Firestone Twin 275s at Texas Review and Reaction

Well I have had some time to think about it and “cool off” if you will but my thoughts on the draw are the same.  I said I would not like it and I didn’t.  The two worse case scenarios I was afraid of BOTH happened (slow or wrecked car in front with Wade Cunningham, and a fast car up front with the other fast cars in the back).  So if you look at it that was it wasn’t too bad as Wade did not cause a huge crash but you have to ask if this keeps happening is this the rule or the exception?  Will was able to “get gone” which did make for a fairly boring race number two but it was not a bad as I feared it would be either.  The two solutions put out there by drivers were: 1) Invert the field and 2) offer passing points.  Well if you offer passing points, the maximum number of points available is still based on a blind draw, which would still be extremely unfair and therefore solves nothing!  A full inversion of the field guaranties the slowest cars in the front of the field, which is a worse case scenario.  Again I give Wade Cunningham huge credit for jumping into a new (road course) car for the first time on the out side of row one and not causing a big wreck.  However, if you make that the standard and you well have a big wreck sooner rather then later.  Therefore, a full inversion also solves nothing!  If you are going to have a twin race format (which I wish they would just do away with) there are only two ways to set the field for the second race.  First, there is the "old way" which set on finishing position of the first race.  That makes it more of a competition red flag where you reset and put everyone back on the lead lap but other then that nothing changes.  Or what I think is the best idea, would be to use race one not only as a points paying race but also as a group qualifying for race two.  Therefore, the fastest lap time turned in race one would get the pole and so on.  This would still shake up the field some but would still be a legitimate way to set a grid; it is the best of both worlds!  This would have been the grid for race two if they used this system:

Just look at that and think “Oh what might have been.”  We can only hope that they put some real thought into how to reformat this race for next year.

Itaipava Sao Paulo Indy 300 presented by Nestle Review and Reaction

My main concern going into the Sao Paulo race was the track surface.  Not knowing that they have already done exactly what I wish they would do.  Which is repaving the track with FIA approved pavement and they repaved it with the same formula of pavement that surfaces the Interlagos Circuit (The Formula One track in Brazil); which makes me love this circuit even more.  There were still reports of bumps but they were inconsistent some drivers saying that it was still very bumpy and Will Power saying it is the smoothest street circuit they go to all year.  The answer I do not know I was not there but there was a huge noticeable bump right in the middle of the braking zone for turn one that needs to be fixed for next year.  Other then that, it is the perfect circuit!  If we could just catch a dry weekend, we would see just how great this circuit is.

As for my predictions Power got the pole but that is as good as I got as Helio was stuffed in the wall and James was stuck on the outside of a spinning car.  The story of the race other then the rain I would say is Sato.  Yeah he ended up eighth but had a much better race then that, whoever made the call to stay out under the yellow better hope he has good job security.  As that was just a really bad call!  I predicted Vitor to be the story but he had a brake line failure so he was unable to back up his podium from last year.  The “Legend in His Own Mind” award I picked EJ oh how wrong I was on that one as he a great race, until he was called for blocking (which by the IndyCar rules he with out question did.)  I will go on record as saying I hate that rule but that is the rule.  He went off the prefer line to prevent from being passed.  I think as the car in front he has earned the right to choose his line and as long as he stay in that line then he is not blocking but if you want to play in IndyCar you have to play by IndyCar rules which says you have to stay in the preferred line.

Over all I would say this weekend was a disappointment.  There is no blame to pass out as it was the weathers fault but as weather is a part of road / street racing lets look to see if there is any room for improvement.  I say yes, there is.  First and I said this on Saturday, painting the run-off areas looks cool but a run off area is there to help run-a-way cars stop and in the wet (when you are likely to have more need of such areas) paint is as bad a ice.  There are ways around this, see the Singapore F1 circuit, but it is just easier not to paint the whole thing.  Have nice defined lines but then let the cars brake on a surface that well help the car stop.  Somewhere else where IndyCar could use some improvement is on the rain tires.  If you really look at these tires you would see that they are not even as good as the Formula 1 intermediate tyre.  If you want to keep the current tire in IndyCar then fine but call that an intermediate rain tire (which IndyCar currently doesn’t have) and then make a real rain tire which would allow them to run in real rain!  I know IndyCar has no control over the weather but I believe IndyCar has a duty to the fans to be as best prepared as possible and limiting the painted areas around a track as much as possible and having a better rain tire would be a huge step in the right direction.

To Penalize or Not to penalize that is the question.

The main talking point this week in IndyCar is whether or not Helio should have been penalized and why was PT different.  I know I am in the extreme minority here but I for one think that race control got the exactly right last week at Long Beach.  If you watch the Helio / Wilson contact and brake down what happened to cause the incident you‘d see that Wilson was the second car in line.  The car in front (I do not remember who it was now) break checked Wilson in the hairpin.  This is not a dirty move.  This is a standard defensive move to make it harder for Wilson to get a run down the front stretch and make a pass going into turn 1.  Wilson therefore had to check up to avoid getting into him, in essence break-checking Helio in a standard accordion effect.  Helio could not see the front car brake check Wilson and ran into the back spinning Wilson.  Would I call this “unavoidable contact”?  No, I would not go that far but I would call it a racing incident and not deserving of a penalty.

So how is this different from the Tracy / Simona contact?  As we were never shown video of this incident it makes it hard too assess.  The reaction on Monday was this was the same contact and should have had the same result.  I however kept on saying, “hold the phone there.  We haven’t seen video of the Tracy / Simona contact and you are putting a lot of faith in Tracy by saying it was the same thing just because it had the same result.”  (A car spun on exit of the hairpin.)  I kept on point out the Tracy has a history of attempting bonehead moves and has tried (and failed) to make a pass in the hairpin before.  Therefore, I was not sure this was not the case again.  I am sure there are some people that want to cry conspiracy theories claiming that IndyCar does not want you to see the video because they do not want you to see the similarities of the contact and just want to stick it to PT.  First Versus is the one who opted not to show us the video not IndyCar and what does Versus have to hide?  They would love to show the video if they had it they just must not have it.  So how did race control see it?  Race control uses a different set of cameras.  These unmanned stationary cameras are more like security cameras then high definition television cameras.  Whether or not Versus have access to this footage is yet to be seen if I would to take a guess I would say no and we will never see video of this incident.  So how do we analyze the contact then?  There are two possible answers to this.  One you simply take the high road and do not analyze it at all.  This is what writers in respectable newspapers would do.  (See Curt Cavin’s Q&A as the perfect example of this.)  But this is just a blog not any respectable news source we are here just to create arguments so we do not have to stand up to the same line of ethics as a professional writer does.  So I can go with answer two and that is take the word of someone who saw it.  This becomes hearsay and you have to make decision on which you are going to believe where there are conflicts.  For this case, we have Al Unser Jr. and Scott Dixon.  Scott said the Helio’s move was far worse then Tracy’s and does not understand why Helio was not penalized.  Here is the quote:

“I was one car back from it. It was totally blatant. OK, Justin was struggling a little bit for rear grip, and it was coming towards the end of the stint, but it still doesn’t make it OK for the following person to say, ‘You’re slowing me down—you’re kind of ruining my race—so I’m going to spin you out so I don’t have to deal with you anymore.’”

What Dixon said about the Helio wreck was just dead wrong.  He claimed that Wilson was holding everyone but wait a minute Wilson was not the car holding everyone up it was the car in front of Wilson that was holding up the train and anyone who calls hat a blatant punt has lost their mind!  (Please note that I consider there are four kinds of contact that can happen in a race.  Unavoidable, Racing incident, Avoidable, and Punt.)  I tack this up to Dixon just being mad and talking with out facts.  The other witness we have to choose to speak publicly about it is Al Jr.  As one of the marshals, he would have the best view available for review of both incidents.  When he decided to come out publicly and talk about it.  I was proud to say what I thought happened (even with out video) is was Al said happened.  Tracy was trying a very ill-advised pass in a non-passing zone and caused a wreck.  That is a big difference then what Helio / Wilson contact where Helio was just the third car in line.  My verdict avoidable contact minor penalty.

What about Helio’s move into turn one then?  What happened here (we know because we have video) is exactly how you describe what Tracy did.  Let us break this down and see what really happened here.  Helio has a run down the front stretch pulls to the inside of Oriol Servia.  Servia moves down (not enough to block not even by IndyCar’s extremely stick definition) moving Helio farther on to the dirty line.  Helio kicks up dust does not slow down enough and plows into Power.  If Helio was trying to make a move on Power then that would be a bonehead move and he should have been penalized but he was not trying to pass Power.  He was trying to pass Servia and slot in behind Power.  In racing when you attempt to make a pass sometimes things go wrong that is by definition a racing incident.  If you attempt to make a clean pass in a passing, zone and fail there should be no penalty.  My verdict racing incident no penalty.