2016 IndyCar season

LucasWheldon · PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 4:10 pm

there were any of these farcical stuff that IndyCar borrowed from F1?

F1 also had that rule that when safety car was deployed pits were closed, and that created great randomness (i.e. 2008 Canadian GP)

StefMeister · PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 5:54 pm

I actually like the VSC & would like to see Indycar adopt it if for nothing else than to cut back on the absurd number of laps that are been wasted under yellow for really minor incidents.

I'd much rather they throw a VSC for 1-2 laps to allow them to restart a stalled car, quickly clear away minor incidents or pick up a small bit of debris than wasting 10-15 minutes running under a FCY as is currently the case.

thestig88 · PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 6:22 pm

Don't mind a freak result once in a while, but end of the day a race winner should be the driver who was quickest overall that day, not who "got lucky", which seems to be every single Indycar race these days, otherwise they may as well just save the fuel and decide the result by drawing names out of a hat

codename_47 · PostPosted: Tue Jun 07, 2016 8:32 pm

You're nevery going to eliminate luck, even with vsc you can build a lead, make your pit stop then be held to vsc speeds halfway around the track while your opponent puts handing them a big advantage
First time that happend to power he'll be calling for the return if proper sc

Baring in mind It can be just as unfair on a lead as a sc then I'd rather stick with the unfair system that makes the race more exciting than the one that makes the race duller.

Also as someone who marshals, I'm not at all happy with cars sharing the racetracks with humans at any speed.
There's a lot of overconfidence already with slow zones meaning marshals are sent onto tracks to clear up with cars still rushing by.
I don't care if it's at reduced speed, any car on marshal incident is going to be horrible, as hell, vsc or not.
It'll only take one mechanical failure or driver misunderstanding over if the vsc is out or not and a car will be playing gouranga with a few marshals
There's already been accidents with slow zones in le mans racing and they have been running it longest

But hey what do marshals lives or injuries matter compared to the fairness of racing for the superstar drivers and the precious gaps they've built up! :yuk:

Soul Reaver · PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 5:14 am

Juihi wrote:

Soul Reaver wrote:

This series is way too much being decided on lucky pit-sequence.

Which throws up bizzare results and is one of the reasons I love the series!

Or makes me not watch after lap 5 and just see the headlines for results. But as I said, I would like on some races, not all. As this affects a lot of the outcome and I would also bore to death to see the pole seater run away everytime in a snoozefest.

sennadesillva · PostPosted: Wed Jun 08, 2016 7:10 am

Fastest car only should win. Nothing at all to do with the team and strategists. Screw the race itself, just award points on qualifying. It'll make the races and championship hella exciting.........just like the 1988 F1 constructors championship! Or better yet since everyone wants the fastest car to win each time and all these new safety changes to be brought about, we could just have the champion be whoever can write the biggest check cuz thats what it will boil down to. Saves time, lives and no worries about sponsors or tv coverage right? lol Okay, clearly playing devils advocate here but variety is always good for sports and thats what the series right now. Not to mention VSC would be a new bit of electronics to get going on these cars and with just f*&$!@g reverse taking a crazy amount of time to get right and standing starts being a joke does anyone really think that implementing a VSC system will be easy for these guys?

racer612008 · PostPosted: Mon Jun 13, 2016 8:22 pm

JR Hildebrand will sub for Josef Newgarden, unknown on how many races but will test in place of Newgarden on Tuesday at Road America
http://www.motorsport.com/indycar/news/ ... en-782026/

Philthy82 · PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 6:34 am

codename_47 wrote:

You're nevery going to eliminate luck

Then you shouldn't be worried about them changing one area where luck is more important than performance.

codename_47 wrote:

I'd rather stick with the unfair system that makes the race more exciting than the one that makes the race duller.

You really think legitimate racing is that boring that if the field isn't artificially bunched up a few times it'll be shit?

codename_47 wrote:

Also as someone who marshals, I'm not at all happy with cars sharing the racetracks with humans at any speed. [...] But hey what do marshals lives or injuries matter compared to the fairness of racing for the superstar drivers and the precious gaps they've built up! :yuk:

As someone who has marshalled, what you're saying makes no sense, and if you're not happy with cars sharing racetracks with humans at any speed I'm not sure how you were ever allowed to marshal anything. Not Power nor anyone else is suggesting they should allow the cars to go around at full tilt, it's about what the minimum VSC lap time set is. I'd be interested to know if that's any faster or in fact slower than they run under a safety car, as apparently VSC runs at about 65% of race pace, while safety car has never had a speed limit but just the SC driver's discretion, which according to Bernd Maylander is usually about 8/10ths.

IMO it's inevitable the VSC will come to more racing series at least for low level incidents, and if it hits the safety requirements while reducing the lottery factor I don't see what the problem is. I'm all for tight racing, but that's only ever been rewarding through legitimately close competition and challenging conditions; we've all watched enough racing to know that a caution in a boring race is entertaining for about 10 seconds until normal service resumes. For those of you who crave artificially bunched up fields, I don't see NASCAR introducing it anytime soon.

codename_47 · PostPosted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 4:05 pm

Philthy82 wrote:

codename_47 wrote:

You're nevery going to eliminate luck

Then you shouldn't be worried about them changing one area where luck is more important than performance.

codename_47 wrote:

I'd rather stick with the unfair system that makes the race more exciting than the one that makes the race duller.

You really think legitimate racing is that boring that if the field isn't artificially bunched up a few times it'll be shit?

codename_47 wrote:

Also as someone who marshals, I'm not at all happy with cars sharing the racetracks with humans at any speed. [...] But hey what do marshals lives or injuries matter compared to the fairness of racing for the superstar drivers and the precious gaps they've built up! :yuk:

As someone who has marshalled, what you're saying makes no sense, and if you're not happy with cars sharing racetracks with humans at any speed I'm not sure how you were ever allowed to marshal anything. Not Power nor anyone else is suggesting they should allow the cars to go around at full tilt, it's about what the minimum VSC lap time set is. I'd be interested to know if that's any faster or in fact slower than they run under a safety car, as apparently VSC runs at about 65% of race pace, while safety car has never had a speed limit but just the SC driver's discretion, which according to Bernd Maylander is usually about 8/10ths.

IMO it's inevitable the VSC will come to more racing series at least for low level incidents, and if it hits the safety requirements while reducing the lottery factor I don't see what the problem is. I'm all for tight racing, but that's only ever been rewarding through legitimately close competition and challenging conditions; we've all watched enough racing to know that a caution in a boring race is entertaining for about 10 seconds until normal service resumes. For those of you who crave artificially bunched up fields, I don't see NASCAR introducing it anytime soon.

Yes yes, personal insults, thanks a lot. I'm a great marshal thank you very much.

As I said, luck is part of life, you're never going to eliminate it. The GP2 race at monaco was similarly unfair but that was due to the exalted VSC screwing the race for the leader.
Motorsport fans need to get over the fact that sometimes you can do everything right but the luck just goes against you for no fault of your own.

Motorsport keeps trying to control these uncontrollable elements to the point of squeezing anything exciting or interesting out of the sport, not realising that it is those unpredictable elements that make it first watching in the first place.

If we all knew who was going to win with certainty before the races start, knowing that things will run smoothly and they won't face any adversity, we wouldn't watch in the first place. The viewing figures in F1 when Schumacher and Vettel were in their dominant seasons reflect this.
Conversely those races were the teams have to throw their pre-race plans out of the window and improvise their way through the race due to track conditions, tyre performance issues, weather conditions or unexpected random elements, end up being the best races of the season. Silverstone 2003, Japan 2005, Canada 2011.
Those races would not be possible under the VSC

As for the marshal point, well marshals do their best work when they're not pressured. When the field is bunched up behind the SC and on the other side of the track they can focus fully on cleanup. When there's cars running by, whether at racing speed or not, it makes it hard to concentrate on incident clearup because of having to keep one eye on the track, the noise of the cars making it harder to communicate, etc. Professor Sid Watkins alluded to this in his book when he's talking about the monza 2000 pile up.
He was screaming for a red flag but Charlie would only put out the safety car, which made dealing with the marshal injuries that much harder for the medical staff.
These guys are not paid, these guys are worked hard by the millionare race drivers and race control. And they're expected to go over the wall while cars are only feet for them so we can protect the precious seconds these superstar drivers have built up?
Please!
Let them do their job in more safe conditions then let the millionare playboys work a bit harder when it's all cleared up safely.

Philthy82 · PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 12:53 am

So use VSC for small incidents and SC for big ones with lots of debris, like F1 does currently. Rejecting VSC completely is stupid, it has the potential to allow for significantly less disruption (and therefore more racing) from repeated small incidents, and I can think of several Indycar races in recent memory that would have massively benefitted from it, e.g. St Petersburg last year.

codename_47 · PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 3:46 pm

Aside from all the other reasons against it, there's another big one when it comes to indycar: race control.

They usually can't organise a piss up in a brewery so do we really trust them with not fucking up a VSC?