Stay On Track: P2. Right Track, Wrong Setup
Looking through the notebook, I just tore out some more stale pages. A promo at the April 4 Taylor Swift concert in KC, and the Partners in Education program initiative for the Kansas City Northern School District won't be of much use now. The Kansas Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 lights up on Saturday at 1:30 PM ET.
There was a blogger I used to read named Roggespierre. Very smart dude, he opened my eyes to a thumbnail sketch on marketing strategies and cited sources which contained troves of information.
He used them as hammers to bend everything from wishbones to wickerbills, pounding on all the things he thought were wrong with IndyCar racing today. In establishing factual repairs to the damage, I learned a few things. So I thank you, RP. Twice.
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Stay On Track has so far presented eight specific new initiatives which address one of the "P"s in marketing: Promotion. There's more in the toolbox.
Does Promotion need some fixing? Randy Bernard's statements to date seem to answer in the affirmative. Good on him.
P2 is about the next item on the marketing list: Product.
You can devote gallons of sweat and stacks of cash to pump up an audience. It won't do you much good, if the first IndyCar race people come to see ends up deflating their interest. Ask around at G Force Go-Karts in Richmond.
The Product of IndyCar Racing is simple: Entertainment.
That takes in a lot of territory, and I guess pit stop challenges and music acts have their place. I'm talkin' about practice. And qualifying. And racing.
And that takes a very long list of technical changes to improve the Product. It's a bit of a struggle to figure out how to present the list without boring you to tears.
The best way to start this discussion is with the firsthand words of the people that matter. Please read them, and think a little about the technical references they contain and the underlying implications. I think there are answers here that help to fix stuff.
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This is from the IndyCar.com News archive, dated September 18, 2009. The subject is Motegi.
Q. Tomorrow for the race, can we expect some overtaking on turns three and four?
Scott Dixon: "Yeah, absolutely. I think three and four is definitely the key to the circuit, whether it's practice, qualifying or racing. That's why we at least did take some time to work on it in race setup. You can start the car quite loose, you tend to burn the right front up quite a lot here. The loading on the front of the car through three and four is quite heavy. Obviously when you get in traffic, you lose a lot of your front grip."
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This from the F1SA website, which appears to be a reprint of Indy Racing League article from the same day:
Dan Wheldon:
"It wasn't a bad run in the National Guard Panther Racing car today, we just have a little too much understeer on the exit of Turn 4. That's what we've been trying to dial out today, and we have a reasonable race car to be quite honest, and we did a long race run with the car earlier today, and it was good. I feel like we're well prepared for the race and might be just a little bit behind the Penskes and Ganassis on the longer runs. But for the most part, we're in pretty good shape. The key here is you've got to be able to get on the power real early coming out of Turns 3 and 4 and you've got to be able to drive the car in there really deep, as well. If you can get on the power early, and with confidence, coming out of there you can get a good run on people coming down the straight."
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Last one, this is from the Motegi post-race interview Sept. 19, 2009 also from the IndyCar.com News archives:
Q. Could you see the situation between Dario and Matos developing in front of you?
Scott Dixon: "Yeah, I kind of saw it. Dario I thought through the race had been extremely brave actually with the traffic. I was kind of being a little more cautious with it. He was definitely throwing the car in there. He totally different styles for turn three. I don't brake all and lift off the throttle a lot earlier. And he drives right in there and brakes right into the apex. He was definitely making some pretty spectacular passes going into this. Earlier on in the race, I think E.J. Viso or Hunter-Reay, I did the same thing in turn two, went to the outside. There were definitely lots of marbles up there. The car started to slack off. Dario got definitely a lot higher than I did, lost a lot more speed, was definitely enough and a break for us to go on the inside into turn three."
END EXCERPTS
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The point is not about making every oval track just like Motegi: that list of changes is too long. It's about the challenges presented there, to the drivers and the crews, which elevates their requirements. Cipher on it for a little.
Last point: I'm not any closer to being an engineer than I am a journalist. Zip.
The last time I touched an IndyCar, we were using Zip Ties around the shock absorber pistons to measure suspension travel. Electronic Data Acquisition and Computational Fluid Dynamics sound like foreign languages to me.
Listening to drivers doesn't.
Link to other "Stay On Track" entries:
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