Yahoo Autos The RACER Mailbag, September 4
Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will be saved for the following week.
Q: Why doesn’t IndyCar let cars qualify one at a time on road courses? Wouldn’t this solve the interference problem?
JRW, AZ
MARSHALL PRUETT: I’m not against the idea, but since it isn’t done in any other open-wheel championship that I know of — big or small — it’s not like IndyCar is going against the grain.
Also, there’s been a thing that’s evolved in recent years where whatever number of folks and too many series believe every driver, on every qualifying lap, should have Moses parting the way at all times. I don’t know exactly when that belief took off, but it’s lame.
Successful qualifying is about timing and making runs at the best windows of opportunity. It’s part of the strategy. Today, every team and driver is seemingly expected to have a 360-degree view on every second of their qualifying sessions, and if they impede somebody by 0.1s, they get penalized. I just don’t get it. If it’s blatant, give them a penalty. If the driver is asleep at the wheel and totally clueless, give them a penalty. Otherwise, minor inconveniences are part of the experience.
This isn’t drag racing with dedicated lanes for each qualifier to be protected from each other. IndyCar drivers are given equal time and opportunity to use the track at the same time to deliver their best laps. If they fail in that equal opportunity due to a slower driver being in the way, well, that’s part of the equal opportunity, not a guarantee.
Q; This was one of the best race weekends that IndyCar has ever had, with two great races that may have energized the need for more short ovals thanks to the surprising crowd that showed up for the Milwaukee 250. I wish they would go old school and have two races like they did from 1949-1983 when they raced after the Indy 500 and on Labor Day weekend. Perhaps by 2026 we could see Richmond, New Hampshire, Michigan and Homestead.
And since Pato O’Ward was complaining about the missed opportunity to race in his hometown country of Mexico, maybe they could add the oval race at Autódromo Internacional Miguel E. Abed in Pueblo, Mexico, which is similar to World Wide Technology Raceway.
Alistair, Springfield, MO
MP: The Indy-to-Detroit routine just feels like a massive drop-off in spectacle and prestige. Indy-to-Milwaukee? That’s a proven winner.
Who is going to say no to a day of IndyCar racing and fried cheese curds? James Black/IMS Photo
Q: As long as there’s been online forums, fans have complained that “all IndyCar needs is better marketing.” It’s 2024 and despite the marketing genius of “I am Indy,” the refrain still stands.
I think part of the problem today is that Penske Entertainment either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the digital space. Responsive design for the web has been around since at least 2008; it’s what makes content wrap to fit your computer, phone, or device screen. It’s so old (in web development years) that people don’t even refer to it as responsive design anymore; it’s there by default. However, IndyCar.com isn’t responsive on desktop, mobile, or the IndyCar app, so you can’t read full stories. (I attached a screenshot of IndyCar.com on mobile on Friday of Milwaukee weekend for context.)
The weekend schedule is not on the IndyCar.com homepage; it’s a click away, hidden under “Race details” (which you have to scroll down to see – and because the site isn’t responsive, it’s obscured by the race countdown timer). The homepage doesn’t offer notifications, which means the only people who know what’s going on during race weekends are people who either install the IndyCar app, or people who are interested enough to go to IndyCar.com and know where to click.
I get notifications from the Android IndyCar app that sessions are starting, over 45 minutes after they start. I got a notification Practice 1 at MKE started 47 minutes after it began. There are no notifications when sessions are about to start, or even the weekend schedule in advance. Links in notifications don’t go to the story in the notification, just the app’s homepage, which means you need to find the linked story on the homepage.
I don’t know how IndyCar can grow the sport’s footprint when they don’t seem to understand the basics of delivering digital content. It’s a bad user experience, and a bad impression for fans.
Ed, Jersey
MP: Thanks for writing in to share your experiences, Ed.
Q: As I watch Milwaukee Race 1, something that’s been bugging me has caused me to email you. When production shows an in-car camera view, in the lower right corner they show the logo of the camera sponsor.
Inside the cockpit all around the rim of the aeroscreen the same sponsor’s name is displayed. The logo names also appear on the rear wings for backward camera shots.
It seems that it would help viewers identify cars if they put a still shot of a side view of the car carrying the live camera shot. I don’t associate Mission Foods with Rossi’s car color scheme of the week, for example. I see their name on screen, so the camera logo box is redundant.
Please pass that suggestion to race TV production team.
Pat, Indy
MP: NBC, you’ve got one race left to take care of Pat.
Q: Power pits for new wing as they are getting ready to go green. IndyCar calls off restart, enabling Power to change his wing without going two more laps down. Penske privilege?
Joe Mullins
MP: The guy finished 10th and needs a miracle to win the championship, so if it was done to help him, it was a failure.
Q: Why does IndyCar decide to count any laps before green that extend past the normal pace laps towards the total race count? As a fan, it just feels like we are being shortchanged (although I recognize it is not normally a crazy amount). Like with Palou, it’s just crazy to me that we lost six laps of racing.
And then follow up: why was the restart after the lap six Newgarden crash single file? We never saw the green on the attempted start, so I would’ve thought that it should’ve been a normal two-wide start. Again, this is one of those little things that can make a fan feel short-changed.
All in all though, the weekend was a huge success and the racing was great Hoping they stay at Milwaukee for years to come.
Ben, Chicago
MP: The race — the event of competing over a prescribed number of laps — starts at the end of the pace laps, regardless of whether the green flag flew and actual racing took place. The lack of going green doesn’t mean the next lap(s) are additional pace laps.
The rules call for the start of the race to be double file and all the rest to be single. The race started on lap one, even though no wheel-to-wheel competition happened until the restart.
Q: It’s so easy to nitpick and be critical these days, but I just wanted to say how awesome the racing was this weekend at Milwaukee. I was pleasantly surprised by the crowd. Clearly a long way to go, but Penske Entertainment needs to do everything they can to never let this track fall off the calendar again.
Has there been any thought into improving the front and rear wing tether system? Surely there’s got to be a quicker way to unclip and reattach the tethers. A wing change these days is absolutely painful to watch.
Michael, Halifax, Canada
MP: You should see the pre-quick change noses that were held in place by 15-20 countersunk allen bolts that took three years to change. The real pain is the 20-30 seconds lost navigating most pit lanes. I’m sure IndyCar and Dallara could work on improving the change time, but of all the things the series needs to improve, is this one to waste time on and force teams to spend more money to buy whatever updated parts? I’d say no.
Here’s one of my shots of Buddy Lazier’s Hemelgarn Lola in 1991:
1991: Whitney Houston delivered an epic rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl, Nintendo released the Super Nintendo, 2G was rolled out even though most phones weren’t high-tech enough to use it, and IndyCar nose changes took forever. Marshall Pruett photo
Q: What are the persistent problems plaguing RLL across both their IndyCar and IMSA programs? It has not just been an outlier race or two, but they are consistently mid-pack at best with what appears from the outside to be well-funded and properly equipped programs which have had past success.
With three team principals who are all in their 70s, you have to wonder about the long term outlook and succession plan, especially having just built a Taj Mahal HQ in Indy.
Graham is no longer the young charger, but one of the senior members of the paddock and one who has family and multiple businesses to manage, taking focus away from driving and training. Fittipaldi has been a big disappointment even on road courses, and Lundgaard sees greener pastures elsewhere in the paddock in ’25.
In IMSA their cars look spectacular, but again are rarely in the conversation come race day with a driving squad which primarily came out of GTs.
The whole thing is just perplexing with RLL not being a consistent front runner in either series, much less both.
Pedro
MP: Effective leadership over both programs, and specifically on the IndyCar side, lack of top-tier engineering leadership. Bobby Rahal isn’t meant to be putting in 16-hour days to run RLL; not at 71 years old and with auto dealerships and other businesses to oversee as well. Same for Mike Lanigan.
When I think of Penske, I think of Tim Cindric running the show, with authority, and he has some amazing lieutenants in charge of organizational or engineering/competition success with Ron Ruzewski, Kyle Moyer, Jonathan Diuguid, Myron Bouslog, Travis Law, etc., to lead and direct the team.
Same with Ganassi and Mike Hull and his army of organizational/engineer/competition managers with Barry Wanser, Mike O’Gara, Chris Simmons, Taylor Kiel, Jim Hamilton, Blair Julian, etc., doing the same exact things.
Penske has a NASCAR program, which I haven’t included in this rundown, so if we look at the comparisons of Penske and Ganassi and RLL who currently have multi-car IndyCar programs and manufacturer IMSA programs, I’d bet the owners of RLL would look at the hardcore team/engineering/competition leadership trees at their fellow IndyCar+IMSA teams and see they have nothing like the same staff volume or structure.
RLL has excellent people in most, but not all of its key positions. It doesn’t have enough of the same badasses its rivals have, and it also needs a big change at the top with Graham moving into the team president/managing director/dude who’s going to shake things up and restore the team’s competitive stature.
It’s on the engineering side, where the first ballot hall of famer Eddie Jones has been trying to retire for years and is no longer a big leader, and the somewhat brief and unsuccessful experiment in bringing a F1 aerodynamics experts in with Stefano Sordo to be the IndyCar team’s technical director did little to improve their fortunes. After one-and-a-half years with the team, he was gone after May. Allan McDonald was cut last year after the failures at Indy, and he was picked up by Juncos Hollinger Racing, which used his experience and wisdom to strengthen its engineering team. JHR is having its most competitive season to date, which isn’t a coincidence. RLL moved Indy 500-winning engineering veteran Todd Malloy over from the IMSA side to fill Sordo’s vacuum, and he’s a pro’s pro. But having to dive into the deep end in June to try and figure out what hasn’t been working, craft fixes, and set those potential fixes in motion could take six months to a year.
Graham is really excited about Jones’ successor, a first-year IndyCar race engineer by the name of Ashley Higham, but he’s both young and inexperienced. The best race engineer RLL’s had, in terms of on-track results, is Ben Siegel, who runs Lundgaard’s car, and he’s also somewhat young. Huge future for him — future technical director and more if he wants — but that doesn’t change the fact that here in September of 2024, there’s no deep engineering structure to rely on, no badass technical director to lead the team out of the wilderness, and that’s a vital problem to solve.
The team is stuck in that most unfortunate place where it expends a lot of effort and money but has no idea what it will get from weekend to weekend, other than frequent disappointment. Slow starts, rallying to find fixes, and Herculean efforts by Rahal or Lundgaard or Fittipaldi on occasion to overcome being lost on the first day is the well-worn script for RLL.
Bob, Mike, Dave and everyone else there deserve better. But not if they keep making minor adjustments when major alterations are required.
Q: I was fortunate to attend the Portland GP in 2018, which had a huge crowd. While watching this year it was apparent the crowd has dropped by about 70% since returning. I realize this is mostly Green Savoree’s fault, but this is a concerning trend where the final stretch of the calendar will have sparse crowds.
Is the brain trust at Penske Entertainment aware of how stale the product is becoming? Another Penske Ganassi one-two without any compelling passing /dueling for the lead (a common trend in the aeroscreen era).
If diehards like myself are getting burned out on the product before the end of the season, what does that say for the casual fan? Something needs to be done to restore parity to the field.
BuckheadIndy from Stankonia, the dirty dirty, the ATL
MP: We’ve had some great races at Portland with aeroscreens, and everywhere else with aeroscreens, so let’s not use the thing to carry all the blame for no reason.
The thing I’d ask is tell me when we had parity in the field? It’s been a loooooong time since an upstart little team like Schmidt Peterson Motorsports or KV Racing or even Dale Coyne Racing played the role of occasional spoiler of the Ganassi-Penske-Andretti domination.
Every championship since the new formula arrived in 2012 has been won by the big three, and of the 13 Indy 500s, 10 have been won by the big three (thanks to KV, Meyer Shank, and RLL for breaking up the group). This further reinforces the point that the biggest teams, which won almost all of the races before the new formula, continue to be the best, with the most money, and most of the best drivers and personnel, and dominating is what they are supposed to do.
Parity? Maybe for a brief period in the IRL from 1996-2000, kind of, but once the Penske cars showed up at Phoenix in 2001 — our Sam Schmidt team was next to them in the garages — we watched that concept disappear. Totally understand how you might be burned out on the Big 3, but this is what it’s been for decades. Might change the players — could have been a Newman/Haas Racing or Galles Racing or Player’s/Forsythe — but the dynamic of a few monster teams taking almost all of the spoils is the norm, and going to a new car won’t change that.
Q: How is the flip of the starter switch bad for safety compared to having to fetch a car not centered in the pit box and sending another crew member and or starter tool into a busy pit lane?
Ron Schroder
MP: Because one involves the crew overseeing starting the car and knowing when it’s ready to leave, and the other presents the risk of the driver leaving without his crew being aware and fully out of the way.
Q: This proposed IndyCar charter membership is crazy. The top 25 are locked in from 2025 and beyond. Total lockout of any new teams for wanting to come race with IndyCar. Sounds to me like Mr. Penske and Mr. Miles have been drinking whatever Mr. Brown from McLaren is telling them is the direction he thinks IndyCar needs to go. Instead of 26-30 full-time entries, weed out the small teams that have supported IndyCar since the IRL was formed, and cut the full-time entries back to around 20-24.
Second, locking the field size at 27 outside of Indy is just stupid. If you have tracks like WWTR, Milwaukee, Iowa, Portland and Road America that can support bigger fields, go race by race. It’s not that difficult.
And my last pissed-off issue of 2024, Mexico said, “IndyCar, you get a Mexican driver in your series, you can come race here.” Once again, IndyCar has dragged its feet long enough, fixated on its 17-race schedule, and NASCAR comes sneaking in the back door. If not NASCAR, it’s F1.
You can’t sit around and wait for your phone to ring, you have to get off your butts and go visit these other venues. I worked at USAC for 15+ years, and that’s how we grew our series.
AE Danville, IN
MP: It’s Penske Entertainment leading the downsizing move, FWIW. Zak Brown supports it, but this is something the owners of the series want first and foremost. If it wasn’t difficult to host more than 27, they would. But since it is difficult at a number of tracks, they aren’t.
I wonder why IndyCar is so focused on the site of the Mexican GP when other options could be explored. How about something original and unique like a street race that is 100 percent IndyCar’s, instead of going to a road course where F1 and NASCAR will draw much bigger crowds, and the series would need to pay to rent the facility and do all of the work to be a distant third in popularity to the other events?
This feels like a good time for a photo of something completely random, so here’s Jack Brabham with an F1 car made of ice cream at the 1966 Mexican Grand Prix. Motorsport Images
Q: In last week’s Mailbag, Bill M questioned why hybrid IndyCars don’t always start their engines under hybrid power when they’re allowed to.
Presumably if you spin with 100% charge you’ll be able to restart yourself, but if you’re on 0% you won’t. So what’s the “danger zone” of charge where, if you’re driving round below that level and spin, you won’t have enough power to restart the engine?
Paul, Edinburgh, UK
MP: IndyCar’s Honda-built energy storage system is configured to save the last 30 percent of its charge for restarts. In other words, what drivers have to play with, which is on a 0-100-percent charge scale, is actually 31-100 percent. Now, can a driver, having issues or fumbling with self-starting, burn that 30 percent down to zero? I’m not sure if the ESS will let drivers truly go to 0, but if there’s stalling and a need to do multiple self-starts, a driver might be out of luck.
Q: With a nod to big team domination in the standings, would a rule preventing any car in the top 10 of the Leaders Circle from participating in off-season manufacturer/tire/hybrid testing help close the gap?
Vincent Martinez, South Pasadena, CA
MP: It couldn’t hurt, but as I’ve said before, if you’re Dallara/IndyCar, Firestone, or Chevy/Honda, do you want your C, D, and F students helping you to study and prepare for the big test, or your A and B students tacking the preparatory work?
I’m not saying the midfield and smaller teams can’t be super helpful in testing, but you’d probably want to lean on the ones with the best of everything to help you develop whatever you’re working on.
Q: How does race control work? I remember at some point it was a committee of three people or something that made the decisions. Is that still how it works?
Geoff
MP: It was, but years ago, it reverted to two with Arie Luyendyk and Max Papis. If there’s a deadlock on a call, I believe Jay Frye is the tiebreaker.
Q: Do the IndyCar teams have a private channel to communicate something to the drivers that they don’t want broadcast? I was thinking about the Power-Malukas incident at WWTR. After the race, once Will cooled down and saw the replay he realized it was totally his fault and immediately apologized to David. Could the team, knowing how hot Will can get, let him know during the race so he doesn’t have to do all the crazy stuff?
Ed Kelly, Studio City, CA
MP: Not that I’m aware of while the car is on track. When it’s on pit lane and the umbilical is connected, yes. Other than telling a heated driver to calm down while racing, doing as you suggest involves giving the driver the impression you’re taking sides, and that’s not what I’d recommend.
And Will didn’t do anything crazy. Malukas played it up like he was accosted or confronted by Power, saying that he screamed at him. In fact, Will was riding by on a golf cart with his wife Liz and yelled, ‘What the ****, Malukas?’ Power cleared the air with Malukas, but David also over-sold the encounter as being way more than it actually was.
Q: If I understand correctly, next year’s charters are limited to three per owner. How would it be handled if you have a technical partnerships with other teams? Would that count as one of three for the owner of the technical agreement? Also, would IndyCar allow a team to skirt the rules by naming family members as the owners of additional teams?
Susan Bournoville
MP: Hi Susan. This might be worth reading, along with the numerous links in the story.
The charter is set by where teams placed in the 2023 entrants’ championship. Technical alliances have no bearing on the entrants’ championship. If the team did not compete in 2023 and place inside the top 25 in the standings, they aren’t eligible to receive one of the 25 charters.
Q: With the passing of “Chuck,” the IndyCar racing community has lost another legend. Would you happen to know if there might be an organization that we could send a memorial donation? Perhaps Chuck had a favorite organization?
Bruce, Western Massachusetts
MP: Here’s what I got from the funeral home: He will be laid to rest at Acton Cemetery. The family requests that donations be made to Southminister Presbyterian Church.
Q: What is the general mood within the paddock on the future direction of the IndyCar series?
Bob
MP: Mixed. The paddock was beaming with pride at Milwaukee. Prior to Saturday’s race, I spent a lot of time with team owners and there are plenty of grievances that linger, including concerns over a Penske bias in race control, behavior of Penske Entertainment officials acting like they did back in the day as fanboys for their team, the costs of going hybrid, and myriad other items that persist. There’s general happiness with the charter program, but it also has some hardened detractors who do not want to speak out against it/Penske, at this point. There’s universal love for the FOX TV deal Penske delivered. Like I said, it’s mixed.
The vibe amongst the teams is mixed. Geoffrey Miller/Motorsport Images
Q: How many miles does the pace car in the series you cover accumulate during the course of a season? Can you purchase one after the season has ended?
I would also ask of you to have a survey of the greatest souvenir you can go home with? In my opinion I believe it would be a flag, an autograph or a part of a car or a pace car.
Nitro Bob from Boston
MP: 1,241 miles. The Mailbag doesn’t do surveys, but photos with drivers or legends tend to be the most personal items that are spoken of and shared. Some of the pace cars are preproduction models, which get crushed after they’re done, and the cars with VINs — press pool cars — first get offered internally to Honda employees, and if there any that go unsold, they get moved to a wholesaler, I’m told.
CHRIS MEDLAND: Obviously it’s a hypothetical question based on how many incidents we get in a season, but the safety car runs with regularity on a Thursday when it completes around 10 laps as part of the High Speed Test (which is when it crashed at Monza), then also does a lap before the start of every race. So we can guarantee around 270 laps even before it’s called upon for its usual role in a race situation.
The safety car also appears in junior category races, so even though each season fluctuates I think we can safely say it’ll often do at least 100 laps in race situations across F1, F2 and F3. With the average length of a track being a little over three miles, factoring in all the variables you’re probably looking at between 1000 and 2000 miles.
But F1 has two safety car suppliers, so it’s split between Aston Martin and Mercedes, and that means each car could be looking at half of that (plus there are two safety cars available each weekend so there’s always a back-up, and each will get a test).
They’re not up for sale at the end of a season, though, because the same cars carry over to the following year — with some good servicing — until either manufacturer wants to introduce a new model.
I definitely think a part of a car is the best souvenir you can go home with. An actual physical item that’s taken part in the race you were at would be awesome, even if it’s damaged and you’ve managed to pick it up as debris from the side of the track!
I did some fundraising when I first did a charity sporting challenge 11 years ago (plug: I’m doing the London Marathon next year, so apologies for all the tweets you’ll see asking for donations) and teams provided items I could give away in a raffle, and by far the most coveted items were the car parts, with a rear wing endplate from Williams and front wing flap from Marussia.
Q: I think Williams deciding to get rid of Logan Sargeant is understandable, but putting a rookie in this Williams when there is no potential for a full-time drive next year is unconscionable. I think the thing to do here would be to run somebody who’s a third/sim driver who has some F1 experience.
From what I’ve read, Colapinto has 37-40 points from results and only qualifies for a superlicence because he has 3 additional points for doing FP1 sessions and not getting a penalty in last year’s F3 season.
What is the upside for Williams and for Colapinto here?
Will from Indy
CM: Colapinto isn’t as far off being the sort of driver you were thinking of, as he’s done plenty of simulator work for Williams and drove in FP1. That was one reason Williams picked him, because of his knowledge and experience of the team and the current car compared to other options.
Another reason is he’s a Williams Academy driver, so it fast-tracks his development but also tells Williams all it needs to know about his potential. It knew it was splitting from Sargeant anyway, but if Colapinto does a good job he’ll become reserve driver, and if not then the team will be able to see if he’s got the potential to keep investing in.
For Colapinto, it’s a real shop window moment, where he can try to impress Williams but also even put himself in the frame for the vacancy at Stake, because F2 drivers including Gabriel Bortoleto are also being considered there.
And finally, it’s lucrative for Williams with the sponsors it has signed off the back of Colapinto’s promotion. Two Argentinian brands — Globant and Mercado Libre — have already joined as partners after Colapinto was given the drive, and all other things being relatively equal, that’s always a bonus that teams will lean towards.
Q: Is Ferrari compensating Carlos Sainz for breaking his current contract, or was he going to be a free agent in 2025 anyway? If the former, any idea how much Carlos is getting from them?
Chris Pericak, Charlottesville, VA
CM: There was no break in contract. Carlos was out of contract at the end of 2024 so he was a free agent anyway, and Ferrari simply chose not to offer him a new deal and sign Lewis Hamilton for 2025 onwards instead. Carlos was free to move anywhere next year.
Sainz was not under contract to Ferrari beyond this year, so both sides were free to make other plans for 2025. Simon Galloway/Motorsport Images
Q: Will we see drivers from the NASCAR Mexico Series in the Mexico Cup Series race?
Chris Fiegler, Latham, NY
KELLY CRANDALL: It’s far too early to see how that is going to play out, but I would expect interest will be high for that race for many drivers — Mexico Series and otherwise. However, I’m not sure how many available seats, if any, there would be to slot them into the grid.
THE FINAL WORD
From Robin Miller’s Mailbag, September 4, 2013
Q: I’m starting to be disappointed in watching IndyCar. Not the product, or the races themselves, but the rules, whining, bitching and complaining. I’ve never heard so much whining from every driver on the grid. It’s getting old, and I wonder how these drivers would cope if they were racing in the days of CART in the early 1990s. I’m sorry, but that “avoidable contact” rule needs to be thrown out. Besides, what really constitutes avoidable contact? It’s racing, it’s going to happen. So what you got punted, isn’t that what all the great IndyCar drivers of the past are famous for? The Chrome Horn? I’m not just talking Paul Tracy, but Emerson Fittipaldi, Al Unser Jr. Michael Andretti, these and other “named” drivers have all been guilty of “avoidable contact” and there was never a punishment. (Watch Cleveland 1995 for an example.)
I’m still trying to figure out the big deal with Dixon at Sonoma. He hit a pit crew man; you can’t do that, it’s in the rulebook. Maybe I am old school, but I hardly saw Wally Dallenbach on TV or his name even mentioned in the broadcast when he ran the show in CART. It just seems like there is too much focus on race control than the race itself. Let them settle it on the racetrack. Was Baltimore a fiasco? I’m not so sure. I enjoyed the race. Come on people, it’s a street race; you are going to have pile-ups, backups, and a lot of contact in those close quarters. What are people expecting? NASCAR thrives on chaos, and it brings people to the track.
I’m very disappointed that there isn’t another race for a month, because emotions are high and again IndyCar fails to capitalize on it. IndyCar is a great product, let race control do its job and stop questioning everything. I’d like to see Dixon fined for calling Beaux Barfield an idiot. Wasn’t Paul Tracy fined for calling Chris Kneifel an a** clown? IndyCar and Beaux Barfield need to take control of the show, and if the drivers don’t like it, go somewhere else to race, or pull up your panties, climb in the cockpit, shut up and go racing.
Kris Branch, Ocala, FL
ROBIN MILLER: You’ve hit on all my hot buttons. The bitching and moaning is out of control. Unavoidable contact is the most objectionable and senseless rule in street racing. Street racing is like indoor midget racing; there’s always going to be contact. The greats of the 1960s and ’70s didn’t use the Chrome Horn because it was way too dangerous, the cars weren’t safe, the tracks weren’t safe and there was no such thing as a street race. Nobody in the ’60s had a clue about who was the USAC chief steward (it wasn’t Harlan Fengler, he was Indy only). Dallenbach did a good job and I feel bad for criticizing him unfairly a couple times.
The chief steward’s job is thankless and the people screaming for Barfield’s head are the same ones who backed Brian Barnhart and then wanted him beheaded. It’s just IndyCar’s luck that we’ve got to wait a month before the next race and it sucks. But hey, Little E’s going to make The Chase so life’s not all bad.
