What an odd duck the Indianapolis 500 is—embracing the latest in technology while steadfastly holding tight to traditions so old half the audience is unlikely to understand them without an explanation from a helpful pre-dementia graybeard.
Today, for example, was Carburetor Day, an hour of pre-race practice to allow mechanics to properly adjust the carburetors on the participating race cars. In 2000, bowing to the vernacular of the new century, it was shortened to “Carb Day.”
This, of course, despite the fact that the last two cars to use carburetors in the Indianapolis 500 were Lotus-Ford teammates Dan Gurney and Jim Clark in 1963. Clark, a rookie—which certainly stretched the definition of “rookie,” as he won the first of his two Formula 1 championships that year—finished second, and Gurney fifth, despite daring to have their little engines behind the driver. Clark won the race in a Lotus in 1965, and by then some of the forward-looking competitors thought that maybe the engine did belong in the back. Incidentally, 1965 was the year gasoline was phased out for methanol, though mechanics continue to work on the race cars in Gasoline Alley. (Now we await the day when Roger Penske takes a long, hard look at the rules and finds some loophole that will allow a carbureted, gas-powered engine to develop like a thousand horsepower, which he secretly builds, enters and wins with.)
This, and the sad and continued absence of Jim Nabors, brings us to the 99th running of the Indianapolis 500, where there is some innovation on the track: New body kits for the cars.
Previously, the cars, be they Honda- or Chevrolet-powered, wore the same outfit: It was created by the fashion designers at Dallara, which also designed the rest of the car. All along, different body kits were planned, but they finally arrived this year.
But there was a problem. Chevrolet appears to have done a better job of designing its body kits for the street- and road-course races, which is all the types that have been held this year. Chevrolets have dominated, and they lost only the rain-soaked New Orleans race to Honda’s James Hinchcliffe. Plus, at the season-opening race in St. Petersburg, the complex aero pieces were also fragile when struck by the out-of-practice, over-eager field, and they shed parts like a modern-day Yugo.
Most of these were Honda parts, thanks to a nose that was seemingly designed by Salvador Dali. The Chevrolet, noted defending champ and Chevy driver Will Power, “doesn’t have as much crap on it to fall off,” a comment made minutes before he was likely asked to attend a media-training refresher. One of those parts, as you may have heard, was apparently booted off the track by another car and landed on the head of (presumably former) race fan Brigitte Hoffstetter, fracturing her skull. The pregnant Hoffstetter supposedly was 100 yards from the track at a concession stand. The body kits were reworked before the Long Beach, New Orleans, and Barber Motorsports Park races and seem to shed fewer parts, but the Hondas were still slower than the Chevrolets.
But those are not superspeedway oval races, and an entirely new body kit is being utilized for Indy. Team owners were concerned about the lack of testing of the new kits.
Some team owners were more than just concerned, and not just about the Indy body kits, but about the “new look” in general, assuming anyone can tell the difference in the Honda and Chevy bodies at more than 200 mph. Said Michael Andretti, who is fielding more Hondas than anyone else: “All I can say is that I’ve been talking about this from day one. I said, ‘Guys, you’re doing two things: You’re putting a huge expense into the series, and you’re messing with our product on the race track, which I think is the best product out there.’ You can only lose in this scenario—you’re not going to gain. Now we have a split field. Why? Millions and millions of dollars have been spent by manufacturers and the teams, and I don’t see that it has put one more person in the stands.”
And this was before he, or anyone else, had gotten the opportunity to real-world test the superspeedway kits at Indianapolis. And when they did: Yes, the Hondas were still slower.
Helio Castroneves during 2015 Indianapolis 500 Carb Day.
But is also seemed like the Chevrolets were crashing and going airborne. First was Penske veteran Helio Castroneves, who got loose, corrected, spun, and took off like a V-22 Osprey. Then Josef Newgarden “cut a tire on debris,” said Firestone, hit the wall, and took off—not like an Osprey, but he still could have sold advertising on the bottom of his car. And then Ed Carpenter, polesitter the last two years, spun earlier than anyone would have expected in a turn, hit the wall, and did not exactly launch, but still went upside down, sliding on his roll bar.
Which brings to mind the time NASCAR driver Rick Mast flipped at Talladega and slid on his roof for what seemed like 20 minutes. A TV broadcaster asked the uninjured Mast what he was thinking as he slid down the pavement. “I was thinking,” Mast said, ‘Please stop!’ ”
Derrick Walker, veteran car owner, former driver and in-general level head, is the chief of IndyCar’s competition side, and he pointed out that the three airborne Chevrolets were different wrecks, with different causes. Castroneves’s crash was by far the most dramatic, as it possibly pointed up some genuine oversights in the aero package. IndyCar responded by telling Chevrolet teams to remove an odd little wickerbill-thing that as essentially a little vertical strip that ran from nose to cockpit. No one made any guarantees that it was the problem, but it was easy to address.
Indy officials mandated that for qualifying that the teams abandon their lower-downforce, higher-speed qualifying bits and pieces, as well as give back the added horsepower IndyCar was allowing for qualifying only, which made for a careful, processional, uneventful qualification on Sunday after Saturday’s rain. Nobody went airborne.
Honda teams were upset that they were required to make the same changes to their setups as were Chevrolet teams since no Hondas had gone airborne, but the company and the teams kept that mostly to themselves. And it didn’t help that eight of the top 10 qualifiers were Chevrolets.
James Hinchcliffe at the 2015 Grand Prix of Alabama.
Indy’s 99th Airborne squad might have still been in the headlines had it not been for Honda driver James Hinchcliffe’s horrible crash in Monday practice, where the right front suspension rocker arm broke, sending him into the wall at 125 g’s. Parts of the front suspension penetrated the cockpit, as well as, reportedly, Hinchcliffe’s leg and pelvis, and we came very close to losing him. Everyone in Gasoline Alley is checking rocker arms.
As far as the airborne incidents go, only the Castroneves crash was a true blowover; the other cars went airborne primarily because of the attitude at which they struck the wall. Castroneves simply started going backwards at more than 200 mph. All those aerodynamic aids that help press the car to the ground when you are going forward do little to help you stay on solid ground when you go backwards.
“You have a 1600-pound object that is essentially designed as a wing, designed to push the car down to the ground. But that is when you are going forward. Airplanes take off at speeds between 60 and 150 mph. We’re going 230 mph. When something goes wrong, and you are going backwards, bad things can happen,” said driver Townsend Bell, who will start his ninth Indy 500. “It’s always been that way at Indy, for a hundred years. The track is about one thing, and one thing only: Who fast can you go around this oval? It’s a speed contest first, a race second,” Bell told Car and Driver.
“When something happens at Indy, it’s often like an airplane crash. Always has been. I don’t want to downplay the severity of the crashes we’ve seen, but to say I’m surprised, or have any increased fear, would be very naïve of me. Because that concern is always there, from your first race on.” And, no, Bell says, he can’t feel any difference in this year’s Chevrolet aero kit and last year’s Dallara aero kit.
Besides being spectacular to see on television, going airborne is especially concerning in open-cockpit cars. If the car comes down on the fence cockpit-first or, as it did in the case of the late Dan Wheldon, hits a fence pole in just the wrong spot—or if another car can’t stop and penetrates the driver’s compartment—well, it’s horrible to imagine.
Will cars fly on Sunday? We hope the hell not, but if one goes backwards at high speeds, it could, because that’s what cars do. Aerodynamic technology is actively working on the concept of keeping the car planted whether it is going forwards, backwards, or sideways, but we’re not there yet.
Remember Rick Mast, and that flip in his No. 1 Skoal Bandit Chevrolet in the 1991 Diehard 500 NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway? His 3600-pound car was nudged from behind by Buddy Baker’s car, and Mast spun 180 degrees, the car continued going backwards, and it flipped upside down. And hit the wall, and slid on its roof for nearly a quarter-mile. Mast was fine, but he had a roof. IndyCars don’t have a roof. So, in Mast’s words, please stop.
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