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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Barber Rewind
Marshall Pruett looks back at some of the interesting stories, themes and trends from IndyCar Series Round 2 at Barber Motorsports Park.
Sebastien Bourdais, along with many drivers throughout the field, lit up the 2.3-mile Barber track during Sunday's race. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)
It was hours after he’d won the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, and long after the 52,879 fans that turned out to see the race had gone home.
Standing on a hilltop overlooking the track, Will Power was pumping his fist, rejoicing at the news about how well Rubens Barrichello and Sebastien Bourdais had done behind him.
His raw display of emotions captured just what many had felt about the day: When it all goes right, IndyCar is damn hard to beat in terms of quality and entertainment.
“That’s what we need…it’s exactly what we need,” said Power. “We need guys like Rubens to do well, and Sebastien to do well. They’re so important; so many people follow them. It’s awesome that we have all of this competition throughout the field.”
Power’s sentiment spoke to what many fans have reacted to in the past two weeks. St. Pete might have been an epic cluster on TV, but for those who watched it in person or read detailed race reports, stirring drives took place. Passing was common. Talent was on display.
The same was true at Barber, but on an entirely different level. Drivers pushed harder than we’d seen in quite some time, but it didn’t result in wreck after wreck or an endless stream of yellows. It was memorable, and for all the right reasons.
By my count, 19 of the 26 drivers in the 2012 championship have what it takes to win races (even if their machinery might not be up to the task), creating just the kind of dynamic that caused Power to hold his own mini-celebration.
No one wants to cause any false alarms by hailing the return of Indy car racing too prematurely, but if things keep heading in the current direction, we’ll be able to look back at Barber as the race that gave us a glimpse of where the series was headed.
Thanks For The Compliment, But…
Who needs the “Push-to-Pass” button when the good ole’ “Pass-to-Pass” pedal works so well? As Power and others commented, Firestone received a lot of credit for its road course tires which, as the race appeared to show, featured alternate “Reds” that had a rather severe drop off in performance.
With the Reds running out of grip sooner than expected and lap times then increasing by a few seconds per lap, some drivers became sitting ducks which led to fraught battles and passes galore.
Unfortunately, after taking a closer look, laying the credit at Firestone’s doorstep wasn’t entirely accurate.
The biggest turning point—and the reason for the awesome race—came from the limited running time teams had prior to the 90-lap contest, rather than a special compound produced by Firestone.
As simple as it sounds, far too many teams had to guess on the correct chassis setup for the race, and with only one solid hour of practice on Friday to draw from, many of those guesses were wide of the mark. Some got it right and did a lot of passing, while even more got it wrong, wore out their tires and were passed with ease.
I could go into a long discussion on the specifics of how it all happened, but I asked Al Speyer, Executive Director for Firestone Racing, to do it in 200 words or less:
“The fact that no one ran the actual race tires prior to this past weekend, paired with the inclement weather limiting track time on Friday and Saturday, led to the unpredictability of the race. Teams didn’t really know how the cars would react to the primary and alternate Firestone Firehawk race tires. More laps on the tires equals more predictability. It’s a fine line for a manufacturer to walk. We want to provide our IndyCar teams and drivers with the best possible tires; yet at the same time, if our tires ‘going off’ helps make the racing more exciting, and leads to more viewers and more fans, then that’s good for everyone. We’ve proven without a doubt that we can make consistent, reliable tires. It’s possibly a more difficult challenge to make tires that degrade the exact right amount at the exact right time. There’s an elusive gap we’re seeking between the primary and alternate tires, and I believe last weekend was as close as we’ve ever been to the optimum difference in performance between the two tires.”
OK, So That’s The Answer?
If you think of a race weekend like 2.5 days of study sessions followed by the final exam at the end of the third day, Barber essentially deleted study time Friday afternoon because of rain, canceled Saturday morning’s session because of fog, had a quick study hall session Saturday afternoon in qualifying, barely met Sunday morning during an abbreviated warm-up and then went into finals a few hours later with most of the class feeling wholly unprepared.
One engineer I spoke to after warm-up was beyond frustrated, saying, “I have no idea what to expect for the primaries, the alternates, fuel windows…anything. This isn’t how you go racing…”
The subject matter at hand, the Dallara DW12, is still a bit of a mystery topic for most of its students, and at least in the early part of the season, reduced track time paid off with an exciting and unpredictable race.
So is that the answer to keeping the excitement going? Cut down on practice time and send teams into the race cold and guessing on setups? That’s an interesting topic to explore...
Pick your favorite band. Would you rather see a three-hour concert where they play half their catalog—lots of stuff that wasn’t necessarily popular, and some tunes you didn’t like—that leaves you feeling like you got more than enough time with them for the price of admission? Or would you rather have a tight set—maybe just 75 minutes of greatest hits—that leave you wanting more?
During a normal event where rain and fog doesn’t intervene, you get the first option. With less practice time, the Barber weekend was short on overall track time for the ticket buyers, but delivered a heck of a finale on Sunday.
Sure, the top two teams dominated the podium, and that won’t change no matter how little practice time is on the schedule, but the limited running paid off in how rest of the field mixed it up on Sunday.
As the formula stands right now, fans expect a certain amount of time with the headliners at each event (Warning: foreshadowing of the next topic), but if less study time will deliver the kind of action that happened at Barber, maybe a “less is more” approach is worth considering at road and street course events.
I Paid To See the Headliner, Not The Opening Acts
Like some others on Saturday morning, I was less than impressed by the series’ choice to scratch its 20-minute practice session due to fog and the inability for the emergency medical helicopter to land because of that fog. The need to delay the session wasn’t the problem.
But the compromise—to run a single installation lap with two minutes left in the session, followed by the checkered flag--was hard to accept.
The day had a packed schedule, making the delay a challenge to overcome, but rather than carve a few minutes from each support series to make sure the headliner—the series that drew the fans to the facility—got some track time, as the paying audience rightfully expected, should have taken precedence.
For those families who got up early to beat the traffic, park, take the tram and then walk to their seating area to see the Indy cars run at 8 a.m., the one-lap teaser…followed by 45 minutes of Indy Lights qualifying…must have been maddening. IndyCar qualifying was up right after that at 9:40, offering an hour of dedicated track time where maybe 45 solid minutes of actual lapping took place.
With the GRAND-AM Rolex Series occupying most of the schedule on Saturday, it would have been nearly impossible to carve all of the 20 minutes back, but the lack of effort to come up with a compromise, or to put the fans first was rather revealing.
I’m not saying it would have been easy to make schedule adjustments on the fly, but, as a general rule, any decision that involves shorting the limited number of fans we have that follow our sport is a bad one.
The fog issue, at its core, had nothing to do with a Saturday morning in Alabama or teams missing out on time to practice. It spoke to a greater disconnect between the series and its audience. Appeasing our current fans and making new ones is the only thing that really matters right now.
Going forward, and as one team principal suggested, why not learn from this year’s race weekend, skip trying to run a little bit on Saturday morning, make Friday and Sunday purely about open-wheel and leave Saturday for the sports cars?
Fill Friday with a few hours of IndyCar practice and qualifying, let the fans know ahead of time that the series will bookend GRAND-AM and, if we’re lucky, rain and/or lots of rubber from the Continental tires used by GRAND-AM will make Sunday’s IndyCar race every bit as unpredictable as it was this year.
Tag, But Not Simona?
The engine issues that befell Simona de Silvestro and Alex Tagliani during the St. Pete race warranted a bulletin from INDYCAR clarifying its engine change rules. De Silvestro encountered an engine failure in the race—it wasn’t catastrophic, but did prevent her from finishing the race.
Per rule 15.6.1, she wasn’t penalized because the failure happened in the race. After the race, Lotus found a worrisome trend in the engine data from Tagliani’s car and called for an engine change.
Tagliani’s Team Barracuda BHA team was assessed a 10-spot grid penalty because the change, although rooted in a problem that manifested itself in the race, did not prevent him from crossing the finish line.
INDYCAR’s bulletin made it clear that finishing the race eliminates the use of Rule 15.6.1 to escape the 10-spot penalty (and before the 1850-mile usage minimum has been hit).
Tagliani dropped out on Lap 1 at Barber with an engine-related problem, but it’s likely he’ll avoid a penalty. His Barber issue was attributed to a rather simple fuel pump drive failure, which, according to Rule 15.4.2, is eligible for repair and re-use. Provided it’s fixed and put back in the car for Long Beach, Tag will start wherever he qualifies.
Standing on a hilltop overlooking the track, Will Power was pumping his fist, rejoicing at the news about how well Rubens Barrichello and Sebastien Bourdais had done behind him.
His raw display of emotions captured just what many had felt about the day: When it all goes right, IndyCar is damn hard to beat in terms of quality and entertainment.
“That’s what we need…it’s exactly what we need,” said Power. “We need guys like Rubens to do well, and Sebastien to do well. They’re so important; so many people follow them. It’s awesome that we have all of this competition throughout the field.”
Power’s sentiment spoke to what many fans have reacted to in the past two weeks. St. Pete might have been an epic cluster on TV, but for those who watched it in person or read detailed race reports, stirring drives took place. Passing was common. Talent was on display.
The same was true at Barber, but on an entirely different level. Drivers pushed harder than we’d seen in quite some time, but it didn’t result in wreck after wreck or an endless stream of yellows. It was memorable, and for all the right reasons.
By my count, 19 of the 26 drivers in the 2012 championship have what it takes to win races (even if their machinery might not be up to the task), creating just the kind of dynamic that caused Power to hold his own mini-celebration.
No one wants to cause any false alarms by hailing the return of Indy car racing too prematurely, but if things keep heading in the current direction, we’ll be able to look back at Barber as the race that gave us a glimpse of where the series was headed.
Thanks For The Compliment, But…
Who needs the “Push-to-Pass” button when the good ole’ “Pass-to-Pass” pedal works so well? As Power and others commented, Firestone received a lot of credit for its road course tires which, as the race appeared to show, featured alternate “Reds” that had a rather severe drop off in performance.
With the Reds running out of grip sooner than expected and lap times then increasing by a few seconds per lap, some drivers became sitting ducks which led to fraught battles and passes galore.
Unfortunately, after taking a closer look, laying the credit at Firestone’s doorstep wasn’t entirely accurate.
The biggest turning point—and the reason for the awesome race—came from the limited running time teams had prior to the 90-lap contest, rather than a special compound produced by Firestone.
As simple as it sounds, far too many teams had to guess on the correct chassis setup for the race, and with only one solid hour of practice on Friday to draw from, many of those guesses were wide of the mark. Some got it right and did a lot of passing, while even more got it wrong, wore out their tires and were passed with ease.
I could go into a long discussion on the specifics of how it all happened, but I asked Al Speyer, Executive Director for Firestone Racing, to do it in 200 words or less:
“The fact that no one ran the actual race tires prior to this past weekend, paired with the inclement weather limiting track time on Friday and Saturday, led to the unpredictability of the race. Teams didn’t really know how the cars would react to the primary and alternate Firestone Firehawk race tires. More laps on the tires equals more predictability. It’s a fine line for a manufacturer to walk. We want to provide our IndyCar teams and drivers with the best possible tires; yet at the same time, if our tires ‘going off’ helps make the racing more exciting, and leads to more viewers and more fans, then that’s good for everyone. We’ve proven without a doubt that we can make consistent, reliable tires. It’s possibly a more difficult challenge to make tires that degrade the exact right amount at the exact right time. There’s an elusive gap we’re seeking between the primary and alternate tires, and I believe last weekend was as close as we’ve ever been to the optimum difference in performance between the two tires.”
OK, So That’s The Answer?
If you think of a race weekend like 2.5 days of study sessions followed by the final exam at the end of the third day, Barber essentially deleted study time Friday afternoon because of rain, canceled Saturday morning’s session because of fog, had a quick study hall session Saturday afternoon in qualifying, barely met Sunday morning during an abbreviated warm-up and then went into finals a few hours later with most of the class feeling wholly unprepared.
One engineer I spoke to after warm-up was beyond frustrated, saying, “I have no idea what to expect for the primaries, the alternates, fuel windows…anything. This isn’t how you go racing…”
The subject matter at hand, the Dallara DW12, is still a bit of a mystery topic for most of its students, and at least in the early part of the season, reduced track time paid off with an exciting and unpredictable race.
So is that the answer to keeping the excitement going? Cut down on practice time and send teams into the race cold and guessing on setups? That’s an interesting topic to explore...
Pick your favorite band. Would you rather see a three-hour concert where they play half their catalog—lots of stuff that wasn’t necessarily popular, and some tunes you didn’t like—that leaves you feeling like you got more than enough time with them for the price of admission? Or would you rather have a tight set—maybe just 75 minutes of greatest hits—that leave you wanting more?
During a normal event where rain and fog doesn’t intervene, you get the first option. With less practice time, the Barber weekend was short on overall track time for the ticket buyers, but delivered a heck of a finale on Sunday.
Sure, the top two teams dominated the podium, and that won’t change no matter how little practice time is on the schedule, but the limited running paid off in how rest of the field mixed it up on Sunday.
As the formula stands right now, fans expect a certain amount of time with the headliners at each event (Warning: foreshadowing of the next topic), but if less study time will deliver the kind of action that happened at Barber, maybe a “less is more” approach is worth considering at road and street course events.
I Paid To See the Headliner, Not The Opening Acts
Like some others on Saturday morning, I was less than impressed by the series’ choice to scratch its 20-minute practice session due to fog and the inability for the emergency medical helicopter to land because of that fog. The need to delay the session wasn’t the problem.
But the compromise—to run a single installation lap with two minutes left in the session, followed by the checkered flag--was hard to accept.
The day had a packed schedule, making the delay a challenge to overcome, but rather than carve a few minutes from each support series to make sure the headliner—the series that drew the fans to the facility—got some track time, as the paying audience rightfully expected, should have taken precedence.
For those families who got up early to beat the traffic, park, take the tram and then walk to their seating area to see the Indy cars run at 8 a.m., the one-lap teaser…followed by 45 minutes of Indy Lights qualifying…must have been maddening. IndyCar qualifying was up right after that at 9:40, offering an hour of dedicated track time where maybe 45 solid minutes of actual lapping took place.
With the GRAND-AM Rolex Series occupying most of the schedule on Saturday, it would have been nearly impossible to carve all of the 20 minutes back, but the lack of effort to come up with a compromise, or to put the fans first was rather revealing.
I’m not saying it would have been easy to make schedule adjustments on the fly, but, as a general rule, any decision that involves shorting the limited number of fans we have that follow our sport is a bad one.
The fog issue, at its core, had nothing to do with a Saturday morning in Alabama or teams missing out on time to practice. It spoke to a greater disconnect between the series and its audience. Appeasing our current fans and making new ones is the only thing that really matters right now.
Going forward, and as one team principal suggested, why not learn from this year’s race weekend, skip trying to run a little bit on Saturday morning, make Friday and Sunday purely about open-wheel and leave Saturday for the sports cars?
Fill Friday with a few hours of IndyCar practice and qualifying, let the fans know ahead of time that the series will bookend GRAND-AM and, if we’re lucky, rain and/or lots of rubber from the Continental tires used by GRAND-AM will make Sunday’s IndyCar race every bit as unpredictable as it was this year.
Tag, But Not Simona?
The engine issues that befell Simona de Silvestro and Alex Tagliani during the St. Pete race warranted a bulletin from INDYCAR clarifying its engine change rules. De Silvestro encountered an engine failure in the race—it wasn’t catastrophic, but did prevent her from finishing the race.
Per rule 15.6.1, she wasn’t penalized because the failure happened in the race. After the race, Lotus found a worrisome trend in the engine data from Tagliani’s car and called for an engine change.
Tagliani’s Team Barracuda BHA team was assessed a 10-spot grid penalty because the change, although rooted in a problem that manifested itself in the race, did not prevent him from crossing the finish line.
INDYCAR’s bulletin made it clear that finishing the race eliminates the use of Rule 15.6.1 to escape the 10-spot penalty (and before the 1850-mile usage minimum has been hit).
Tagliani dropped out on Lap 1 at Barber with an engine-related problem, but it’s likely he’ll avoid a penalty. His Barber issue was attributed to a rather simple fuel pump drive failure, which, according to Rule 15.4.2, is eligible for repair and re-use. Provided it’s fixed and put back in the car for Long Beach, Tag will start wherever he qualifies.
2013 INDY 500 Practice
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