Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers may be despatched to mailbag@racer.com. We love listening to your feedback and opinions, however letters that embrace a query usually tend to be printed. Questions obtained after 3pm ET every Monday will probably be saved for the next week.
Q: I’d must think about that O’Ward’s chef should be cooking up crow 3 ways for Mr. Miles after seeing him fill malls and stadiums at a race he’s not even racing in…
Laz, Independence, MO
MARSHALL PRUETT: That and McLaren boss Zak Brown carrying his Pato Who? hat on the Mexico Metropolis GP.
After not contacting O’Ward for fairly a while after stepping on his appendage together with his feedback in August, Mr. Miles did certainly lately join with Pato to attempt to clear the air, which O’Ward informed me final week previous to the GP. Let’s see how lengthy it takes for that peace treaty to be damaged.
Q: I’d wish to throw out a thought for somebody to be a part of the Indy 500 race day: Pat McAfee. I used to be watching GameDay, and he threw out the Indy 500 in his introduction about Indiana. The man can speak. He lives in Indiana, was a member of the Colts, has his personal present and will get the phrase to these individuals who aren’t already watching. He may have drivers on his present all through the month of Could. Let him arrange his present on the monitor. Looks like an enormous win to me.
Chris, Michigan
MP: You’re certainly one of many to have the identical thought, and sure, McAfee, who was concerned with Conor Daly and the five hundred a couple of decade in the past with a t-shirt sale marketing campaign, could be an ideal bro-age match for Indy. Solely subject is IndyCar and the five hundred at the moment are solely on FOX, and McAfee is among the many largest names related to ABC/ESPN. I raised the identical level earlier within the 12 months when a reader made the identical suggestion when NBC was the only broadcaster, and if there’s a method for FOX to welcome one of many important characters from certainly one of its largest rivals into its largest IndyCar race, I’m positive it can occur. However I simply don’t understand how.
Q: I vaguely keep in mind from final season there being a scarcity of sim time all through the sphere. I particularly keep in mind Agustin Canapino going into some weekends with out having any monitor time within the sim.
Why don’t the IndyCar groups, or at the least the highest groups, have their very own sims? Is it a query of price range, or simply that each Honda and Chevrolet have already got one, so there isn’t a must have your individual sim?
Leo, Stockholm, Sweden
MP: IndyCar groups depend on the large driver-in-the-loop simulators at Chevy, Honda, and Dallara to show these sim laps as a result of they’re prohibitively costly. It’s 100% a query of price range. And when you’ve gotten a dozen-plus drivers to attempt to accommodate and a finite quantity of sim time to supply, you’ll see the contenders get precedence over the non-contenders.
The producer simulators are in excessive demand year-round. On this case, Honda drivers obtained an early digital have a look at the Nashville avenue course earlier than racing there for the primary time in 2021. Picture by way of Honda
Q: So typically we hear {that a} monitor is tough to move on, with no overtaking alternatives. What makes a monitor “satisfactory”? And are there any?
Shawn, MD
MP: There’s 5 sorts of tracks utilized in IndyCar, so we gained’t spend hundreds of phrases on the subject right here, but when it’s an oval and it historically has a single lane that can be utilized within the corners resulting from an absence of grip within the higher lane or too many marbles being thrown into that lane, that’s one instance.
However greater than something, it’s the automobiles in so lots of immediately’s collection that make passing extraordinarily onerous as a result of they’re both spec automobiles, or near being spec. Passing on the identical tracks which have been in use for many years wasn’t as a lot of a problem when CART groups with a Chevy A motor from Ilmor stumbled on a driver with a Cosworth DFX, which lacked energy and torque in comparison with the Chevy A. Or when a Firestone-shod Reynard was chasing a Goodyear-shod Reynard within the second half of the Nineteen Nineties.
When everybody’s utilizing Dallara DW12s, on Firestones, and the Chevy and Honda motors are practically an identical of their outputs, passing needs to be rattling close to inconceivable.
Q: Sebring introduced it’s switching to Ticketmaster and had the gall to say that it’s going to enhance the fan expertise. WTF!?
Indignant Kyle
MP: Thanks for the replace, Kyle.
Q: A rumor has been making the rounds that Simon Pagenaud could possibly be pairing with Ryan Hunter-Reay for Dreyer & Reinbold/Cusick Motorsports in subsequent Could’s Indy 500. Have you ever heard this? It will be nice to see Simon again in IndyCar, and his teaming up with RHR would make one heck of a group! Two former winners.
Dan Michaelian., Destin, FL
MP: I like that notion, and I’m positive Simon would soar on the alternative if and when he’s prepared to show laps in an IndyCar. Rather a lot would want to occur in his restoration earlier than that would occur. Right here, on the finish of October, it feels extremely optimistic.
Q: After studying this week’s mailbag I needed to write in. IndyCar could not have licensed any Lego units, however they’ve licensed a extremely candy scale mannequin equipment made by Salvinos JR Fashions. I lately bought the 1:20 scale mannequin of Pato O’Ward’s 2024 Dallara and I’m impressed.
This equipment is each bit pretty much as good because the F1 kits made by Tamiya, and so forth., on this scale. For these of us who wish to construct museum-quality race automotive fashions (and never simply purchase a die-cast) this equipment is unbelievable. It has a whole lot of components and consists of each Chevrolet and Honda engines. The decal sheets are intensive and even present markings for the carbon fiber parts with its attribute weave. The equipment is presently out there in variations for Pato, Scott Dixon, Josef Newgarden, Scott McLaughlin, Kyle Larson, and Takuma Sato. I’m positive that makers of aftermarket decal sheets will quickly supply others. Fireplace up your airbrush!
Invoice Gilman, Rochester, NY
MP: That’s superior, Invoice; I had no thought. If solely they had been available on the Walmarts and Costcos and Targets and different huge shops the place children and households alike would see and purchase them like Legos and Scorching Wheels.
