Q: In the May 15 Mailbag, somebody named John thought that IndyCar’s lack of ovals and a lack of American drivers was the reason it’s not more popular. That is BS. If anything, the variety of international talent and tracks raced at is part of the allure of IndyCar. The only issue that I as some stereotype of a snooty European would have with it is that some of these American drivers are a bit on the boring side.
IMO, the main issue that IndyCar has that it’s in a no man’s land of being successful enough to maintain existence in perpetuity, but lacks that extra something to really put itself back to the forefront of the average person’s radar (outside the month of May). The international talent does help because while it might be a surprise to some, people outside the USA do follow IndyCar and want to see their driver do well.
It also comes off as a fairly casual sport where people actually do have fun and do not have to have about 95 million different sponsor obligations to fulfill every weekend compared to F1. Quite un-elitist, if you ask me.
Otto, Laukaa, Finland
MP: I’m with you, Otto. Most of IndyCar’s drivers are fairly interesting.
Q: We all know that Mercedes’ dominant F1 run from 2014-21 began with a huge advantage in power with the new V6 turbos with rules during that time only allowing relatively small incremental changes to the engines. During that period I also assumed the chassis was excellent and maybe only trailed Red Bull in that area. Given how in recent years Mercedes has had continual shortcomings in chassis design, is it possible that the cars in the dominant period were never that good and the power was just so much better that it hid the shortcomings? Or has there been some significant brain drain in their chassis development program that has led to their current situation?
Second, McLaren’s current significant performance advantage over Mercedes while using the Mercedes power plant further points out how poor the Mercedes chassis is. Do the Mercedes engine customers have the same spec engines as the works team? Same goes for Ferrari. I remember years ago the Ferrari customers would get the engines the works team used the previous season.
Ed Kelly
CHRIS MEDLAND: The initial Mercedes cars were definitely not great aerodynamically, even by Mercedes’ own admission. If you look at it, Williams was able to closely challenge at times in those first few years as it opted for a specific type of design with the same power unit, but at the same time the first McLaren of that era was a long way off. Integration of the power unit into the chassis was key and done well by Mercedes, but the team acknowledges it took a while until it felt like it was building really good cars.
And those cars were very good in the higher-downforce era from 2017 onwards, when there was much more convergence. Teams were allowed to develop more freely and did catch up, but the engines have been frozen in recent years and that’s actually placed a bit of a limitation on where someone like Mercedes could use a strength, and made it solely an aero and chassis series. The team was very good at understanding the previous generation of car, but you’d still say the PU played a part in Mercedes staying ahead of Ferrari and then Red Bull until 2021. Whereas now, it doesn’t have as good grasp of ground effect regulations and how to maximize car performance in this era.
The way the cars are run are very different — far lower and more stiff, with less rake (basically the difference in ride height between the front and rear axle) — and Mercedes hasn’t been able to extract performance in this way so far. When it put raw downforce on in a similar way to the previous cars, it didn’t translate into lap time because it wasn’t always usable or predictable. These cars are so complex that it’s not how much downforce you theoretically have, but how much of it is efficient and stable.
McLaren is the perfect example you use, because that’s a team that does have a better understanding of how to do what Red Bull is doing and get the ground effect cars working efficiently, and is clearly quicker than Mercedes with the same power unit. But on the last point, yes, all customer teams have to receive the exact same specifications of engine, so that is a clear comparison you can make but also removes an area Mercedes could have had an advantage.
THE FINAL WORDFrom Robin Miller’s Mailbag, May 21, 2014
Q: Attention Indy 500: Please pay attention to what Kurt Busch did. Make a deal with NASCAR, run the Indy 500 on Memorial Day Monday, so that more NASCAR drivers can participate at Indianapolis. You could get 7-10 drivers to come here and IndyCar drivers might want to run Charlotte, too.
And the deal? Rotate the two races swapping Sunday/Monday each year like a home/away football series. Can you imagine the crowd here to see Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart, Dale Jr., etc., running the 500? What does NASCAR get — no TV competition for their race, and they could (and should) start their race earlier because fans don’t want to be at the track until 10-11pm. And to make it interesting, add a $5 million bonus for any driver that can win both races in a weekend.
Lee Driggers, Indianapolis
ROBIN MILLER: Bless your heart Lee, it’s OK to dream. First off, NASCAR isn’t going to do ANYTHING to accommodate IndyCar or the Indy 500. Secondly, Rick Hendrick would NEVER let JJ or Junior or Kahne run the Speedway (Gordon doesn’t want to) and Busch is only doing it because Stew is his car owner. I reckon Kyle Larson is the only other Cup regular with a shot at Indy sometime.
