Indycar News & Rumors.

[Yannick]

It's good to find out Sebastian Saavedra has fully recovered from his crash at the Indy 500.
He is also going to be racing the #8 car again this weekend at Toronto.
http://www.racer.com/indycar/item/11...-8-for-toronto

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

I agree with the first part, but this is one on one. Chevrolet v's Honda

Whatever happens in the next little while to appease Honda will likely have an impact on Chevrolet. They could get punished for doing a better job

Its a no-win situation...

I understand what your saying, however, I still think it's somewhat disingenuous of Honda. Both Chevrolet and Honda signed up to this and both have been subject to the same parameters. It's not as if Honda went into this blind folded.

Whatever happens to appease Honda is going to have an impact on Chevrolet but it doesn't necessarily have to be a no win situation.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

I understand what your saying, however, I still think it's somewhat disingenuous of Honda. Both Chevrolet and Honda signed up to this and both have been subject to the same parameters. It's not as if Honda went into this blind folded.

Whatever happens to appease Honda is going to have an impact on Chevrolet but it doesn't necessarily have to be a no win situation.

It is just totally wrong in racing to entrench an advantage, and any time that you freeze development on different equipment you will entrench the advantage.
If you are spending serious money on racing and you cannot fix the faults in your car, you are just plain wasting your money and making yourself look stupid.

You simply cannot take away somebodies right to succeed simply because they were behind a competitor at some arbitrary point in history!

If Chevy has any collective brains they will do what's good for the series and themselves in the long run! If they don't it is a huge pity as this series has really kicked off, till the point where the competition was skewed by the introduction of the new kits.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by wnut

It is just totally wrong in racing to entrench an advantage, and any time that you freeze development on different equipment you will entrench the advantage.
If you are spending serious money on racing and you cannot fix the faults in your car, you are just plain wasting your money and making yourself look stupid.

You simply cannot take away somebodies right to succeed simply because they were behind a competitor at some arbitrary point in history!

If Chevy has any collective brains they will do what's good for the series and themselves in the long run! If they don't it is a huge pity as this series has really kicked off, till the point where the competition was skewed by the introduction of the new kits.

No one knew the Chevrolet kit would be the better of two and the advantage to Chevrolet's kit has been entrenched, because of a development freeze during the season and the reason for that is to keep costs down.

I'm sure everyone will do what's good for the series, including Chevrolet.

[wnut]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

No one knew the Chevrolet kit would be the better of two and the advantage to Chevrolet's kit has been entrenched, because of a development freeze during the season and the reason for that is to keep costs down.

I'm sure everyone will do what's good for the series, including Chevrolet.

Hope so BJ. Indycar has always had a better culture than F1, it will be interesting to see if Chev can rise above self interest and do what is good for the sport, unlike Mercedes who just seem set on wrecking what's left of F1.

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by wnut

Hope so BJ. Indycar has always had a better culture than F1, it will be interesting to see if Chev can rise above self interest and do what is good for the sport, unlike Mercedes who just seem set on wrecking what's left of F1.

Its not Chevrolet's fault.

[fredd1]

Wouldn't have thought it was Merc's either

[wnut]

Originally Posted by fredd1

Wouldn't have thought it was Merc's either

]

It is exactly Mercedes' fault now, they managed to secure a dominant advantage out of a very flawed set of rules; probably in January 2013; and now they are refusing to allow the frozen rule to be eased to allow a better competition, this is to the detriment of the sport! Most certainly Mercedes' fault!

[10TENTHS]

Check out the Indycar youtube channel, they've started uploading full races again (not geo-blocked and with original broadcast graphics).

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by wnut

]

It is exactly Mercedes' fault now, they managed to secure a dominant advantage out of a very flawed set of rules; probably in January 2013; and now they are refusing to allow the frozen rule to be eased to allow a better competition, this is to the detriment of the sport! Most certainly Mercedes' fault!

I don't see any parallels between Chevrolet's and Mercedes' dominance, other than they both happen to be currently dominant, in their respective series. The freeze on aero-kit development, isn't something Chevrolet deliberately set out to exploit because when the rules were drafted, no one knew they would have the better kit.

[bjohnsonsmith]

IndyCar is to hide push to pass data, in a bid to encourage overtaking, starting with today's race at Toronto.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119468

[joeb]

Don't know if this has been reported elsewhere, but Andretti is suing NOlA motorsports park for not paying bills.

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com...x-of-louisiana

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by joeb

Don't know if this has been reported elsewhere, but Andretti is suing NOlA motorsports park for not paying bills.

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com...x-of-louisiana

It was mentioned on the 2015 IndyCar schedule thread but this is the best thread to continue any discussion about it.

The story's also been carried by Autosport.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119556

[Yannick]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

It was mentioned on the 2015 IndyCar schedule thread but this is the best thread to continue any discussion about it.

The story's also been carried by Autosport.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119556

IndyCar really need to work on a better schedule. It's sad that, whilst the racing is really good, the schedule for next year is going to have at least one less racetrack to stage an event when compared to this year.

Here's hoping Milwaukee will remain on the 2016 schedule.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Yannick

IndyCar really need to work on a better schedule. It's sad that, whilst the racing is really good, the schedule for next year is going to have at least one less racetrack to stage an event when compared to this year.

Here's hoping Milwaukee will remain on the 2016 schedule.

The scheduling is in the hands of Mark Miles and if the series were to lose a race that would not bode well but it would relieve the teams somewhat, with the season being crammed into only a few months but the other problem is the very long off season.

Mark Miles has deliberately ended the season on the last Sunday of August, so races don't clash with the NFL season, but what do teams and particularly their personnel do during this long off season? The season needs to start a lot earlier.

[Yannick]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

The scheduling is in the hands of Mark Miles and if the series were to lose a race that would not bode well but it would relieve the teams somewhat, with the season being crammed into only a few months but the other problem is the very long off season.

Mark Miles has deliberately ended the season on the last Sunday of August, so races don't clash with the NFL season, but what do teams and particularly their personnel do during this long off season? The season needs to start a lot earlier.

Indeed, the scheduling is in the hands of Mark Miles, and he has been criticised a lot for following the Boston Consulting Group to a T on ending the season before NFL starts theirs.
He seemingly didn't even think of having any races on Saturday evenings in September. And that in spite of the fact that IndyCar has got a tradition of running some races on Saturdays, not merely on Sundays. Fontana even being the prime example of a Saturday race.

Wanting to start the season earlier is one thing but Miles better had the venues lined up to do so before cutting the season short. Yet, it turned out things happened the other way around and for the foreseeable future, the season of the Verizon IndyCar Series is going to end on Labor Day. It is already obvious, though, that the sponsors of the teams don't like an offseason from September to late March.

So where do you go if you cannot have Fontana nor Phoenix nor Homestead in the early spring because track owner International Speedway Corporation doesn't like another event at a date there which is too close to the NASCAR Cup race?
Brasilia didn't come to fruition and NOLA was marred by seriously bad weather and now ended by a lawsuit.

Suppose there were no Fontana on the calendar anymore next year, would Sonoma, owned by Bruton Smith, still veto a possible return to Laguna Seca if it were the season opener? This and a return of the double-header at Houston's Reliant Park in April might be the easiest way to fill the time slots the Boston Consulting Group report had Miles dream of because the title sponsor would have liked to keep Houston but it was dropped anyway because of the Labor Day goal.

The NOLA lawsuit might scare away promoters from trying to host future IndyCar races at club tracks, though.

It looks like this is the toughest time for IndyCar during Mark Miles' tenure at the helm so far.

Here's hoping for more good and safe racing action regardless.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Yannick

Indeed, the scheduling is in the hands of Mark Miles, and he has been criticised a lot for following the Boston Consulting Group to a T on ending the season before NFL starts theirs.
He seemingly didn't even think of having any races on Saturday evenings in September. And that in spite of the fact that IndyCar has got a tradition of running some races on Saturdays, not merely on Sundays. Fontana even being the prime example of a Saturday race.

Wanting to start the season earlier is one thing but Miles better had the venues lined up to do so before cutting the season short. Yet, it turned out things happened the other way around and for the foreseeable future, the season of the Verizon IndyCar Series is going to end on Labor Day. It is already obvious, though, that the sponsors of the teams don't like an offseason from September to late March.

So where do you go if you cannot have Fontana nor Phoenix nor Homestead in the early spring because track owner International Speedway Corporation doesn't like another event at a date there which is too close to the NASCAR Cup race?
Brasilia didn't come to fruition and NOLA was marred by seriously bad weather and now ended by a lawsuit.

Suppose there were no Fontana on the calendar anymore next year, would Sonoma, owned by Bruton Smith, still veto a possible return to Laguna Seca if it were the season opener? This and a return of the double-header at Houston's Reliant Park in April might be the easiest way to fill the time slots the Boston Consulting Group report had Miles dream of because the title sponsor would have liked to keep Houston but it was dropped anyway because of the Labor Day goal.

The NOLA lawsuit might scare away promoters from trying to host future IndyCar races at club tracks, though.

It looks like this is the toughest time for IndyCar during Mark Miles' tenure at the helm so far.

Here's hoping for more good and safe racing action regardless.

I found this on Mark Miles, http://www.ibrc.indiana.edu/auber/bios/miles.pdf and reading it and looking at what he's achieved with ATP tennis and getting Indianapolis to host Super Bowl XLVI, the guy is obviously no slouch.

However, I feel the Hulman Georges have just got themselves another Randy Bernard. Someone with a good sports record outside of motorsport but clearly someone who knows nothing to very little about motorsport, hence his reliance on the Boston Consulting Group. This in turn begs the question what does the Boston Consulting Group know about motorsport? From what I've seen on their website, precious little. Looks like a classic case of the blind leading blind.

[mountainstar]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

However, I feel the Hulman Georges have just got themselves another Randy Bernard.

This is part of the mistake this series has been making for 20 years from the beginning as they bounce around with repetitive churning turnover of staff, sponsors and teams, everyone else is always the scapegoat or the problem, but the real problem all along has been the hulman george family and the product itself, which admit it folks, except for a couple of people in Indiana and some motor racing nerds no one wants to watch.

You can pick whoever you want to be CEO or el presidente of indycar and until the hulman george family moves on and they fix the product, nothing good is going to happen, it's all just going to be a big turd polishing job.

Also at issue is the musical chairs of races, as the series has the sanction fee price they want and what people are willing to pay is another thing. The NOLA race is a prime example of how tight things really are needing millions from taxpayers to make a race happen and yet the race is many hundreds of thousands still in arrears. Baltimore went the same way. Way back when this race was proposed and the mention made of taxpayer funding it, I alluded to Louisiana politics at work. What a deal. Millions get siphoned off of hard working taxpayers to fund a race the success of which matters little. The track gets several million in upgrades, Joe Bob's construction company makes out and the promoter and series take it in the butt.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by mountainstar

This is part of the mistake this series has been making for 20 years from the beginning as they bounce around with repetitive churning turnover of staff, sponsors and teams, everyone else is always the scapegoat or the problem, but the real problem all along has been the hulman george family and the product itself, which admit it folks, except for a couple of people in Indiana and some motor racing nerds no one wants to watch.

You can pick whoever you want to be CEO or el presidente of indycar and until the hulman george family moves on and they fix the product, nothing good is going to happen, it's all just going to be a big turd polishing job.

Also at issue is the musical chairs of races, as the series has the sanction fee price they want and what people are willing to pay is another thing. The NOLA race is a prime example of how tight things really are needing millions from taxpayers to make a race happen and yet the race is many hundreds of thousands still in arrears. Baltimore went the same way. Way back when this race was proposed and the mention made of taxpayer funding it, I alluded to Louisiana politics at work. What a deal. Millions get siphoned off of hard working taxpayers to fund a race the success of which matters little. The track gets several million in upgrades, Joe Bob's construction company makes out and the promoter and series take it in the butt.

You say the real problem all along has been the Hulman George family and the product itself. So if the Hulman Georges were to move on, how then can the product be fixed, so it's not just a few motor racing nerds who watch it?

I don't follow NASCAR and yet, they have a very long season with some 30 odd races and with some tracks holding more than one race over the course of the season. Does NASCAR command a sanctioning fee?

[Bob Baldwin]

YES !! But look at the tracks they run on . MANY are ISC owned tracks . Just follow the money .

[NaBUru38]

Originally Posted by Yannick

Mark Miles seemingly didn't even think of having any races on Saturday evenings in September. And that in spite of the fact that IndyCar has got a tradition of running some races on Saturdays, not merely on Sundays. Fontana even being the prime example of a Saturday race.

Kentucky, Las Vegas, Chicagoland...

[D.R.T.]

Great to have you back in the forum mountainstar

[Yannick]

Has there been an update on the health of driver Carlos Huertas? How has he been doing after he was ruled out of an Indy 500 start due to an inner ear condition? I hope the Houston race winner from last year is doing better these days.

[Salamus]

Honda likely to return next year.

http://www.ibj.com/blogs/4-the-score...turn-next-year

“The characterization that our return to the series is 50-50 I think exaggerates the drama,” said Honda spokesman T.E. McHale. “We do have a few concerns, but IndyCar has been open to discuss those concerns. If I was going to handicap the possibility that Honda will return to IndyCar next season I’d say it’s more like 70-30 or 80-20.”

[Matt]

It's enjoyable when you can spot the crapwagoner because they're capitalize every proper noun and beginning of sentence, but refuse to for the company Indycar.