ELKART LAKE, Wisc. With fans continuing to flood the racetracks in droves and roam the IndyCar paddock again without masks, several production drivers are hoping that officials will return to a normal race weekend schedule for 2022 and beyond.
Several drivers referred to this idea in one way or another during the first half of the season, but on Friday night the top performers of the session were asked directly how the weekends were put together.
Traditionally, on most street and street course weekends, the teams had three full but more even days on the track with two practice sessions on Friday and one Saturday morning, followed by qualifying in the afternoon with a Sunday race.
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But hoping to support the teams’ budgets while sacrificing some track time, IndyCar tried several schedule formats to thicken the weekend. It has been said the move can have a significant impact on teams’ budgets, including booking a night in hotels for their crew and team members. The season opener at Barber for IndyCar, for example, lasted only two days, with two practice sessions and qualifying all Saturday. The GMR Grand Prix on the IMS street course was similar while it occupied Friday-Saturday instead of Saturday-Sunday.
Detroit was unique as a double race, with a single practice session on Friday and then both qualifying and races every Saturday and Sunday. This weekend in Road America, together with St. Petersburg in April, took place over three days, but without using much of this Friday. Both days only included a 45-minute practice session in the late afternoon / early evening, another practice session and qualifying followed on Saturday.
The concern there from the driver’s point of view is that the weekend will still end super-condensed when the teams set up the paddock, unload and prepare their cars and practice all Friday, whereas this would traditionally have happened on Thursday and Friday.
“What’s a normal schedule anyway?” replied Romain Grosjean when he, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Josef Newgarden were asked on Friday about their desire to revert to a more traditional setup. When the rookie was told what this was all about, he said, “I like that. Friday morning it gets boring. You don’t know what to do. “
Hunter-Reay added, “The teams seem to be saving money by keeping to the cut schedule because it’s one day less. There’s a bigger issue on the whole economics of the whole thing.
“But it would be better for racing drivers and fans to have ‘Friday, Saturday and Sunday’ again. The problem is, if you miss something on the first workout, you’re really on your backfoot all weekend. “
Bobby Rahal was one of the first to publicly complain about the condensed weekends last fall, particularly frustrated with the frequent double races that helped IndyCar hold a 14-race championship. After five of them a year ago, IndyCar has only held two, although there is still uncertainty as to whether the canceled Toronto race will be made up for by creating another double-headed in Mid-Ohio or Portland. But his idea of shortened weekends, which can greatly hinder a smaller team when it is unloading with handling problems, or even deprive larger teams that don’t have nearly the time on the track to try out their full range of setups to get on with hone the winner, still sounds true.
But as different formats have been used so far this year and no race weekends have been announced for the future at the moment, it is unclear whether IndyCar is still viewing this as a “new normal” or just another association to get to a truly normal 2022.
“I want to go back to the regular schedule,” said Newgarden. “I know all of my teammates do too.”
Why the phoenix fought the flames
Don’t expect Grosjean to get up anytime soon – actually look for the ex-Formula 1 driver jumping into a Honda for a race this season that is supposed to be in the air at best when he first came out last winter Times signed with Dale Coyne Racing and Rick Ware Racing. In August, Grosjean will contest his very first oval race at WWT Raceway, partly out of curiosity but also to carefully test the water as he ponders whether to compete in the Indianapolis 500 next May.
“It’s always been like that for me, but also since the season is over and I’ve really enjoyed it, I want to get a taste of Ovals,” he told IndyStar this weekend. “Everyone says it’s a super interesting and good race. As I’m from Europe I don’t know anything about them so I think it will be pretty cool to try it out. “
Grosjean couldn’t have done anything more unexpected than what we saw on the final laps of the second race of the Detroit Grand Prix. Just over 15 laps remaining slowed Grosjeans # 51, and camera footage showed first smoke and then fire emanating from his front brakes. Given his far more drastic collision with fire last November, when a rampaging inferno in his Haas F1 cockpit nearly cost his life after a high-speed crash, his urgency to clean the airplane and get out of the car last Sunday was greater than understandable.
Grosjean sprinted away from the car and to the safety fence, but then yelled and pointed at the flag bearers. Confused, they finally handed a fire extinguisher to the driver, who was still wearing his helmet and driving gloves. Grosjean ran back to the car, and if he had a few seconds before the AMR security team arrived, we might have seen him use it.
Instead, he was hastily chased away and the professionals took care of the job. As he explains, his idea of jumping in to save the day was pragmatic, as silly as it might have looked.
“I just wanted to avoid as much damage to the car as possible,” he said. “I know if the brakes are on there is no harm to the rest of the car, but then the wishbone starts to hurt, then it spreads, so I wanted to run as fast as possible so the damage was limited to the car . “
Two-wheelers or four?
With 46-year-old IndyCar veteran Tony Kanaan swearing by it, it’s hard to imagine that an exercise regimen could be dangerous. But the downsides of road cycling were brought up last week when Dark Horse series title contender Rinus VeeKay, who finished fifth in the points classification after the Detroit Grand Prix in his sophomore year in IndyCar, and his Ed Carpenter Racing Team announced Tuesday that VeeKay broke his collarbone during a 75 mile practice drive with his trainer at 15 miles.
The two started around Indiana Dunes National Park and headed for Chicago on Monday, riding a fairly empty paved bike path when VeeKay lost control and went over his handlebars. Not wanting to fall on his face or wrists, he told IndyStar, he tried to catch the fall with his left shoulder. Almost immediately after the impact, he said, he knew he had probably broken it. Quickly brought back to Indianapolis by his parents, VeeKay underwent successful outpatient surgery on Tuesday, and the team tapped VeeKay’s Road to Indy rival Oliver Askew to board Road America in the # 21 Chevy this weekend.
VeeKay, who was placed in a metal plate by the surgeons, said by trying to test his mobility more slowly each day and scheduled intense cryotherapy when he moved to his new Ft. Lauderdale home, hoping to be back in the car on July 4th in Mid-Ohio.
Even so, Marcus Ericsson, one of the paddock’s most avid cyclists, said he wasn’t being put off by one of his best cardio machines. Ericsson, who lives a little north of Indianapolis, is often on the city streets, going on long bike rides with various members of the paddock.
“Of course there is risk, but you could fall if you hit the pit lane on your scooter,” he said. “That’s why I think it’s difficult to draw the line between what you should and shouldn’t do. The main thing is to be careful not to put yourself in a situation where you could injure yourself.
“You can be in the gym and drop a weight on your foot, but it definitely makes you think.”
Email IndyStar motorsport reporter Nathan Brown at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.
The post IndyCar drivers want normal weekends, explains Grosjean Fire Extinguisher first appeared on monter-une-startup.
