Oilpressure

In a post last week, I praised former IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard for trying new things to see what worked. Some of them did, some didn’t. It would be inconsistent of me to chastise IndyCar, as so many have, for trying something new and different this past weekend with The Thermal Million Dollar Challenge. Did it work? You decide.

It really depends on your definition of what worked. It gave IndyCar fans a lot of opportunities to watch race cars this weekend. The weekend featured more than four times as much practice time (nine hours) as we see on a normal IndyCar weekend (two hours). But there was a lot of time during those hours that saw many drivers eating ice cream, while only a few were on track.

The race day format was interesting sounding, but failed to deliver – in my opinion. Heat One had a nasty crash on the start, that saw Scott Dixon punt Romain Grosjean from behind, just as the field was headed toward Turn One. Grosjean was just a spinning passenger, as his car careened into Rinus VeeKay and narrowly missed Will Power. Power was able to avoid any crash damage, but his evasive action put him near the back of the field.

Once the remaining ten cars re-started, it was a parade until the race ran out of time, instead of laps, although I don’t think it would have altered a thing if it went the full ten laps. Felix Rosenqvist won Heat One, as he continues to impress with his new team Meyer Shank Racing. He would start alongside the winner of Heat Two.

The second heat race started cleanly. The only excitement generated from that race was Alexander Rossi taking the transfer spot away from Tom Blomqvist. Up front, Ganassi drivers Alex Palou and Marcus Armstrong checked out from the rest of the field – with Palou taking the win.

The field for the twelve car, twenty lap shoot-out was set. The problem is, I’m still waiting for the shoot-out. By not allowing cars to not take tires in the ten-minute “halftime”; it was determined that racing on the same tires for twenty laps would be impossible. So a few drivers, led by Colton Herta, determined the best strategy would be to coast around for the first half and save tires, before going full-blast in the second half of the race. It worked for Herta, as he was able to charge through the field and finished fourth and in the money.

It gave Herta and his team a nice finish and a little cash ($100,000, however far that goes in IndyCar), but it sure made for a boring first half of the feature race. It’s sort of like in the Inaugural Indianapolis 500. Ray Harroun got with Firestone officials and determined that the magical speed to obtain optimum tire wear was 75 mph. Several cars were going faster, but they were using up their tires. Changing tires in those days was a little more involved than a seven-second pit stop. By going just slow enough, Harroun was able to stretch his tire life, make fewer pit stops and ultimately won the race. It wasn’t sexy, but it worked. It was the same with Herta’s strategy.

Up front, It was more of the same that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing – an Alex Palou beatdown. In the victory lane interview, after saying it was “amazing” three times in twenty seconds, Palou said he would use the money to buy diapers and pajamas for his newborn. I can’t help but think a large chunk of his portion of $500,000 was going to go toward settling his lawsuit with McLaren.

TV Coverage: When you are on the air doing your best to fill up over twelve hours of air time, it’s easy to find things to pick at and complain about. I’ll go easy, as I do think NBC did a good job and brought us every second of on-track activity.

That being said, there were some things I could have done without. First of all, I’d like to see an end to the overused “Hello, Palou!” I find that even more cringe-worthy than “The Thirsty 3s” and the “Tasty 2s” for the crews of Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden respectively. I was also sorry that Townsend Bell tried to resurrect the dreaded “Slick Willie P” for Will Power.

I realize it is their job to try and generate interest in a broadcast that features and uninteresting event. We saw that happen many times just this weekend with March Madness. You knew a game was over with five minutes to go, but the announcers kept trying to make you think that Team X was going to muster a comeback and beat Team Y at the buzzer. But at some point, announcers have to acknowledge that we are all watching a dud. When they don’t, it insults the intelligence of the viewer. NBC bordered on that several times over the weekend, with their incessant hype.

There is another thing that has always bothered me, yet all of the networks do it. When something worthy of a replay happens, why do they put the live action in a small thumbnail screen, while they show the same replay in a much bigger screen that takes up 90% of the screen. I would much rather watch the live action in the larger screen. I already know what happened in the smaller screen. If I want to watch it, I at least know what to look for. NBC did this a couple of times yesterday, but it seems to be the accepted practice across all sports platforms. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

But as far as I’m concerned, NBC’s worst transgression of the weekend, was when they allowed pit-reporter Marty Snider to bring back the Jack Arute cheese-grater. Arute became a laughing stock for his bad use of props in the late 2000s. His worse use of one was using a cheese-grater to demonstrate what a rough track surface does to soft tires. He caught so much grief on social media for it, it became almost funny – but not in a good way. I’ve upset a few people for taking shots at Snider in the past. When he offers up such low-hanging fruit, how can I not?

Most wanted interview: Other than watching Herta charge from the back, the only real excitement of the feature was when Alexander Rossi was battling for position with Josef Newgarden. The two touched, then Newgarden ran Rossi up high, causing both of them to lose two positions. I was really wanting to hear what each of them had to say about the incident, but we will be left to speculate for four weeks.

Who will pay? Like him or hate him, Romain Grosjean is passionate about racing and he will not mince words. While everyone else seemed to get the memo to only say positive things about the event, Grosjean did not hold back his anger when he was hit from behind before eventually taking out Rinus VeeKay. When they put a microphone in his face, he responded with “Who’s going to pay for the damage? We come here with no points on the line, we do nothing wrong, and the car is completely smashed. What is that? It’s not what I signed in INDYCAR for.”

Grosjean was not wrong. You had to figure that some driver from a small-budget team, with only an outside chance to finish in the money; was going to wad up their car for nothing. Actually, the only two cars to sustain significant damage came from two of the smallest teams in the paddock – Juncos Hollinger Racing and Ed Carpenter Racing. Neither team is flush with cash, and now they are out a sizeable repair bill, when there were no points to be had.

Truth serum, anyone? Speaking of the positivity memo, I would like to go have a beer with a few owners, drivers and crew members and catch them in a moment of truth to hear what they really thought about this weekend. On the broadcast, they were all in lockstep on how wonderful the Thermal Club is, what a great idea this was and how they couldn’t wait and race for the “big bucks” Will Power came the closest when he pointed out that his evasive maneuver at the start saved the team a couple of hundred thousand in crash damage. He said surely he would get some kind of bonus for that.

I have to think most owners weren’t thrilled to be risking their equipment at the start of the season for a non-points race. But will they say it publicly? Probably not.

The purpose was served: Yes, this was a contrived and way over-hyped event. But it did serve a purpose – actually more than one, if you think about it. First of all, it gave IndyCar a chance to try a lot of new things. Push-to-Pass during qualifying was an idea unique to this race. As a fan, it’s hard to tell what that contributed, but I’ll promise the drivers know – and they will share their input with the series at the appropriate time. The also used Push-to-Pass from the start of the race for the first time. Did that contribute to the opening melee in Heat One?

There were other small nuances that the series tried on a non-points race. Who knows? We may see some of these things show up in a regula r race, or we may not. That’s one of the benefits for an event like this. If they try something and it doesn’t work, it didn’t sabotage a driver’s championship.

But the main purpose it served was giving race fans a chance to watch some IndyCar competition, without having to go six weeks in-between the season-opener and the second race of the season. That was the primary goal of this event, and in that regard – I’d say it succeeded.

All in all: I watched most of the Thermal coverage on Peacock this weekend, but most of it, except for the race itself, was on a delayed basis. I had to work during Practice One, so I watched it in-between NCAA Tournament games. I caught up and watched Practice Two Saturday morning. I did watch Practice Three live, but I missed some of Practice Four. Qualifying took place during Tennessee’s game with Texas, so I watched the Vols live, then watched qualifying after their nail-biter was over. We did watch all of Sunday’s race broadcast live, before flipping over to more basketball. Friday morning, I warned Susan that I was going to commandeer the TV for most of the weekend. I did.

It was not scintillating to watch, especially after watching fast-paced basketball when I could. But as I said, I’m glad they tried something different. Overall, I’d say it was a success, but if they try it again – I think they need to look at making some fairly major tweaks.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on March 25, 2024 at 4:02 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.