I looked st this years schedule, 12 road courses, 5 ovals. The bravery decreases again. Sigh… I wish the IRL was still around.
I don’t think bravery should be a part of motorsports. I think skill should be. Ergo, I would like to see the rules set up so that even if there is a situation, the driver isn’t at risk.
I’d also like to see the rules set up so that innovation is encouraged and that faster cars (drivers) can pass.
i dont watch open wheel stuff anymore. oval is boring. F1 is sorta interesting. they dont refuel anymore during races. air jacks and 8 guys changing tires. does indy still not allow anyone over the wall before the car gets in pit lane? 3 sec is slow for F1?
IMO, there are different skills involved for oval vs road courses. Either can be boring. I’ve often heard that F1 is boring because the leader runs away and hides, and there is very little passing behind him.
The IRL IS still around, it is just called IndyCar. The sanctioning body is the same.
I hve NO idea what “bravery” you are describing… Does racing on an oval require more or less bravery? I suggest that it does not. Oval tracks are now lined with foam walls to protect the drivers and the fans from 190 mph crashes. Road courses are designed with paved or gravel runoffs to slow the car before it hits tire or foam barriers.
I don’t know if you realize it or not but most road course top speeds are similar to oval speeds. Most road courses are a bit narrower than ovals so passing is more of a challenge.
That existed in previous decades. It increased the cost of racing to unsustainable levels. A good, 2 car IndyCar program costs $15 Million. A good F1 program for 2 cars cost the US team, Haas, $120 Million but Ferrari spends over $570 Million.
Innovation is a big reason I watch F1. 21 races with only 5 winners. The competitive racing is why I watch IndyCar - 8 different winners in 17 races for 2018 on both ovals and road courses.
I don’t think any road course that Indycar races on has 235 MPH top speeds like they see at Indy.
You are right about that but most ovals are not that fast.
There’s such a vast discrepancy in competitiveness between the teams in F1 that I find it a chore to watch., and it’s been like this for some time now. In the early 2000’s Ferrari had a stranglehold on the drivers and constructor’s championship, no other team could really compete. Then it was Red Bull showing the same dominance for another half a decade, now Mercedes the dominant team. It’s almost always you have one really dominate team and everyone else (in fairness, in the last season or two we’ve had two teams that had a decent shot a winning)…
In terms of on-track overtaking and the level of competition in the field, F1 is about the least-competitive mainstream form of auto-racing that I can think of. I also get the impression that in F1, the driver isn’t as important as the car. If you put Alonso in a Mercedes, he’d likely win a lot. If you put Hamilton in a Williams, it would take a near miracle for him to get a podium finish,
There’s more parity in Indycar, though it comes at a price of very limited innovation, everyone runs the same chassis and there are only two engines to choose from. Some of the most competive races you’ll ever see were oval Indycar races, the 2013 Indy 500 had 68 lead changes among 15 drivers , at 2015 Indycar race in Fontana, there were 80 lead changes amount 14 drivers (in a field of 23 cars), that’s more lead changes in a single race than you’ll see in three full seasons of F1.
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The IRL was created when Tony George , who inherited the Speedway split with the car owners (C.A.R.T.) with the CART teams racing at road tracks and the newly formed Indy racing League going to ovals. The split was bad for both with attendance and car counts dropping The two eventually rejoined.There are a couple of reasons oval racing is more dangerous. The average speeds of the crashes is much higher on an oval, most of the crashes on a road course happen on the slower corners and there is much,much, more passing on the ovals.
The brave part is in passing on the ovals, most of it is done by going closest to the ragged edge, not by superior equipment. You might pass a guy once on a road course but it goes on all the time on ovals. Many of the European drivers who had great success in the road courses of CART were afrais of the Ovals they had to race on after the merger and some of them even refused to drive on the ovals. The number of oval track races has been diminishing but I don’t know if that is being fueled by the sanctioning body, the car owners, the drivers or whether The track owner are not welcoming them. Auto racing attendance is declining in the us across the board and running a money making event is tricky,
To be controlled by the same management group Tony George put together as CEO of the Indy Speedway and the IRL. Tony stepped down from his role as CEO of the Indianapolis Speedway and the IRL shortly after the re-unification - some claim because the Hulman family was tired of the money he was throwing around.
There’s a similar controversy about the so-called halo device used on F1 cars. I haven’t much expertise on F1, don’t even know which channel F1 races are broadcast on, my only knowledge of F1 is from the 60’s when it was shown on wide world of sports, delayed broadcast. And the Ron Howard movie “Rush”. Anyway I believe the halo’s purpose is to prevent road debris and pieces of crashed cars kicked up from cars ahead from hitting the driver following behind; but it also obstructs the view the spectators want from seeing the driver. Niki Lauda (former F1 driver) is opposed to that halo device I think, saying it is too much of a compromise to the fun of watching the sport, in order to provide just a little more safety to the driver. Me, I’d prefer all F1 races end with the same number of drivers walking away at the end of the race as when the race started, and if that meant I couldn’t see the drivers as well, so be it.
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