Indycar 2025
 

Thermal actual points race tomorrow.

Could be an interesting race with high tire deg. Has anyone here driven the track?

Qualifying now.

Interesting track, interesting race with the tire strategy. A shame about the technical difficulties, but glad I was able to catch the end.

Alex Palou was very aggressive at the end . He made it look easy to overtake Pato . Tire strategy was spot on for Palou . Good race to watch ........ at least the parts that were televised .

Officially registering my vote to drop this event. I didn't like it last year, and this year was no better. Find a natural road course somewhere. Please! These compact private club tracks with no infields and zero character may be fun to drive but they are boring on TV and not appropriate for top-level race series. Watching on TV it's tough, at any given time, to figure out where the cars are on the track because it all looks the same. And there are no spectators to speak of. Indycar claims there were 5,000 spectators. Where were they, in underground bunkers? There's got to be better options out there Roger.

^^^ Agree 100% Curt

There was no reason to return to watching the race after the technical difficulties and the ensuing 10 solid minutes or more of commercials. So I didn't.

Boring race, strange track layout, (okay, it was kind of cool how pit-out could be used as a launchpad!) not impressed with Fox at all.

The whole thing felt uninspired.

+1
I kept thinking this is
-an ugly track
-really poor camera angle options
-limited opportunity to pass
-boring race up until the last 15 laps

Side note: the hybrid system robbed a couple drivers with poor reliability and it was virtually unmentioned as far as a factor in the outcome other than those who were victims of system failure.

I will say that the Fox split screen when they go to commercial stinks . It is too small . Get rid of the driver running order and have a true 50/50 split screen . With the large running order block at the top the split screen is like watching two postage stamps . Just horrible . Show the running order when you get back to full screen of the race . Also too many commercials !!!

Fox aside (anyone can have technical issues) I'm afraid this season so far has been kind of a snoozer. Whatever Ganassi has going on with Palou seems inevitable. The dice he had with Lundgaard was brilliant for 4 corners, but otherwise the race was a snoozefest. Power came thru the field but you didn't see much of that. Ehhh.

^^^ Is Ganassi that smart or is everyone else that dumb? It just seems like they appear from midfield with 20 laps to go with fuel and/or tire strategy to take the win more often than not! Nobody else can figure this out? OK, Palou and Dixon are fantastic drivers but it seems more weighted toward strategy in most cases.

100%... an embarrassment for the series. You wanna race among millionaire houses go for it, but this ain't exactly Monaco (background wise). There's more passing though ;-)

I worked it and agree, this is a Mickey Mouse track not worthy of professional racing. Flat as a board, track surface had a drop of 2" or so to the "runoff" area that was CA desert dust. No gravel catch areas that I saw. Just a lot of silly money in a very out of the way place. Armco stacked three high with very few safety measures. And not to mention that my station was, in my view, dangerous given the trajectory that cars would take if they were to drop a wheel, which thankfully did not happen. I am not sure who passed this track as safe for professionals. Certainly wasn't the FIA. From what I hear, this date was set because of a hole in the schedule before Long Beach and the date for next year was give to a TX race. I will not go back to work it if asked.

Though I did get to listen to come yahoo hammer a GT3RS around the track after Sunday morning practice. Sort of seemed like showing off.

Can anyone here afford it ?? Have you looked at the price of admission is ? $125k initiation $2400 a month dues ,, then build a 6000 sq ft house

Anyone else follow the Offtrack with Hinch & Rossi podcast? I like it. Some good 'insider baseball' stuff, etc.

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Yeah, they're a hoot. Its a pod that I regularly listen to while riding or working out.

Rossi has a self-deprecating personality that is hilarious. The opposite of what comes across on race weekends. :D

Anybody else hear Rossi's comments on his podcast about how incredibly boring it is to drive an Indycar this year? He says the reason there have been so few incidents and yellows in the first 3 races is that everyone is driving around at 85% thanks to tire/fuel strategies. At the end of the race, the drivers' get out of the cars and haven't even broken a sweat. The 500 will be different because the cars have turned into a handful to drive over the years due to added 'mass' without upgrading the chassis. This is proven out by the crashes in practice already. He went into some detail on this.

There's been lots of chatter about the tires and the add'l weight etc all leading to nobody really wanting to push on the street circuits so far and Thermal. Its been sorta boring for them and us, and a real lack of yellows.
Based on practice, looks like Barber might be the end of no yellows.
Indy gonna be another deal, as the hybrid is really going to come into play in the finale. You surely don't want to lead into the last lap, even more than last couple years.
What Rossi said that shocked me is that you can more or less be fully recharged in the short chutes after using full hybrid on straights, and it coupled with the aero advantage of being in the draft is going to make it interesting.

Some surprises in today's qualifying . Not surprised at all on the pole winner .

Pole winner is a guy who is tough to beat this year.

Has Scott Dixon hit the age/performance wall ? The guy has been phenomenal for a very long time . But has he lost his edge ? The mistake he made yesterday in qualifying is an example . He's definitely NOT a backmarker but I wonder if he is still considered a threat to win ? To be clear I am and have been a fan of his .

He's a threat to win through sheer wile, but he's certainly lost a step to the younger guys in the series in terms of speed. The heavier car doesn't help either.

Dominant performance by the winner well done . Reenus Vekay was flying the last 15 laps well done for Dale Coyne racing . I think Dixon clawed his way to 12th . Not a bad race to watch , it's a beautiful venue .

Yawn.
Some good stuff in the field, Papaya early on for sure, but man, the front of these races this season has been just dull.
And Herta has yet another effort doomed by a bad stop. At least this time it wasn't the crew.

Excellent 'Dear Roger' piece by Derek Daly in Racer:

a-letter-to-roger-penske-color-confusion

Basically, Derek is calling for a return to consistent liveries for cars throughout the season. It really has become ridiculous. I spend the first half of many races trying to figure out who I'm watching because they have a different livery at every friggin race :( Look back to the 90's Golden Era. You always knew which team and which drivers were in the Marboro cars, the Target cars, the Kool cars, the Kmart cars, etc.

Saturday race at the imho boring IMS road course.

Can Palou be beaten?

Pray for rain! Racing is always good in the rain. I've had a long-standing proposal for Indycar and F1 - artificial rain makers for every race! :cool:

It'd be nice, but without tobacco and beer $$ to fund full season sponsorship, even the best teams need to spread it out. No one is coming up with the lions share of 3-6 mil to fund solo sponsorship, even on a Penske apparently.

A comment was made on another board that Dalys son would not still be in Indycar without rotating sponsors. Ole Derek didn’t fully think this one through.

Small teams always find sponsorships for the Indy 500. I remember seeing cars with the local plumbing company painted on the side of them.

Half the cars now have companies on them that I have to google to find out who they are.

The problem is not multiple sponsors, it's lack of consistent team identity. McLaren have done a reasonably good job of maintaining some sort of team identity, despite multiple sponsors, by incorporating the papaya orange on all of their cars. Maybe something could be done along those lines? The criticism by Daly is valid. The solution may take some out-of-the-box thinking. Maybe you either stick with a single livery (think, Herta and Gainbridge, the ECR cars this year, Prema, etc.) OR ... if you're going to change things up every race you are required to have at least 50% of your car painted/wrapped with a consistent color for the season.

Rahal finds a new way to blow it.

The race winner is on a roll ! How is he not in a F1 seat ? And Scott Dixon finished 5th !

He didn’t blow it, unless you think it was tire strategy.

Even the other top 5 cars were on the same strategy as Palou and they could not beat him.

I'm referring to his pit stop.

+1

Palou is the new Dixon. All they do is talk about how wonderful he is thru half the race. There are a lot of cars doing serious battle and are totally ignored. A few get 30 seconds of mention and then back to ignored.
The new racer announcer is worse than Leigh Diffey.

He didn't have the car to beat Palou. He gambled that he wouldn't need the best tires and plenty of Push To Pass at the end and lost. IMO it was his only shot anyway.

The cars are boring because the hybrid system is heavy and the cars don't handle as well. Drivers can't take the risk of getting out of control and not being able to pull it back. Indycar screwed themselves to be politically correct and push the hybrid.

Dixon is not winning because he can't use his fuel economy skills to get the front.

Back markers can't get out of sequence and hope for a yellow to get in a better position. They need Jimmy Johnson or Sato to take big risks and cause a yellow.

That stop did not lose him the race.