Larson was operating away till he wasn’t, a number of comers and goers, green-white checker end… all in all, rattling entertaining. The TV broadcast confirmed the invocation and the Nationwide Anthem, not like one other channel he may identify.
Huge Possum can see the attraction, pleasure and leisure worth, and that’s the reason the stands have been packed. They’ve their very own SiriusXM 24 hour radio present, and on and on.
The saving grace for IndyCar at the moment is the Indianapolis 500.
Not being essential, and it’s with deep disappointment that Huge Possum studies these information and he doesn’t have an answer.
Trying ahead to seeing you on the Speedway. Meatloaf dinner on the Speedway American Legion corridor on Quick Friday. Pleased to have you ever be a part of me as my visitor
Huge Possum
MP: Thanks for the invite, my man.
Actually robust second for Penske Leisure. How will they react?
Big new TV associate, heavy pre-season promoting marketing campaign centered on driver personalities and the quickest racing on earth (*after land pace racing, air races, and drag racing), and coming into the season and FOX relationship, it had years upon years of with the ability to precisely say it had the very best racing, and all of this has gone out the window in two months.
I take advantage of this description a number of occasions per 12 months, however Penske wants to think about IndyCar as a product on the shelf. How does it feel and look sitting subsequent to comparable merchandise on the identical shelf? What issues does its product supply that makes it stand out in the very best methods in opposition to the others? By way of 2024, I feel most would agree that its product was sturdy and interesting. And I feel most who’ve purchased and loved the product in recent times would acknowledge the product has modified, and altered considerably, in 2025, and never for the higher.
It’s simply not as interesting because it was final 12 months, and for these of us who love this product, it kills us to see it being buried behind the cabinets for F1, which has gone from being boring as hell to extremely entertaining, and IMSA, and so forth, which have nice merchandise to purchase immediately.
And that’s not being essential of Penske or IndyCar; it’s merely saying what’s actual.
The nice factor is Penske has the only real authority to make any and all modifications to enhance its product. There are contracts, in fact, with obligations to its auto producers and different official companions that may’t be ignored with out the danger of being sued; but when the product they assist to make isn’t promoting prefer it as soon as was, I’d hope they’d all come collectively and work on discovering fast fixes.
