2005 Indianapolis 500 Practice Thread

[drdisque]

Qualifying for Saturday has been postponed. Pole day will be run on sunday using the same draw as saturday. 22 cars will be allowed into the field. Each car will still only have 3 attempts for the day. They will do a 2-part pre-qualifying practice session tomorrow as they do on pole day.

[GP Racer]

Originally Posted by drdisque

Qualifying for Saturday has been postponed. Pole day will be run on sunday using the same draw as saturday. 22 cars will be allowed into the field. Each car will still only have 3 attempts for the day. They will do a 2-part pre-qualifying practice session tomorrow as they do on pole day.

What a shame!

I had it made today. My kids were busy, and my wife was out, and I had the TV all to myself. I didn't even need to grovel or beg! Tommorrow though, it's back to being husband and dad, which means I will miss alot of the quals.

Such is life...

[evo]

Is ABC going to show television coverage of that tomorrow, or is it going to be on ESPN, which I don't have? I'm sure TSN wouldn't pre-empt a dog-walking competition to show the ESPN coverage.

[Purist]

Rustyfan, in practice for the 2002 French Grand Prix, one of the Jordan's had its nose fold under at Estoril, and it went straight into the wall. Fernando Alonso's Renault hit a wheel on the front stretch during the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix, veered left, ricocheted off the pit wall, and then nailed the outside retaining wall. Neither showed signs of lifting-off. The Jordan was doing around 160, and the Renault about 180 mph. I've never seen a Champ Car become airborne unless it had gone over someone's wheel in some manner.

[rustyfan]

Originally Posted by Purist

Rustyfan, in practice for the 2002 French Grand Prix, one of the Jordan's had its nose fold under at Estoril, and it went straight into the wall.

That was Fisichella at Magny-Cours. Note that his wing still stuck to the car and just removed the ability to steer, which is a major difference from hitting an almost stationary piece of (quite large) debris like Hornish did.

Originally Posted by Purist

Fernando Alonso's Renault hit a wheel on the front stretch during the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix, veered left, ricocheted off the pit wall, and then nailed the outside retaining wall.

Exactly, he hit a wheel - rather hard to run over that.

If you have seen the video of Hornish crash, you should have noticed how the car, as ran over the debris, bounced up so much in the air it was almost equal to a wheel-to-wheel hit with another car (a la the World Series by Renault flip at Zolder). The flat bottom did the rest.

And no, I have still not gotten a proper example of a similar situation happening in either F-1 or Champ Car.

Originally Posted by Purist

I've never seen a Champ Car become airborne unless it had gone over someone's wheel in some manner.

I got one for you - Pancho Carter during practice for the 1987 Indy 500. And he didn't even hit a piece of debris - he just got airborne completely on his own, on flat asphalt, after spinning. It's the only unaided open-wheel liftoff I - from memory - can remember seeing.

[courageous]

I am stuck at work on night shift, so have combined all the times from the various sessions so far & peoples fastest laps are.

1 4 Tomas Scheckter 39.5076 227.804
2 16 Danica Patrick 39.5374 227.633
3 11 Tony Kanaan 39.5561 227.525
4 55 Kosuke Matsuura 39.5822 227.375
5 26 Dan Wheldon 39.6276 227.114
6 17 Vitor Meira 39.6412 227.037
7 27 Dario Franchitti 39.6637 226.908
8 6 Sam Hornish Jr. 39.6929 226.741
9 8 Scott Sharp 39.716 226.609
10 9 Scott Dixon 39.7908 226.183
11 3 Helio Castroneves 39.812 226.062
12 70 Richie Hearn 39.8776 225.691
13 37 Sebastien Bourdais 39.8843 225.653
14 10 Darren Manning 39.9235 225.431
15 33 Ryan Briscoe 39.9527 225.266
16 95 Buddy Lazier 39.9577 225.238
17 36 Bruno Junqueira 40.0065 224.963
18 5 Adrian Fernandez 40.0364 224.795
19 7 Bryan Herta 40.0399 224.776
20 2 Tomas Enge 40.0875 224.509
21 15 Buddy Rice 40.3448 223.077
22 51 Alex Barron 40.7266 220.986
23 44 Jeff Bucknum 40.9209 219.937
24 83 Patrick Carpentier 40.9663 219.693
25 14 A.J. Foyt IV 41.1026 218.964
26 20 Ed Carpenter 41.1303 218.817
27 24 Roger Yasukawa 41.2113 218.387
28 21 Jaques Lazier 41.2745 218.052
29 91 Paul Dana 41.2787 218.03
30 20 Jeff Ward 41.4155 217.31
31 48 Larry Foyt 41.6282 216.2
32 25 Marty Roth 41.8163 215.227
33 41 Scott Mayer 43.4894 206.947

[Félix]

Originally Posted by Purist

It still seems that IRL cars have a greater propensity for lifting-off than other serious open wheelers. About the only times I've seen CART of F1 machines take-off was when thare was fairly direct wheel to wheel contact (nose of one car going up and over the tail of another, or right front to left rear and left front to right rear). In situations where I have seen them hit debris, they generally either plough straight into something, or spin out.

The issue with the IRL cars will not be solved purely by lowering the outright speed. It MUST be dealt with through aerodynamic modifications.

I think the IRL cars have a strong propensity to experience these take-off incidents ON (fast) OVALS. They trim those cars down so much to reach tremendous speeds on a little over 650 horses. That is the problem; there is so little aerodynamic downforce left that the restoring force needed when a car is seriously disturbed rapidly becomes too much for the few hundred pounds of downforce the body is still generating, and the the flat bottom then takes it all over and you're gone for a scary ride.

The worst thing when looking for safer regulations is when there is not enough downforce. Cars with around or over 1000 horses have been running here and there in the last 20 years without turning into airplanes.

The solution would have been to keep the 3.5 engines and instead mandate serious gurneys to boost downforce on those ovals, and maybe also introduce rules to enforce that the wings are run at real positive angles (and not flat or even negative so that the cars have the maximum top speed but just want to get away at every bump in turns 1 & 2...)

Sportscars have flipped a lot (with the help of bumps and massive flat bottoms) and a rear wing gurney with a slight power reduction was immediatly mandated. Still, BMW joined Mercedes' and Porsche's flipped club and all left; the companies and their sponsors don't like their car to be featured (upside-down) on "This Week's Wildest Sports Videos".

The IRL's "safety advances" aren't really that extraordinary. Other circuits have always had crash absorbing structures on their walls and even runoff areas before those walls. The longitudinal gurney can certainly help, but in the case of a big one, most flat bottomed cars are always very
unstable and unpredictable. Backflip landings always break mostly bodywork, and the roll hoop is there to resist even more extreme forces, even on cars that weighing almost twice as much. But when the roll hoop (or the car in general) reaches a place it was not supposed to reach because of flying aerodynamic randomness, you're in big trouble. That's quite what happened to Kenny Brack, and that can take rollhoops off and kill the driver, as shown by Michele Alboreto's fatal Audi testing accident.

[Hazza]

Something like that happened to Brian Redman didn't it? His Can-Am flipped and didn't dissapate any of his forward movement, so when he landed upside down the tarmac ground through the roll hoop and then started to wear through his helment! Just thinking of that makes me wince.

The fact is that you can never completely make an openwheeler safe, freak accidents can happen, it's just about reducing the risk so people like Kevin Cogan can walk away at the end of the day.

[Down F0rce]

Is there a video of Hornish's crash somewhere?

[rustyfan]

Originally Posted by Down F0rce

Is there a video of Hornish's crash somewhere?

Check your PM's.

[luke]

Originally Posted by rustyfan

Check your PM's.

Do you have a link then Rusty? If so could you pm it to me, thanks.

[Tim Northcutt]

It is very colland windy here in Indy today...

The high temp is not expected to even reach 60 degrees, with 15-20 mph winds from the west..

It ought to make qualifying very interesting this afternoon...

[luke]

Sam's flip was one of the weirdest I've seen.

[rustyfan]

I just saw Ryan Briscoe's qualifying crash... man, he came VERY close to flipping over, to say the least.

[climb]

Mercifully chassis safety performances are higher and higher

[ozrevhead]

Originally Posted by rustyfan

I just saw Ryan Briscoe's qualifying crash... man, he came VERY close to flipping over, to say the least.

well as long as Ryan didnt get injured thats all that matters!!!

[rustyfan]

Originally Posted by ozrevhead

well as long as Ryan didnt get injured thats all that matters!!!

I don't think there was much danger of that as Briscoe really just glanced the wall with the left rear as he spun coming out of the turn. Of course this was enough to make the suspension give way which in turn upset the stability of the car enough for air to get in underneath and lift it up. Same basic principle as when Dan Wheldon flipped in the 2003 Indy 500, actually.

[infoxicated]

Originally Posted by ozrevhead

well as long as Ryan didnt get injured thats all that matters!!!

Ryan is an injury waiting to happen - I'll be surprized if he sees lap 100 without testing those SAFER's. He should have gone to F1 - all that run off area and traction control might have helped him finish a few races.

[Snrub]

The IRL mandates minimum wing angle, does anyone know what it is for Indy?

[rustyfan]

Practice is now underway again at Indianapolis. Kenny Brack and Jimmy Kite got a 30-minute session all to themselves to start things off, and now practice is open to everyone.

Kenny has so far put in a lap of 225.005mph, currently third fastest. Guess that pretty much eliminates the concern I had whether or not Kenny would be able to get up to speed

[StickShift]

I don't think anyone is questioning his ability to get the car up to speed. I think a lot of us are concerned about his fitness over 500 miles, and his durability in another crash.

[rustyfan]

Originally Posted by StickShift

I don't think anyone is questioning his ability to get the car up to speed. I think a lot of us are concerned about his fitness over 500 miles, and his durability in another crash.

I agree that the real test will be his stamina over the entire race distance, but I doubt he'll be any more "fragile" than any other driver out there when it comes to a crash. He has said himself he is in better physical shape right now than before the 2003 accident, and if I remember correctly his back is actually stronger as well due to the metal that was inserted during the post-crash surgery.

[sgw2]

For the record here are the speeds of the unqualified cars out on the track today

Kenny Brack*(15) Panoz-Honda (Rahal) 225.774*
Ryan Briscoe*(33T) Panoz-Toyota (Ganasssi) 222.408*
Jaques Lazier*(21) Panoz-Toyota (Playa Del) 221.972*
Patrick Carpentier*(83T) Dallara-Toyota (Cheever) 220.898*
Marty Roth*(25) Dallara-Chevrolet (Roth/PDM) 220.377*
A.J. Foyt IV*(14) Dallara-Toyota (Foyt) 220.209
Larry Foyt*(48T) Panoz-Toyota (Foyt) 220.176
Jimmy Kite*(91) Dallara-Toyota (Hemelgarn) 219.266*
Ed Carpenter*(20T) Dallara-Toyota (Vision) 217.983*
Jeff Ward*(22) Dallara-Toyota (Vision) 216.636*

yet to practice

Arie Luyendyk jr. (98) Dallara-Chevrolet (Curb/Beck/Agajanian)

That at least fills the grid. I think a 220 mph will be safe. Toyotas seem to be the slowest, if you don't count Team Penske. The Vision duo need to find a few more mph to be safe. Anybody who accpts a sub 200 speed will be asking to get bumped, and if you have a couple my guess is a few rides will materialize from the back-up cars to go after them.

Its getting interesting.

[rustyfan]

Luyendyk - and any other rookie who might be interested - will have a shot at doing the Rookie Orientation today, so he couldn't do any practice yesterday.

[racer69]

Interesting Larry Foyt was practicing in a Panoz rather than a Dallara....