101st running of Indianapolis 500

The first day of practice is underway. And guess who is fastest right from the start. Alonso looks really confident, he goes as low as possible, nearly touching those curbs. Actually, he might be way too confident way too early. But he's been super impressive so far

http://racecontrol.indycar.com

He looks smooth and fast.  I think he has an excellent shot.

Miller Lite is back!!!

Helio CastroNeves car looks similar to the 1988 Danny Sullivan paint scheme.

Speed is rising. Carpenter up to 223,4. He wasn't exactly my most favorite driver after the merger because of obvious reasons, but it can't be denied that he's a natural talent on ovals. And actually a nice guy, too

Petr Hlavac wrote:

Speed is rising. Carpenter up to 223,4. He wasn't exactly my most favorite driver after the merger because of obvious reasons, but it can't be denied that he's a natural talent on ovals. And actually a nice guy, too

Carpenter is a throwback to the guys from the 70s.  Came up through sprint cars, oval driver, very personable and not full of himself.  

No sponsorship on Aleshin's car. None at all. I wonder how much does it cost to run a car during the "month" of May. I think i've heard something around one million USD. Anybody knows?

Harvey in the wall.

https://m.imgur.com/WQTXKL9

Day 1 highlights.

Results of Day 2.

- 2404 laps turned, Alonso being the most active with 117.
- No crash yesterday, only Aleshin brushed the wall without any serious consequences.
- Hinch sidelined for most of the day due to technical issues.
- There was a lot of driving in the pack, drivers are obviously practicing under race conditions with race setup.
- Chevys are fast, but there's a strong suspicion that Honda is sandbagging. Probably we will know only after qualifying is over.
- Alonso is getting in the groove. Started carefully with Andretti teammates around, but got into fight with everybody else at the track soon.
- The weather looks good for today, but starting from Thursday there might be occasional thunderstorms in the area. Let's see how it develops for the qualifying weekend.

Only 33 cars entered this year again

Frank Verplanken wrote:

Only 33 cars entered this year again

Yeah, with miserable prize money and limited number of available engines, you won't get more than 33 anytime soon. Actually, Alonso can be on the grid only because Stefan Wilson stepped out of his car, Honda simply didn't have another engine/couldn't provide one more due to contract with Indycar. Sad but true...

Why was Marco Andretti driving two different entries?

David Jundt wrote:

Why was Marco Andretti driving two different entries?

Good catch. Marco propably did a shakedown of the backup car. This means that there is still one team missing, which is the Lazier effort. They're terribly underfunded, probably have limited miles on the engine and even last year they didn't show up until Thursday i believe.

Quote :

Only 33 cars entered this year again

When you have more drivers in a virtual event on a niche market 10 years old sim, you know something is going terribly wrong in Indycar

lol indeed ! Do the current Indycars even exist on any sim by the way ?

Frank Verplanken wrote:

lol indeed ! Do the current Indycars even exist on any sim by the way ?

Yes, but mainly in their Road Course config

Ah yes ok . Must not be too hard to mod anyway, nothing like our beautiful 1973 and 1988 mods with their lovely varied fields !

There's no argument that American open wheel racing used to be in better shape than it is now. It sucks to have just one car (and an ugly one), it sucks to have all the innovation gone forever. However, although it might be hard to believe, it used to be a lot worse not that long ago. And we all know who is to blame... The good old times are never coming back, but one can either enjoy what we have now or live in a world that ended in 1995.

Btw, DW12 is in several sims including Raceroom, rFactor2 and it's surprisingly popular in iRacing, too.

Not much happened today due to weather - high wind and a bit of rain. It was a good practice for those who were not familiar with the differences the wind makes in each corner. It's nicely described by rookie Zach Veach :

"The risk vs. reward factor is not very high," said Veach after running 216.747mph. "The wind catches you in the rear of the car in Turn 2 and you have a bit of snap that gets your attention. Then you get blown down the backstretch and carry so much speed into Turn 3 you get a big understeer".

Anyway, the best summary comes from the Lone Star JR

"The only thing anybody can learn today is how to save their life," said three-time Indy 500 winner Johnny Rutherford".

Unfortunately, weather forecast looks like there will be more of the same during the upcoming days, including weekend.

I don't get why they show two seperate columns for aero kit and engine supplier.

After all, if you have a Chevy engine, you're bound to have the associated aero kit

Frank Verplanken wrote:

Ah yes ok . Must not be too hard to mod anyway, nothing like our beautiful 1973 and 1988 mods with their lovely varied fields !

On rF2, the complex tyre model could be giving you a headache, and now you also need Inters&Wets for changing conditions.

Even Enduracers apparently completely fucked up their mods with unrealistic inertia data, as you seem to be able to slide through turns with tyres over 200°C and still get away with it(as in tyres barely wearing due to constant heat).

So even the "pros" of modding face issues.

And the first one goes into the wall. Josef Newgarden in T1. Uninjured, but the car is badly damaged.

Actually, Indy's prize money isn't that bad, it's not that great, but it's not bad either. The last 2 years the winner has gotten around $2.5 million out of a little more than $13 million in total money.

As far as the engines go, we can all point our fingers squarely and SOLELY at Honda and GM for that mess.
Every year I listen to people bitching about how we only have 33 or 34 cars and why won't Indy let more in. Well, Indy, like the rest of us, want there to be 40 or more cars. But when the only 2 companies willing to provide engines for your series force you to sign contracts that say neither side will provide engines for no more than 17 cars each, your hands are tied. They also can't open up to more companies because both contracts are pretty much entitling a form of exclusivity for GM and Honda. Publicly, GM and Honda bemoan the fact that they have to provide engines for half the field and aren't making any money off of them, and yet they're signed contracts ensuring that only they will be providing the engines.

The problem is, what Indianapolis needs, versus what it can get are 2 completely different things.

Indianapolis needs, at least 2 chassis constructors - Of the 4 or 5 chassis proposals submitted to the ICONIC committee way back when, only ONE of them were willing to compete, EVERY.SINGLE.ONE. of the other proposals were not interested, in the least bit, unless they were the SOLE supplier for the series.

Indianapolis also needs at least 3 engine suppliers - For this, you need to find an engine formula that ANYONE can produce and be competitive. Which is surprisingly harder than it seems. One would think this Turbo-V6 formula would work, pretty much ALL cars come with some form of a V6 and/or Turbo charging. But only Honda, GM, and Lotus showed any kind of actual interest. There was some meetings with Fiat that came to nothing, which is a shame because Fiat now has a damn good V-6 that can be used as a base for an engine in the form of Chrysler's 3.7L Magnum V-6.

But with all of this is Cost. Remember when the ICONIC Committee announced that Dallara would be building the Chassis Base, but teams would be allowed to add their own AeroKits to make the cars look different. The only stipulation being that they had to be made available to all of the paddock and could cost no more than $75,000 for a set? Remember how long it took the Teams to start bitching about not being able to afford the kits when they were supposed to be available?

When the ICONIC Committee first made that announcement, someone asked Swift if they were gonna produce a Kit, because they had shown interest. Swift flat out said No, there was no way in hell they were gonna provide AeroKits. Why? It was going to cost a MINIMUM of $5 MILLION to develop a competitive Kit, and to then only be allowed to sell them for $75,000 Max, They would have to sell 2 - 3 Kits to EVERY TEAM just to break even. This is why there are so few chassis manufacturers anymore. The cost to develop a car that is competitive with another is ridiculous. For some comparison to our current Season. Back in the 80's, if it was clear to Penske that their in-house chassis wasn't cutting it, they would call March, they had NO PROBLEM at all with dumping their own chassis. Fast forward to the 90's and there were a couple of times when Penske should have called up Reynard but wouldn't. They had invested too much money into their cars to just dump them aside. They HAD to make them work.

We can sit here for hours and bemoan that Indy needs this or Indy needs that...but Indy is never going to get them and it's NOT because of the Split or NASCAR, it's because of the Economics of the world we currently live in. The days of companies throwing money at sports ventures that they have an interest in are gone. Everything is much more profit driven now. Why are we spending $10 million to put our name on a race car, we already advertise enough. Why can't we take that $10 million and use it to buy a machine that we can use to replace 15 workers on an assembly line, an dnow we don't have to pay them wages, overtime, give them benefits, etc...

For Indy and Racing in general to return to the way things once were, be it in the 80's or 90's, we need to have a fundamental shift in the way Companies do business and how they view their money. To be frank, I don't see that happening anytime in the next 20 or 30 years.

I can only agree partly to what you say. Yes, big money sponsorship is basically gone, but there are lots of formulas out there racing competitively on modest budgets. What you can't do is sell a formula as latest tecnology, and at the same time want it to be cheap. But theoretically the essence of american racing is not about that, but about the driver - at least on paper. They could have many more cars on the grid, it all depends on the rules and on the old offer/demand balance. Years ago people just built cars in the backyard, and that style of car doesn't come to Indy anymore not because of competitiveness (They could not care less being 5 seconds off the pace) or budget, but because of rules. The rules are so limiting that effectively you end up with a spec series for the guy who gets them tailored to what he produces. And all the rest won't play that game, obviously.

You could easily go back f.e. to the 2000 champcar rules and have people dust off the Lola and Reynard plans and chassis and start buidling them again at no development cost. No extra budget for further developing the following year? Fine, the car stays as it is, no problem, the racing is great anyway. It was great in 2000, it will be great again. Of course you will no longer have the cars look as they do now, but that is the price to pay and anyway those of the 2000 looked much better.