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 embody a query usually tend to be revealed. Questions acquired after 3pm ET every Monday will probably 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 purpose why it hasn’t seemed into utilizing the extremely profitable IMSA formulation?
Scott C, Greenwood, IN
MARSHALL PRUETT: This could be the preferred query/resolution on this matter lately, however sadly, the identical reply applies: An IndyCar chassis has a really brief, slim, and low area offered to hold an engine. Each GTP or GTD engine – aside from Acura’s ARX-06 motor, which is similar 2.4-liter engine IndyCar was meant to make use of – is waaaaaay too huge.
The area in an IndyCar is sort of a Measurement Small, and all the things in IMSA is a Giant or XL.
A giant 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 in every single place. And to suit these motors, there would must be a complete redesign via which the automobiles would get longer and presumably wider, and taller, and acquire a ton of kilos.
Q: You’ve mentioned you’re assured in there being greater than 33 entrants for the five hundred. Is it secure to imagine they’ll 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 position of being the go-to for further Indy motors.
Q: You talked about that a number of the TV crew individuals had moved over from NBC to FOX. I questioned in case you might 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 important variations between a street course, resembling Street America, in comparison with brief oval like Iowa, however would simply be focused on what the common variety of individuals moreover 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 together with dozens on the trackside half, and I’ll see if I can get one thing definitive.
Q: Final yr it was a ‘scheduling battle’ with Texas. This yr, no Texas. Guessing it’s gone for good then. Outdoors the five hundred, there aren’t any extra superspeedways proper? Any rumors of one other giant oval approaching?
Bernardo, San Antonio
MP: Not that I do know of. The need to proceed with IndyCar has been misplaced in Denton, TX.
IndyCar had some good occasions at Texas over time, however the observe went out with a whimper. Sean Gardner/Getty Photographs
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 occasions. However I’d argue that it wasn’t as huge 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 assume we might get an IndyCar/NASCAR double-header 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 huge names like Dario and Danica, so I’m undecided 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 superb.
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 dangerous for enterprise. But when there’s anybody who might get each side to contemplate 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 bear in mind, the final time IndyCar shared some numbers was most likely in the course of the 2011-2012 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 yr Harry the hybrid. So, how did it evolve from what it was 13 years in the past?
You beforehand wrote that the present automotive 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 resembling Dixon and Rossi appear to truly want oversteery automobiles. So, what would, in your opinion, be a really perfect weight distribution? Or at the least one that might make most drivers content material?
Lastly, wherein areas on the present automotive do you assume Dallara might trim some weight and apply this to design the upcoming one? Additionally, how about downsizing the interior combustion engine a little bit bit? May going to a 2.1 or 2.0L engine displacement assist saving a number 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 throughout the cylinders of the present 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 number of kilos. Not until IndyCar wished to pay for it.
Exhausting to say on an optimum weight distribution, because the reply is dictated by driver choice. Dixon isn’t a lover of oversteer as a lot as he needs the nostril of the automotive to be pinned to the bottom, so in his case, he’d want the next weight distribution quantity on the entrance axle. My outdated good friend Sebastien Bourdais was 100% the alternative, wanting the rear pinned always and to handle pace via understeer, so his magic quantity was biased in the direction of the rear axle.
In keeping with my engineer associates 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 automobiles, 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 loads 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, in response to 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 nice query to contemplate.
