IndyCar: more stupid decisions marr race
The IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio should have been a cracker. The so-called "transition drivers" who have been absorbed into IndyCar from the defunct CART series have been waiting for the arrival on real circuits rather than paved dirt track ovals. But IndyCar is stage managed and even on the good tracks, the racing is crap.
Mid-Ohio is a proper race track. It has ups and downs, corners with widely different radii and - shock horror - corners that go left and right.
It's not as great a track as Watkins Glen nor Laguna Seca but it's a decent enough circuit. It has straights leading into corners to provide overtaking opportunities; it has long straights to facilitate slipstreaming and it has massive (no, MASSIVE) run-off areas full of thick gravel and it has large vehicles to crane off broken cars. All of these are missing in the world of roundy-round IRL racing that frankly bores the bits off anyone who enjoys proper motorsport.
One of the reasons that roundy-round racing is so tedious to many is that there are no small crashes and therefore there are two options: stop the race or have a period under a safety car. IRL is a fan of safety cars and so huge chunks of races are run at half speed, in a procession, where the only exciting thing is whether the cars all come into the pits together and try to get out at the same time. After all, for perhaps ten minutes at a time, that's the only racing they can do.
But there is at least logic in using the safety car: the debris has to be removed or it will cause more crashes. And in the absence of anywhere but track and infield, all work is done on the track until the car is taken away on a flatbed.
Circuit racing is different: when a car comes off, unless it hits something hard, it tends to go far off the track and to be out of harm's way. Marshalls can work on it successfully and big green cranes can come and take it away very quickly. And on a long course, cars take over a minute to circulate and, due to the similarity of IRL cars, they tend to come around in bunches.
So, across the rest of the world, an "off" would result in a yellow flag (meaning slow down and don't overtake until you pass the green flag) on the approach to the accident site.
But not in IRL. First, the drivers stay in the car: on roundy round tracks, this makes sense: a stationary cell is not safe, but it's a darned sight safer than running down the banking as 20 cars come screaming around the corner in a bunch. But in circuit racing, it makes no sense at all: the best place to be is behind the barriers.
Secondly, US marshalls take a long time to arrive at the scene in roundy round racing: they don't walk, they turn up in trucks. But on circuits, they are already stationed at likely accident spots: that's why they have little huts just before corners.
Third, if another car was to have an accident in the same place, then the chances of it arriving in the same place, especially at speed are remote on a circuit.
With more than half a dozen "full course yellows" for single corner incidents, IRL hit another low spot in this race. Not only was the safety car never actually deployed for genuine safety reasons, it stayed out for much longer than would have been necessary raising the spectre that the race is stage managed to allow some teams to light-fuel their cars and not have to do a splash and dash at the end of the race.
The most exciting thing about the weekend was a cat fight between women drivers Danica and Milka which resulted in the throwing of a towel. See the vid here
The race was won by Ryan Briscoe - an Australian. Castronevis, Dixon, Power followed him. There isn't an American to be seen. Perhaps they are all off somewhere waiting for another full course yellow.
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