Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers might be despatched to mailbag@racer.com. We love listening to your feedback and opinions, however letters that embrace a query usually tend to be printed. Questions obtained after 3pm ET every Monday can be saved for the next week.
Q: Given the shortage of progress in securing a 3rd OEM for IndyCar, and a brand new engine formulation supposedly simply a few years away, has IndyCar ever given a cause why it hasn’t seemed into utilizing the extremely profitable IMSA formulation?
Scott C, Greenwood, IN
MARSHALL PRUETT: This is perhaps the preferred query/resolution on this matter in recent times, however sadly, the identical reply applies: An IndyCar chassis has a really quick, slim, and low house supplied to hold an engine. Each GTP or GTD engine – apart from Acura’s ARX-06 motor, which is similar 2.4-liter engine IndyCar was meant to make use of – is waaaaaay too massive.
The house in an IndyCar is sort of a Measurement Small, and all the things in IMSA is a Giant or XL.
An enormous a part of what makes an IndyCar carry out prefer it does is the shortage of weight, therefore the Measurement Small motors. You’d double that weight, or extra, going to an IMSA motor, and it will destroy the dealing with with all of that huge, tall and lengthy mass rolling all over. And to suit these motors, there would have to be a complete redesign via which the vehicles would get longer and probably wider and taller, and acquire a ton of kilos.
Q: You’ve stated you’re assured in there being greater than 33 entrants for the Indy 500. Is it protected to imagine they may come from the Honda camp?
Don Weidig
MP: Sure. With Chevy at 15 full-time and Honda at 12, Honda’s within the comparatively unfamiliar function of being the go-to for further Indy motors.
Q: You talked about that among the TV crew folks had moved over from NBC to FOX. I puzzled if you happen to may give us an concept as to the variety of personnel and their positions are required for FOX to current protection of an IndyCar race? I assume there are vital variations between a street course, comparable to Street America, in comparison with quick oval like Iowa, however would simply be excited by what the common variety of folks in addition to the six faces we see are concerned.
Butch Welsch, St. Louis, MO
MP: I attempted to get a quantity on what number of went from NBC to FOX however couldn’t. Let’s go along with dozens on the trackside half, and I’ll see if I can get one thing definitive.
Q: Final 12 months it was a “scheduling battle” with Texas. This 12 months, no Texas. Guessing it’s gone for good then. Exterior the five hundred, there aren’t any extra superspeedways proper? Any rumors of one other giant oval approaching?
Bernardo, San Antonio, TX
MP: Not that I do know of. The need to proceed with IndyCar has been misplaced in Denton, Texas.
IndyCar had some good instances at Texas over time, however the observe went out with a whimper. Sean Gardner/Getty Pictures
Q: I learn your article “Why St. Petersburg was IndyCar’s best season opener in years,” and I needed to learn it a number of instances. However I’d argue that it wasn’t as massive as when Nigel Mansell introduced the worldwide consideration when he got here to IndyCar and gained the Australian IndyCar Grand Prix.
Anyway, if the sequence will get two million viewers, do you suppose we may get an IndyCar/NASCAR doubleheader sooner or later? I do know it wouldn’t occur in 2026, however dare I say in 2027 it will be good to see it occur in Austin or Phoenix.
Alistair, Springfield, MO
MP: Thanks, I don’t recall saying it was greater than Nigel’s debut, and even the early days of the St. Pete race with massive names like Dario and Danica, so I’m unsure what what’s being argued. I used to be there, working as a mechanic within the Formulation Atlantic sequence that 1993 season, and Mansell Mania was insane; having the reigning Formulation 1 world champion in IndyCar was wonderful.
The IndyCar and NASCAR factor is difficult, since each need prime billing. I do know IndyCar performed the undercard on the second Indy GP/Brickyard 400 occasion the place no person cared concerning the IndyCar half, and if I’m NASCAR, I’m doing nothing to assist IndyCar to realize extra followers and problem its supremacy. That’s simply unhealthy for enterprise. But when there’s anybody who may get either side to think about it, it’s FOX Sports activities CEO Eric Shanks.
Q: Are you aware what the load distribution of the present DW12 is? So far as I can keep in mind, the final time IndyCar shared some numbers was in all probability throughout the 2011-12 winter, which at the moment was 43/57 entrance/rear. However then got here the aero kits, first the engine producers’, then the common one used these days; then the aeroscreen and final 12 months Harry the hybrid. So, how did it evolve from what it was 13 years in the past?
You beforehand wrote that the present automobile has a “suboptimal” weight distribution and the truth that with Harry’s further weight (which is positioned on the rear) and energy increase, the rear finish tends to slide very simply. Nonetheless, I heard some drivers comparable to Dixon and Rossi appear to truly favor oversteery vehicles. So, what would, in your opinion, be a great weight distribution? Or at the very least one that may make most drivers content material?
Lastly, through which areas on the present automobile do you suppose Dallara may trim some weight and apply this to design the upcoming one? Additionally, how about downsizing the inner combustion engine just a little bit? Might going to a 2.1 or 2.0L engine displacement assist saving a couple of kilos? If IndyCar plans to extend each the hybrid’s peak energy and the ESS capability, wouldn’t it make sense to take action?
Xavier
MP: To begin with the final query, you’re conscious that going from a 2.2-liter motor as used as we speak to a 2.1 or 2.0 doesn’t contain making a smaller motor, proper? It’s a discount within the cubic capability inside the cylinders of the prevailing motor, which is like taking a Measurement 12 shoe and stuffing some padding into the toe space to make it a Measurement 11. Neither Chevy nor Honda would spend numerous thousands and thousands to make brand-new and barely tinier engines to assist IndyCar save a couple of kilos. Not except IndyCar needed to pay for it.
Onerous to say on an optimum weight distribution, for the reason that reply is dictated by driver choice. Dixon isn’t a lover of oversteer as a lot as he desires the nostril of the automobile to be pinned to the bottom, so in his case, he’d favor the next weight distribution quantity on the entrance axle. My previous buddy Sebastien Bourdais was 100% the alternative, wanting the rear pinned always and to handle pace via understeer, so his magic quantity was biased in direction of the rear axle.
In keeping with my engineer mates within the paddock, the vitality restoration system that sits between the engine and transmission has shifted between 0.5-1.0-percent of weight to the again of the vehicles, which has moved the load distribution to someplace between 43-44 p.c up entrance and 56-57 p.c on the rear. The ERS has added a number of rearward weight. The aeroscreen has added 50-ish kilos to the entrance, so collectively, there’s a slight tilt to the rear, however nothing to drastically alter the early F/R break up. Simply much more kilos.
There’s some weight to be saved with a brand new tub design, but it surely isn’t an enormous financial savings, based on IndyCar’s technical division. I’ve heard of a light-weight gearbox being floated, however how it will face up to extra horsepower and extra torque is sweet query to think about.
