Grand Prix of Baltimore presented by SRT

[FIAT1]

No, the amateur hour demolition derby was Saturday in the ALMS race. The IndyCar race didn't quite live up to that.

Agree on that one, but I figure this is Indycar forum so I focused on that. I suppose you where there and I would really like to hear in your honest opinion more on the race, crowd and their reaction etc. How about next year? Heard anything?

[drewdawg727]

Baltimore was the best race of the season for me, a lot of passion and determination by a lot of new faces that wanted to show themselves strong at the front of the grid. Shame for all the yellows, but that just means a bunch of hungry people wanting to win! Indycar is at the top of their game at the moment and races like these - especially in the last 10 laps - are what keep me going. Was a great race and a great finish, I'm sorry to everyone who chooses to be negative about it but I want to see action instead of cars wimping out and not going for it.

[jarrambide]

Baltimore was the best race of the season for me, a lot of passion and determination by a lot of new faces that wanted to show themselves strong at the front of the grid. Shame for all the yellows, but that just means a bunch of hungry people wanting to win! Indycar is at the top of their game at the moment and races like these - especially in the last 10 laps - are what keep me going. Was a great race and a great finish, I'm sorry to everyone who chooses to be negative about it but I want to see action instead of cars wimping out and not going for it.

Isn't running half of the race under yellow taking away action?, Last time I checked, drivers couldn't pass other cars under yellow.

The problem is not drivers trying to overtake, we all love overtaking (except F1 stewards when the overtaking is not fabricated by the use of drs, if you try to do it old school, you get a penalty, sad thing is that fabricated overtaking in F1 still looks better than the current Indycar), the problem is "tracks" like Baltimore.

Many temporary courses like Baltimore have but a couple of spots where you can try to overtake, walls are so near that any small mistake when overtaking will have a big chance of ending in a crash, you don't even need a mistake, small contacts (which are or should be common place when people actually try to overtake) can end in a crash easily, you lose control of the car, you crash, you need to take evasive actions, no space to do it, you crash.

zako85 thinks that "One idea, since we know the IndyCars are crash happy, can the organizers at least do something to stop the full course cautions to keep the race flow at least on road courses, where the crashed car sits in kitty litter and is not blocking the way of other cars? "

There is an easy solution to achieve that zako, it is called a racing track, we don't have those, which is why we race on streets, problems with streets is that you don't have space, which means most crashes will end in a full course yellow, truth is that we end up turning a big chunk of our calendar into Monaco, I dislike the use of amateur hour, most of the drivers are qualified professionals, there are a few that are not, but most are talented, the problem is the tracks.

drewdawg727, we don't choose to be negative, just like I don't choose to dislike beets, I just don't like beets and can't pretend I like beets, many of us don't like to see so many laps under yellow flag, many of us don't like to see so many cars not finishing races, many of them with the best drivers the series has, the choosing to be negative gave me flashbacks from the Champ Car vs IRL days of the forum.

Even tough most street races will create the same problems, not every temporary course will have them, a few temporary courses come to mind, Albert Park in Melbourne for F1, Fundidora Park in Monterrey for Champ Car, any of the races staged on airports, all of them offered the space you can't get running in most courses that use the actual streets of a city.

[Starter]

Agree on that one, but I figure this is Indycar forum so I focused on that. I suppose you where there and I would really like to hear in your honest opinion more on the race, crowd and their reaction etc. How about next year? Heard anything?

1) I thought the race was OK, given the excessive crashes causing yellows. All street races have the potential for that though. It was nice to see a couple people have good finishes who normally aren't up front.

The people who complain about the front straight chicane obviously haven't seen the cars up close through there. Most were very twitchy over the light rail tracks WITH the chicane. Without the chicane the cars would be getting big air there. There's no cure for it though. Because of where they are, it's not possible to pave over them so they are what they are.

The 10 car Indy Lights race was boooring. They need to either find a way to build this series or dump it.

2) The crowd was, IM(very unscientific)O, about the same size or perhaps a little smaller than last year. I never heard the gate. Everyone I spoke to and saw seemed to be having a good time. This year there also seemed to be as many or more people watching the Indy race as the ALMS - the opposite of the last two years. All the previous could be wrong. I walked the track several times through the weekend, but had to take care of other business so didn't see all the parts during either ALMS or IndyCar. The crowd WAS amazingly patient during the extended ALMS red flag. (You should have seen the zoo in Race Control!)

3) No word, official or unofficial, on next year. It will NOT be Labor Day weekend. There is a previously booked major event at the stadium which uses part of it's parking lots for paddock space. All the official word is that it will still happen, but a date is not locked in. The unofficial word (that I was able to hear) is mixed - some say yes and some no - so I guess the real answer is "maybe". There is also the issue of the combined ALMS and GrandAm series and what dates go forward and what dates go away.

[bugeyedgomer]

Embarrassing , that's all I'm going to say.

Scott Dixon: “The No. 15 should have received a penalty [for spinning us] and the
No. 4 car passed us on a yellow. So that restart near the end was a complete bosh.
On the restart I had an overtake advantage on Power, it must have been in fourth-gear,
so they can’t complain about wheel spin. Then I got beside him and he ran me straight
into the wall. Then, they wouldn’t bring the car back. [Race Director] Beaux needs to
be fired. He was a complete idiot today.”

Dixon referred to Power as an "Aussie w****r"

[bugeyedgomer]

A heated Dixon glared at Power as he walked past in pit lane soon after the crash and then exchanged words with an IndyCar official.

"It was funny on the radio when we were scanning them in the situation when Power was sitting in the pits. Cindric was telling him exactly what to say when he gets out of the car. Cindric's a piece of s***, which is quite obvious to a lot of people nowadays."

[zako85]

zako85 thinks that "One idea, since we know the IndyCars are crash happy, can the organizers at least do something to stop the full course cautions to keep the race flow at least on road courses, where the crashed car sits in kitty litter and is not blocking the way of other cars? "

I am talking about the road courses where IndyCars do race. In Sonoma, they could get some cranes nearby and ready to evacuate the cars into a safe area under local yellow, as in F1. As for race tracks, if IndyCar officials wanted, they could add more to the calendar. Last time I checked, they're not racing at Watkins Glen, Road America, Laguna Seca, or The Circuit of Americas. I think IndyCar is afraid of not being able to get enough enthusiasts to come to the road course, so instead they try to bring the race to the spectators onto the city streets.

Besides too many crashes and yellows, an annoying thing is, as I mentioned, that the front running cars in the race or the championship regularly get taken out of race. This makes the championship into a lottery, and reduces the fun. This sort of thing should really be minimized. No one likes this. When Hamilton got taken out by Maldonado and Alonso by Grosjean in F1 races last year, people were fuming of boards for weeks or months, but in IndyCar it just business as usual.

[zako85]

Isn't running half of the race under yellow taking away action?, Last time I checked, drivers couldn't pass other cars under yellow.

Maybe this time of competition is part of the culture in American sports in general. This sort of reminds me the games of American football, where brief moments of brutally fast action are interrupted by long breaks and commercials, which is a complete opposite of the normal football, dominated by long uninterrupted, but slow simmering action resulting in very occasional goals.

[jarrambide]

I am talking about the road courses where IndyCars do race. In Sonoma, they could get some cranes nearby and ready to evacuate the cars into a safe area under local yellow, as in F1. As for race tracks, if IndyCar officials wanted, they could add more to the calendar. Last time I checked, they're not racing at Watkins Glen, Road America, Laguna Seca, or The Circuit of Americas. I think IndyCar is afraid of not being able to get enough enthusiasts to come to the road course, so instead they try to bring the race to the spectators onto the city streets.

Besides too many crashes and yellows, an annoying thing is, as I mentioned, that the front running cars in the race or the championship regularly get taken out of race. This makes the championship into a lottery, and reduces the fun. This sort of thing should really be minimized. No one likes this. When Hamilton got taken out by Maldonado and Alonso by Grosjean in F1 races last year, people were fuming of boards for weeks or months, but in IndyCar it just business as usual.

Even when you race in proper race tracks, having enough space to get only local yellows in most curves is not that easy, you need F1 style tracks, I'm not talking about the cookie cutter feel all the new tracks have, I am talking about the huge run-off are they have, even the straights (except for the main straight) have a grass area that helps drivers, some of the gravel traps are so big they look like deserts.

Some people argue that those tracks are very forgiving of drivers mistakes, that now most mistakes go unpunished, and that is true, but it reduces the number of accidents and it lets you run under local yellow when a car crashes in most parts of the tracks.

The old/classic American road tracks don't have enough space for that, putting cranes nearby is not enough, it is about safety, in F1 it works because the cars usually end up far away from the track, prohibiting takeovers in that part of the track works when the car or cars are far away, if they are close enough, you are just putting everyone in danger. AOWR usually tends to protect their Marshalls and corner workers a lot after the few fatalities they had in 1990 and 1996 in Toronto and Vancouver.

Changing tracks to give them bigger run-off areas would be very expensive.

How old are you zako?, Some of us older fans could write pages and pages about those tracks explaining how great they are and at the same time knowing deep down why it is economically not viable to run on them with the current state of the series, very sad.

IndyCars will never race on The Circuit of the Americas, which is a sad thing, I really liked the race when attending the F1 race last year, people were predicting another Mickey Mouse, cookie cutter track, but it is a great track that lets you race and takeover other cars.

[jarrambide]

Maybe this time of competition is part of the culture in American sports in general. This sort of reminds me the games of American football, where brief moments of brutally fast action are interrupted by long breaks and commercials, which is a complete opposite of the normal football, dominated by long uninterrupted, but slow simmering action resulting in very occasional goals.

TV audiences already get those long breaks and commercials without any yellow flags, besides, those breaks last a couple of minutes, when you get Baltimore style races with 6 loooooong breaks, you are just asking people to change channels.

Fans on the track have it worst, NFL, NBA, and MLB fans get some kind of entertainment during their regular breaks, loud music, big screens, the mascot, the cheerleaders, cheesy activities.

I am used to yellows, have been a fan since the CART presplit days, but most street courses have a big chance of having lots of yellow flags.