Oilpressure

While the Month of May is undoubtedly my favorite time of year, we have now entered into a window of time that is another one of my favorites. That’s when we start seeing glimpses of new liveries.

It’s a lot easier than it used to be. In the early 90s, I subscribed to four magazines – Sports Illustrated, AutoWeek, IndyCar Magazine and Racer. As most of you probably heard this past weekend, Sports Illustrated has finally met its demise. I subscribed to SI from the late 70s until about 2000. As soon as I nabbed it out of the mailbox, I began to go through it cover to cover. By the late 90s, it had gotten very expensive, and so many of the articles were more about topics other than sports. I turn to sports to get away from the problems of everyday life. I didn’t care to be preached to, and told how I should think about things that were not sports-related, when I was trying to escape. I finally cancelled my subscription. Apparently, everyone else did too.

I always enjoyed AutoWeek, but around 2007 or so – they went to every other week. With the instant access of the internet, paying for two-week old news was not appealing – so I cancelled that one too. Racer was strictly a matter of economics. Nowadays, $33.00 a year doesn’t sound like much. But in 2008, it seemed like a lot. Although I enjoyed every issue, I was in a cash crunch then, and Racer was suddenly expendable.

I never left IndyCar Racing (ICR). They were my favorite, but they ended up going out of business. Unlike Racer or even AutoWeek, which were very polished and professional products – ICR was more like a homespun periodical. It was produced out of Milwaukee, and Ned Wicker was the editor. After several years, I almost felt like I knew Ned and his other writers. The photography was good, the writing had a familiar feel to it, and best of all – it focused on CART exclusively.

When The Split came, they covered the IRL and CART. They straddled the fence carefully and it was hard to tell which side they favored (although I always felt like it was probably CART). They gave equal time to both series and pretty much kept their opinion to themselves. The IRL either forced or strongly encouraged them to change their name. Their last few years of existence, the magazine was known as IndyCar & Championship Racing. I think The Split and the internet sadly led to the demise of my favorite racing magazine.

One thing I really liked about ICR was that they paid attention to the differences in chassis from one year to the next; as well as new liveries, or subtle changes in existing liveries. For instance, in early 1991, they pointed out that Stroh’s had been replaced by Molson, as an associate sponsor on Al Unser, Jr.’s Lola. It made the racing season seem a lot closer, when you knew what the new chassis looked like, and what livery the cars would be carrying in the upcoming season.

We no longer get to see the newest Lola, Reynard or Penske chassis, but we still get our annual glimpses of the paint scheme for cars. In fact, some cars will carry multiple liveries now, which wasn’t done in the 90s. Josef Newgarden might run a Hitachi scheme one week, a Shell car the next week and a one-off livery for a new sponsor the week after that. But I would say that Newgarden’s primary livery is Hitachi – at least it was last year.

The fun thing about these glimpses is the difference in opinion between fans. Ed Carpenter Racing released a photo of the livery to be carried on the No. 20 car this season. That car will be split between Christian Rasmussen on the road & street courses and Ed Carpenter on the ovals, with Rasmussen getting his own car for the Indianapolis 500. (Photo from ECR)

I am part of a group text between myself and a few former IndyCar bloggers from the early 2010s. I sent this photo and offered my unsolicited opinion. All I said was that I didn’t think I was a fan of that particular livery. One of the younger members of the group said he liked it and wondered what my problem was with it. Since he asked, I responded that I thought it was too jagged, plus I don’t like asymmetrical schemes. I also didn’t like that the number was tilted. Although that may be a throwback, that’s the one thing I did not like on Jim Clark’s 1965 winner – the tilted number on the front. He responded with something to the effect that every reason I listed for not liking it, was why he liked it. To each his own.

Juncos Hollinger Racing has released renderings of their 2024 liveries for Romain Grosjean and Agustin Canapino. I’m not wild about either one, but my main complaint is that there is so little difference between them. From the side, they flipped the colors on the side panel of the rear wing. That’s about it. I also don’t care for the orange trim, that flat-out does not go with black and day-glo green. I guess it’s there to signify the marketing alliance with Arrow McLaren, but I would have thought the alliance would have brought more decals to one or both of the cars. Maybe they are still a work in progress. (Photos from JHR).

Speaking of Racer, I noticed that Marshall Pruett of Racer.com ran an article last Thursday regarding this week’s testing that will be taking place this week on the Homestead road course. The header of the article showed what was obviously the Meyer Shank Racing (MSR) No. 60 to be driven by Tom Blomqvist. (Photo from Racer.com/Walter Kuhn-Penske Entertainment).

While it still carried the familiar pink & black color scheme, it was far different than last year’s car driven by Simon Pagenaud, with much more black than in previous years. I also noticed the sidepods were blank. I have not seen a release from MSR, but maybe I missed it. Either that or their sponsorship/livery design may still be fluid. Whatever the case, I like it. Pink is nice, when used sparingly. It’s like seasoning with curry – a little bit goes a long way.

Some cars won’t change at all from last year. Some will have subtle changes, while others will have major wholesale modifications from what we are used to seeing. Seeing these cars was a nice start – especially considering we are still buried under snow in pretty much all of Tennessee. Usually when we have a big snow, it hangs around for two or three days (sometimes less) and then it’s gone. We have had sub-zero and single digit temps for the past week and it has hardly melted at all. Seeing these cars with their new schemes helped warm me up, as they are a sign that the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season is not too far off. I can’t wait to see what changes other teams produce.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on January 22, 2024 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.