Oilpressure

I was reading through Marshall Pruett’s Mailbag on Racer.com the other night. It appears that most fans were in agreement that last weekend’s season-opening race at St. Petersburg was a bit of a dud. Some fear that this is a sign of things to come this season – at least until the series goes hybrid sometime this summer.

I was a little surprised, however, that so many fans were clamoring for mandated pit stops. Reading through the questions, it seems that many fans think that St. Petersburg should have been mandated to be a three-stop race. The idea is that it would take fuel-saving out of the equation and allow drivers “to stomp on it”.

Fortunately, Pruett shot down the idea. He correctly explained that forcing items such as mandated pit stops creates more problems than the ones they are trying to solve. I agree.

I remember the waning days of CART in the early 2000s. Not only did they specify how many pit stops each car had to make in each race – they also told the teams when to do it. There was a specified window with about a four-lap range when each team was forced to pit.

With mostly spec cars and very slight differences within the engines that the teams cannot touch, there is not a whole lot of creativity left with each team. I am not pining for the era I grew up in where each race consisted of multiple chassis, engines with varying numbers of cylinders and a load of major components that set one car apart from the others. That is not feasible in today’s economic environment.

What I am wanting to see is allowing the teams to have as much leeway as possible. I don’t want to take away aerodynamic tweaks, nor do I want to take fuel-mapping out of the equation. I also want to teams to decide on whatever tactics or strategies that might help or hinder them in a race. If all of the strategy is taken out of the hands of the teams, and decided by the rules-makers – why have a race strategist?

I used to be a big baseball fan, until they lost the World Series in 1994 due to a strike. When they came back, I didn’t consciously boycott – I just found that I no longer had the interest in it that I once had. But when I was a fan, I always preferred the National League, mainly because they did not have the designated hitter (DH) like their American League counterparts who adopted the DH in 1973. I always felt like the DH dummied down the game and took a lot of strategy out of the game, by not allowing pitchers to hit. The National League got dummied down in 2022, when MLB went to a Universal DH. That term makes me shudder to even type it out.

Baseball took a lot of strategy away from the managers, and mandatory pit stops and windows took a lot of strategy out of racing. I’m not a fan of fuel-saving races, but there is a lot more to racing than just going fast. Teams and drivers have to manage their fuel, their tires, their brakes, their push-to-pass; and there is a ton of pit strategy that evolved during the course of the race itself. If you pre-assign pit stops and pit windows, you’ve eliminated a key component of racing.

Proponents of mandatory stops will say that it prevents teams from making the wrong choice. I prefer to say that not mandating pit stops encourages teams to make the right choice. But if they make the wrong choice – too bad. At least they had the choice.

I am all about giving people choice. The more choices a team or driver has, the better. In my opinion, it spices up the show when there are a ton of different ways a team can go. Even within a team, different drivers will make different choices. Scott Dixon may prefer a low-downforce setup. Alex Palou may prefer high-downforce.

If the series starts mandating the number of pit stops in any given race, where does it stop? Will they start specifying specific wing angles that you are not allowed to deviate from? There was a time when the area of the car a team could take some liberties with, was the side-mirrors. Does that really spice things up to see that Ganassi has a better looking mirror than Andretti?

I like having the autonomy in my job to do things the way that best suits me. They give me the freedom to make huge mistakes. If I do, I know the consequences – but that same autonomy allows me to explore different ways of doing things. If I find something that works, I pass it along to my co-workers and staff. Basically, I’m given the freedom to take risks.

It’s the same with racing. Give the teams the freedom to take risks. Let them strategize with tires, and other variables in a race; and let them decide on their own whether a race is a two or three-stop race. Sometimes their choices will blow up in their face, while other times it could put them on the podium.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on March 15, 2024 at 4:05 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.