IndyCar's Oval Problems Lie with the Tracks

(Photo by Darrell Ingham/Getty Images)

The action at IndyCar’s oval races earlier this year left much to be desired and so the series reacted by re-legalizing (and in some cases requiring) various aerodynamic aids in order to increase the cars’ downforce and enable more side-by-side racing. And the changes have had their intended effect. But the increase in side-by-side racing comes at a cost.

The high-downforce package creates synthetic, lowest-common-denominator competition and the risk of major incidents akin to that seen in Nascar restrictor-plate races. Driver talent, car setup, et cetera, are completely removed from the equation. It’s all about who is lucky enough to be in the right spot at the right time.

Take Graham Rahal at the end of Saturday night’s race. He got a great run on leaders Ryan Briscoe and Scott Dixon as they battled side-by-side. But, he said, as soon as he pulled out of line he lost his momentum and couldn’t get past. That’s the product of this aero package: Drivers can’t complete a pass for the lead. That’s why we saw photo finishes at Kentucky and Chicagoland: Neither driver could pull ahead even if they had superior driving talent or a superior car.

And let’s not forget about the added risk of danger. Remember the horrifying crashes Davey Hamilton, Kenny Brack and Ryan Briscoe had?

The problem is: If you take away the downforce, you get what we saw earlier this season. No one can even get close enough to attempt a pass, no matter how much quicker they are than the driver ahead.

Some people say: Increase the horsepower to make the drivers lift in the corners. That’s sounds great in theory. But at the 1.5-mile ovals, this will result in speeds so high that the drivers will experience g-loading.

Thus, it seems the only solution to the problem is to change the racetracks. If the tracks at Texas, Kansas, Kentucky and Chicagoland are changed to have more acute turns that require the drivers to lift in the corners, it would go a long way toward solving the problem as well as increasing the impact of driver talent on the race results. Whatever happened to an oval track being an actual oval? Enough with the tri-oval “double-dogleg” nonsense.

This will never happen, though, because these tracks are designed for Nascar and that’s the way Nascar wants them. This is despite Nascar races at these tracks usually being boring parades in which the cars are spread out several seconds apart (more boring than street races if you ask me).

Of course this wouldn’t be an issue if old-school oval tracks like Michigan, Milwaukee and Phoenix were still on the schedule. But Michigan and Phoenix are owned by the International Speedway Corp. (Nascar’s track arm) and Milwaukee may be on the verge of going out of business, so it looks like IndyCar is stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

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