AN IMMEDIATE PROBLEM TO SOLVE

It has been said many different ways since the checkered flag fell on Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, and Raymond Tobias’ Twitter comment of “I think I’ll bring my umbrella so I don’t get showered by winglets” could be the most poignant so far.

Prior to IndyCar’s season opener, there was a hope that post-race conversations would find fans and the media hailing the successful introduction of aero kits. That possibility flew away – much like the aero kit pieces themselves – after the first lap when IndyCar paused the action to retrieve a disturbing amount of debris.

Four more cautions followed, and while some were to deal with stranded cars, the series used every interruption to dispatch the street sweepers and clean up the carbon fiber, foam, and miscellaneous pieces that blanketed sections of the track. Aero kits indeed became the topic of conversation, but in a negative and potentially dangerous light. What should have been a celebration of IndyCar’s return to creative thinking was somewhat lost by Monday morning.

If you were lucky enough to miss the first half of the race, and have avoided replays and everything else written about the event, it’s possible you came away with only memories of Will Power clobbering the field until a slow final pit stop and a fiercely determined Juan Montoya stole the show. JPM’s win was as popular as I’ve seen at St. Pete, and with so many Spanish-speaking supporters in attendance, the Colombian’s move to the lead and eventual victory sent a significant portion of the crown into a state of rapture. Portions of the main grandstands rose and cheered every time he swept by in the lead, which stood in contrast to the silence during Power’s commanding drive.

Focusing solely on the late battle among Team Penske drivers, Montoya made a bold statement as he repelled Power’s advances and reminded everyone the old JPM was back. There were many hidden gems to be found within the race, but I’m afraid the messy first half could overshadow the second. And then came more bad news.

Reports of a woman being struck by a flying piece of bodywork that went sailing clear over the tall Turn 10 grandstands emerged the morning after the race, and could be the most troubling item of all after St. Pete. The fan, Brigitte Hoffstetter, wasn’t hit by a piece of shrapnel after two cars tangled in a big, loud collision; she was hit in the head without warning while walking in a grassy area that was well removed from the raceway.

It was an unfortunate bookend to the event that raises legitimate concerns about aero kits: The IndyCar race opened with scattered aero pieces on the racing line, then wasted the first half of the contest as an embarrassing amount of bodywork was shed, and closed with the story of a head wound caused by a flying aero kit component. It’s far from the narrative IndyCar imagined prior to St. Pete.

Through 2014, drivers made plenty of contact at St. Pete and other street circuits, and with the spec Dallara bodywork, the pieces usually took the punishment without breaking. The limited number of wing profiles on the stock DW12 and strong mounting system (BELOW, Marshall Pruett photo) also reduced the odds of broken wings and smaller elements leaving the track.

The same type of routine contact in 2015, with bodywork featuring dozens of new aerodynamic profiles and pieces attached to the outer surfaces, now comes with the risk of those items sailing over fences and grandstands. In light of what happened to Mrs. Hoffstetter, it’s something IndyCar cannot afford to have repeated.

Looking back, flying car parts and bodywork pieces have hurt and killed unsuspecting fans before, and St. Pete was by no means the last time injuries will happen. But where something new and possibly frightening has taken place is the relative ease and frequency the flying debris occurred, not to mention the lack of attention-getting circumstances that caused the parts to become airborne.

Without needlessly sounding the alarm bells, a situation has been created where aero kit bodywork can be easily shed and shot through the air, and with the increased odds of new aerodynamic pieces taking flight, safety for those within a reasonable distance of the racing surface has been called into question. In the name of safety, and safety alone, IndyCar has an issue that needs to be addressed immediately.

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THE PROBLEM AND THE POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

The Chevy road course/short oval aero kit, with its lack of a traditional outer front wing endplate (ABOVE/BELOW, Marshall Pruett photos) that extends up and out to the front of the mainplane, leaves quite a bit of surface area exposed and invites trampling by a front tire. The tall, stalk-mounted wing elements on both sides of the mainplane, as everyone noted, looked as if they’d be the first item knocked off by a tire or when struck by a rear wheel guard, and that prophecy came true last weekend.

Three main scenarios happened: the upper elements were knocked off by hitting something in front of the car, were knocked off while dive bombing and hitting the side of a car, or the upper element, shallow endplate, and even the outer portion of the mainplane were run over diagonally.

Think of Power sticking his nose in on Montoya in the final laps – he lost the right-front upper element after hitting the left-rear corner of JPM’s car – or CFH Racing’s Luca Filippi, who managed to lose both upper elements through contact on the first lap. Filippi’s CFH teammate Josef Newgarden also lost two, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Sage Karam lost one, Penske’s Simon Pagenaud lost one, KVSH’s Sebastien Bourdais lost one, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few others who parted ways with Chevy’s Wing-on-a-Stick. Approximately half of the Chevy drivers suffered front wing damage on Sunday.

Of the leading Chevy drivers, only race winner Juan Montoya, Tony Kanaan, Helio Castroneves and Scott Dixon come to mind as having made it through all 110 laps without losing a front upper element. With nothing in place to prohibit the upper elements from being driven over or broken off in nose-to-tail contact, it’s easy to predict the same breakages will continue to happen at every road and street course going forward.

And if Chevy’s aero kit seeded the initial idea of bodywork causing cautions, Honda’s radical road course/short oval package took the topic to new heights. Its complex front array of cascade elements, box elements attached to the tall front endplates, and other pieces affixed to the stock Dallara mainplane gave the impression that with the slightest bit of contact, little wings would be scattered throughout the circuit. In fact, that specific premonition proved to be false in most instances, but the outcome was the same – massive amounts of debris.

Instead of tons of tiny Honda pieces lining the track, it was often bigger chunks – interconnected pieces – that snapped off. What took place, as ABC’s cameras managed to find on a regular basis, were mounting failures where Honda’s endplate/winglet combo attaches to Dallara’s front wings.

To understand why the Honda kits are so prone to leaving big portions of their front wing packages (BELOW, Marshall Pruett image) littered from corner to corner, look no further than the mounting system used at the outer edges of Dallara’s stock mainplanes. It’s here where we find the reason Honda experience more breakages than Chevy.

Bolts connect the complex, tall, and somewhat heavy Honda endplate/winglet package to the Dallara mainplanes (shown below in red), yet with nothing other than a thin vertical aluminum support on the inside that attaches the bottom winglet array to the mainplane, there’s not enough structural support to keep the endplates/winglets from folding inward when hit from the side.

Look at the contact Graham Rahal made with Charlie Kimball and how, immediately after, Rahal’s right-front endplate/winglet package was flapping and falling over on itself. That happened because the little vertical aluminum piece broke and there was nothing else in place to hold it upright.

Like cow tipping, apply the right amount of force to the top of Honda’s endplates – the kind of force transmitted in routine contact – and the unit falls over. In testing at Barber Motorsports Park during Spring Training, Graham Rahal had the right-front endplate/winglet stack go the opposite direction, separating from its mainplane mounts and leaning away from the car.

And folding wasn’t the only problem encountered with Honda’s front wing package. With Honda’s endplate/winglet unit only seriously connected to the mainplane at one location, Simona de Silvestro was able to peel the right-front unit away from its mounting point and turn it 90 degrees – so that her right-front tire chewed away at the outer face of the endplate itself – after driving into the back of James Jakes.

Carlos Munoz and Marco Andretti also savaged their front wing packages against other cars and saw winglets or endplates (or winglets and endplates) go flying.

And there were others – plenty of others – from the Honda camp to surrender front aero kit pieces to the streets of St. Pete. The Foyt team did so much front wing damage in the race, it had to borrow a complete front wing assembly from Dale Coyne to keep Takuma Sato going (RIGHT Marshall Pruett photo). Other than Ryan Hunter-Reay, it’s hard to think of a competitive Honda driver who started and finished the race with the same front wings.

Between the two front wing packages, Chevy’s design (BELOW, Marshall Pruett photo) is better suited to withstand impacts without losing the bigger cascade elements. That’s because, in basic terms, its front wing layout uses a “double shear” mounting solution. The cascade elements are bolted to the back of the front wing endplate and to the inner endplate that rises from the mainplane, sandwiching the elements on both sides.

For Honda, its issues are caused by what is effectively a “single shear” installation with the endplate/winglets, and it isn’t strong enough to keep the unit attached when hit from the front or side.

With most of its new front aero kit pieces held in place by two rigid mounting points, only Chevy’s Wing-on-a-Stick componentry needs a rethink. It won’t necessarily prevent nose-to-tail damage from knocking off an upper element, but in the interest of safety, and reducing the number of pieces being broken in the fairly common drive-over or side impact scenarios that we saw at St. Pete, IndyCar needs to call for Chevy to extend its outer endplates to the front of the wing in a manner similar to the tall, long Dallara endplates used through 2014, or even Honda’s 2015 aero kit endplates. Doing whatever it takes to cut down on upper element breakages must become apriority for Chevy and the series.

On the Honda side, a more comprehensive safety do-over is required. Its aero kit needs to borrow from Chevy with a second, tall endplate mounted to the mainplane, giving the winglets the proper “double shear” installation they need. When hit from the front or side with reasonable force, the unit would have a second rigid structure to absorb the impact and have a better chance of withstanding the urge to be knocked over or ripped away. It wouldn’t prevent the unit from being lost in heavier collisions, but it would definitely reduce the separations in lighter impacts.

After earning the unfortunate distinction as St. Pete’s most egregious polluter, Honda needs to act quickly and secure its endplates/winglets with new mainplane-mounted inner endplate.

At the back of the cars, the rear wheel guards could also stand to be fortified with additional mounting points and, to hopefully prevent more airborne threats, the addition of tethers similar to those used to keep broken suspension attached to the chassis. Rear wheel guards, through, 2014, were like punching bags that could take regular hits without deforming. The new wheel guards have lost this ability. More material, more connection points, and tethers would definitely reduce the chances of rear wheel guards – in pieces or as an entire unit – from taking off.

For the sake of repetition, the fixes mentioned above are for improved safety. From a cost and aerodynamic efficiency standpoint, we can assume Chevy and Honda won’t take kindly to calls for aero kit revisions after one race. And teams probably won’t invite any extra costs or labor to solve these issues. 

Despite any pushback that may happen, IndyCar and its aero kit manufacturers cannot pretend serious flaws weren’t exposed at St. Pete. 

Forget downforce and new lap records; aero kits triggered caution after caution, diluted the quality of racing, drivers made endless trips to pit and replace broken bodywork and, sadly, a fan was hospitalized because of flying debris. Taking a step back to improve the strength and mountings for road course/short oval aero kit pieces won’t happen overnight, and it will definitely inconvenience the series, manufacturers and teams, but with safety as the underlying motivation, something must happen.

Pressing fixes into place by NOLA on April 12 is unrealistic, but with another street race around the corner – Long Beach on April 19 – IndyCar has a clear deadline to meet.

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WHAT ABOUT THE DRIVERS?

St. Pete’s carbon-fiber shower didn’t happen as a result of weak or exposed aero kit pieces; it happened because drivers hit each other with their cars on a frequent basis. Subtract the slam dancing, and the street sweepers sit idling on Sunday afternoon.

Asking IndyCar drivers to play nicely on street courses in the name of reducing broken bodywork is possible, but it would require a complete culture change within the cockpits. Making constant contact in 2015 is a surefire recipe to a poor result, but that message wasn’t received by every driver on the grid.

Transitioning from the “I can’t hit cars with impunity” mindset will take time, needs to happen, and as one veteran driver suggested after the race: “It will be self-policing. If enough guys ruin their own races by playing bumper cars, it won’t take very long before they see how much they’re hurting themselves. Give everyone a couple of races to get used to where the new bodywork starts and stops, and it should get better.”

The note about bumper cars is important. The Dallara DW12’s tank-like strength allowed drivers to erase most fears of losing front wings and endplates. That “bumper car” mentality was on display throughout the St. Pete race, and until the aero kits are strengthened to a state where they can be slammed and hammered like they were through 2014, the penalty will come in the form of broken and flying bodywork.

There’s also a touch of reality that should be considered. Close passes will be attempted, doors will be closed, braking points will be missed, and each time, exposed upper elements and snap-happy endplates/winglets are at risk of being torn free.

Drivers are wired to take, advance, and fight for position – all with an accepted degree of risk involved. It makes asking them to race with less aggression a bit like asking a linebacker to gently sack the quarterback. It sounds like a reasonable solution, and in theory, it should be possible, but across 24-drivers with sponsors to appease and paychecks to earn, it’s hard to imagine everyone will be on their best behavior.

There’s no doubt the situation can be improved by upholding higher driving standards – moving away from the constant contact, but it isn’t a complete remedy.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES?

It’s a simplified take on the outcome of Sunday’s race, but I did find it interesting that after more than a year of design, development, testing, and millions of dollars spent by both manufacturers on aero kits, St. Pete 2015’s winner was a Team Penske driver, the podium featured two drivers from Penske’s stable and one from Chip Ganassi Racing, and Chevy swept the podium with a 1-2-3.

St. Pete 2014, minus aero kits and all that effort, featured a winner from Team Penske, a podium consisting of two drivers from Penske’s stable and one from Chip Ganassi Racing, and a 1-2-3 sweep by Chevy…

2015 marked the fourth straight year – all four during IndyCar’s new turbocharged era – where Chevy manhandled Honda at the season opener. In 2012, four out of the top-6 finishers belonged to Chevy. In 2013 it was up to five of the top-6. In 2014 it was back to four out of the top-6, and this year, the entire top-6 belonged to GM.

If you’re a Chevy fan, it’s clear the Bowtie has done a better job of preparing itself and its teams to start every season since 2012. If you’re a Honda fan, you might be wondering how, year after year, the proud Japanese brand swings and misses at the chance to start the season on a positive note.

On the aero kit front, there’s an even bigger surprise to consider. Prior to aero kits, Chevy lacked a dedicated open-wheel aerodynamics design team. To be fair, the brain trust within its partner company Pratt & Miller Engineering should not be underestimated, but the PME gang isn’t credited with decades of Indy car or Formula 1 aero creations. Honda, with its longtime partners at Wirth Research, were expected to use their vast open-wheel experience to steal the march from Chevy; based on subject matter expertise alone, Honda and WR should have leapfrogged the Bowtie with aero kits. But it didn’t happen. At least not to start the season.

Full credit goes to Chevy for building out the department with new aerodynamicists, designers, and model makers, then rocketing out of the gates with the upper hand.

Honda’s performance deficiencies were notable in qualifying as the top four spots and eight of the cars in the top-10 belonged to Chevy, and the gap between polesitter Will Power and A.J. Foyt Racing’s Takuma Sato in the best Honda was surprising – 0.456 seconds, to be exact. Last year, Sato was on pole.

In the race, the best Honda belonged to RHR who recovered to finish seventh. His race was one long comeback drive after dropping to 17th on the opening lap, but after the race, he reckoned that with or without the delay, seventh was the best they had to offer. “That was as far as we were going to go,” he said.

The most concerning number from the race was the distance between JPM and RHR at the finish. The Andretti driver improved to 10th by the time the field packed under the last caution and make their pit stops. With cars bunched up for the restart, laps 58-110 were run without interruption, and in that span, the gap between JPM and RHR grew to 27.7 seconds. Both drivers were also on new Firestone Reds, and the 11.2-second gap between RHR and Sebastien Bourdais further highlighted the performance separation between Honda’s best and Chevy’s sixth-fastest car.

The margin was hard to ignore, and although St. Pete wasn’t pretty for his team or engine supplier, RHR believes that with aero kits, it’s hard to make conclusive statements where each manufacturer stands after Round 1.

“It could change track to track; Chevy came out at St. Pete with a stronger overall package, but Honda could be the ones to beat at NOLA, and who knows how the other races will go,” he said. “There’s no telling at this point because the kits are so new to everyone. It’s not like before where the edge you saw at a street course would probably carry over to a road course.

“The aero packages are different from track to track, and we’re hoping that Honda is out front when we get to the next race. That’s the cool thing about aero kits; it’s possible to be behind at one track and ahead at the other.”

As I wrote in RACER‘s IndyCar 101 piece, the prevailing belief before St. Pete, which has now been confirmed, is that Chevy created a simplified (but far from simple) and heavily optimized aero kit package for road and street courses. It comes with very few options, isn’t overly complex, and won’t lead teams down blind alleys in search of the best aero setup. Chevy worked intensively to create a single package for the St. Petes and NOLAs that could achieve a high level of performance right out of the box. Chevy teams then went to work learning that base package, and as we’ve seen, they’ve been extracting impressive performance from it since they started testing in early March.

The Honda teams have options upon options, and while their road and street course kits could potentially deliver higher performance levels, it’s much harder to find the sweet spot. With more time and experience with the kits, locking in to the best aero setup should happen at a faster rate.

While Honda teams continued to search for the optimal aero setup at St. Pete, the Chevy teams, for the most part, had already moved on and began perfecting the rest of the car. It was the difference between one manufacturer showing up rested and prepared for the 110-lap exam, and the other cramming up to the final minute to try and earn a passing grade.

Five of IndyCar’s 16 races take place on street courses – almost one-third of the calendar – which makes Honda’s poor showing at St. Pete a concern for every team in their camp. Dismissing Honda’s chances this season, however, would be premature.

“Between Ganassi and Penske, one manufacturer has seven scary drivers on the payroll, maybe more. Honda has one,” said one IndyCar veteran. “I don’t think Honda’s problems, if you want to call them that at St. Pete, was as big as it looked. Penske and Ganassi did what they do and [Ryan] Hunter-Reay was left to carry Honda on his back. You can’t really be surprised at the outcome at the end of the day, can you?”

And he raises an excellent point that was mentioned more than once during the offseason. Add in CFH Racing and KV Racing, and Chevy has an imposing lineup at every track the series visits. Take a quick look at Honda’s roster, and it’s loaded with rookies, up-and-comers, a few ride buyers, and in select instances, drivers who’ve proven they can mix it up and beat Chevy’s top dogs.

Take two of the best drivers from Penske and Ganassi, drop them into leading Honda teams, and the top-10 at St. Pete would look rather different. Graham Rahal, Marco Andretti, James Hinchcliffe, and others from the Honda camp will be needed to restore some balance to the fight, and if Honda’s going to put a driver into championship contention, it can’t afford to have NOLA, Long Beach, the GP of Indy, and the Indy 500 serve as repeats of what just happened in Florida.

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THE LONG, DEEP SLEEP

IndyCar’s painfully long offseason nap lasted more than half of a year – 211 days from the checkered flag at Fontana to the green flag at St. Pete, and its ratings from 2014 stayed flat on ABC with a 0.6 Nielsen rating despite a first-time lead-in by the NBA. The viewership was still up slightly, but compared to the 1.1 rating IndyCar earned on ABC in 2012, the cause for celebration has its limits.

Although the nearly seven-month delay between events did not result in a viewer decrease, team owner Chip Ganassi continues to harbor concerns over the next extended offseason and how it could impact year-round employment for IndyCar team members.

“That’s dealing a slow death to a lot of people in this sport, including myself. I don’t know what I am going to do with these people for six months. It makes no sense to have people sitting around for six months doing nothing, I can tell you that. So they’re either going to be either racing something else or building something else or finding other jobs. It makes absolutely no sense,” Ganassi (LEFT) told a group of reporters on Saturday.

The growth of NASCAR saw a lot of open-wheel mechanical and engineering talent leave Indianapolis for North Carolina, and with another long offseason on the horizon, some of the regular IndyCar teams could look to convert full-timers to part-time roles in the interest of trimming payrolls.

Most IndyCar teams will tell you it has become increasingly difficult to find skilled and experienced open-wheel personnel, and if teams start to take full-season employment off the table, more talent will be lost to NASCAR, IMSA, the NHRA, and other, more active series.

Granted, Ganassi’s warning doesn’t necessarily apply to his expanding house of motorsports solutions; he has NASCAR, IndyCar, IMSA, and GRC programs to staff, and also has Le Mans in the team’s future, but for the CFHs, KVs, Schmidt Petersons, Rahals, and others, Chip’s view of the future could become a reality.

SEBRING LIES

Sebastien Bourdais was in fine form Friday night when he described his ill-natured No. 11 KVSH Chevy at St. Pete. “It wouldn’t turn, it wouldn’t brake, it wouldn’t put the power down. It was a disaster,” he said with a big laugh.

IndyCar’s lone practice session left the Frenchman and his engineer Olivier Boisson with more questions than answers. A two-day test at Sebring just prior to St. Pete had unlocked all kinds of speed secrets for the opening round, and with those lessons applied to his car, the two expected the No. 11 to leap to the top of the timing screens.

Instead, Bourdais was sixth, which wasn’t bad, yet the open-wheel ace couldn’t help but point to Sebring as the culprit for their lack of session-leading pace.

“It happens so many times like that; if everything feels great and everything feels good at Sebring, usually you go wherever you’re gonna use that setup stuff and nothing works,” he explained. “For us, nothing worked.”

Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay was also quick at Sebring, and like Bourdais, expected the team’s testing plan to pay off at St. Pete. He also had a rude awakening when his No. 28 Honda ended the first session down in 14th.

“We were really quick at Sebring, but you have to be careful with it,” he said. “Sometimes the track surface at Sebring helps on street courses, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

It took a sizeable effort from both teams to turn their fortunes around on Saturday, and with Friday lost to errant setup paths, their relative recoveries (Bourdais qualified sixth, RHR eighth) were successful. Without the wasted time on Friday, who knows how much farther up the grid they could have gone.

TRACTION IS KING

One of the pleasures of having Indy cars running so close to the viewing areas at St. Pete comes in the form of listening to the drivers manage their tires and the power from the 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 engines. First viewed at Spring Training, Team Penske’s cars are pure magic in the mechanical grip department, and it showed in practice, qualifying, and again in the race as all four pilots put their Firestone Blacks and Reds to the test without suffering the wheelspin or lateral slides. Most of their competitors weren’t as lucky.

Adding another theme to follow in addition to aero kits, Team Penske’s dominance at St. Pete goes much deeper than engines and bodywork. The Captain’s team has found a damping/springing/geometry package that put them in a different class last weekend, and listening to the rest of the drivers in the field – including the Ganassi team, there’s a sense that the Penske drivers have an edge that will be challenging to overcome.

“They were on another planet here today,” third-place Tony Kanaan said after the race.

Ganassi’s Scott Dixon was a match for the Penske drivers during road course testing at Barber, and with the series headed to NOLA, the move to a permanent road course could reduce the advantage. It will be interesting to see if Penske’s street course dominance returns at Long Beach.

DID YOU REMEMBER?

IndyCar raced at St. Pete with its former race director, Brian Barnhart, presiding over the event, and I’ll admit that I’d forgotten about it until the race was over. Let’s hope most were was pleasantly surprised to find race control’s presence was barely felt throughout the weekend. Drivers who were penalized might not agree, but the hellfire and brimstone expected by some with the return of Barnhart never appeared.

SOMETIMES LESS IS BETTER

The Pirelli World Challenge series provided its usual excitement on IndyCar’s undercard, but with PWC’s spike in GT car counts and the addition of the new Porsche Cup class, its product ended up suffering during both rounds. Too many cars, too many mistakes, and too many crashes.

15 of Saturday’s 26-lap race were run under caution. That’s almost 58 percent of the race spend behind the pace car. Sunday’s 27-lapper had eight laps under caution – 30 percent – and also had eight minutes where cars were halted on the front straight while the melee at the Turn 2/3 section was cleared.

Pro-am drivers were to blame, Pros were just as guilty, and with both races combined, 43 percent of Rounds 3 and 4 with PWC’s headlining GT cars were spent under caution. In races that last approximately 50 minutes each, that’s a problem.

It begs the question of whether the series would be better off by trimming some of the less experienced drivers from the street courses – tracks where grip is low and cement barriers are close – and by keeping the Pros on a shorter leashes. IMSA went through the same introspecitve process early last year after Sebring.

PWC’s brilliance comes from its collision of exotic machinery and a sprint race format. Take away either of those and fans are left without much to follow. And for the teams and manufacturers who spend considerable amounts to participate, street race crashfests are even harder to tolerate. The series has gone through a recent growth spurt and will likely get bigger, but it needs to decide whether big numbers or quality racing is the key to increasing its stature in North America.

If silly start-line crashes, Pro-Am drivers ignoring waving yellows and bashing into crashed cars, Pros blatantly nerfing other Pros out of the way, and other silly behavior is allowed to continue, PWC becomes ordinary. In their case, quality needs to trump quantity.

CARLIN DEBUT

Carlin Racing blitzed the Indy Lights series on their American debut, leading every session, claiming poles in both races and wins on Saturday and Sunday with rookie Ed Jones. The European junior open-wheel powerhouse did the unexpected by making the all-conquering Andretti, Belardi, and Schmidt Peterson Indy Lights teams look average.

Carlin’s presence will force the Indy Lights regulars to reach higher, which is good, but if it comes at an increased price tag, it won’t necessarily benefit the series. If the cost to beat Carlin involves expensive visits to wind tunnels and a growth in CFD/simulation tools and staff, it will inevitably be passed onto the drivers, and at the moment, there aren’t enough funded drivers to fill all of the available Dallara IL15-Mazdas that have been delivered.

Carlin definitely raised the bar, and with a little bit of time between St. Pete and Long Beach, veteran Indy Lights teams will spend the time and money to see if catching the newcomers is possible. If St. Pete was an indicator, it might be harder than anyone suspects.

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TRAPS

Looking at the qualifying sessions where the fastest lap was set in 2014 and 2015, some interesting performance data can be gleaned from how aero kits and power/torque improvements influenced sector times.

The highest top speeds captured with IndyCar’s timing loops are found near the end of the front straight, and using section SFT to SF, 2014’s best of 160.302mph by Takuma Sato was improved by 2.197mph to 162.499mph by the Japanese driver this year.

Differences in acceleration and high-speed cornering through Turns 2 and 3 down to the midpoint of the straight that leads to Turn 4, are captured in the I2-I3 loop, and showed Sato’s quick elapsed time of 06.483 seconds in 2014 was improved to 06.296 seconds by Sebastien Bourdais in 2015, a reduction of 0.187 seconds.

Average speeds for the time spent in that section jumped from 135.560mph by Sato to 139.575mph by Bourdais. A brief snapshot of top speed at the middle of the Turn 3 to Turn 4 straight shows Will Power’s average of 153.794mph in 2014 jumped to 156.082mph by new teammate Simon Pagenaud in 2015.

Section I3-I4 is a long stretch of slower turns where mechanical grip, torque, and low-speed downforce play major factors. In the course of one year, almost a half-second was been carved from the sector, with RHR’s 13.045-second blast from 2014 dropping to 12.585 seconds by 2015 polesitter Will Power.

A look at the long stretch from I1 to I4 reveals Power completed the sector in 27.834 seconds, which could offer the most telling improvement from Sato’s 28.8837-second run set last year. That’s 1.049 seconds faster, and most of it came from cornering.
A look at I4 to I6 shows little variance where pure acceleration comes into play between Turns 9 and 10, and 10 and 11. The same is true from I6 to SF. Combining the improvements from I4 to I6 to SF, only 0.173 seconds were gained in the span of a year.

Drag reduction and some nifty flexibility in the front wing aero kit element shows in the improved top speeds on the front straight, but elsewhere on the circuit, the added downforce kept speeds and elapsed times in check on the straights that weren’t preceded by high-speed corners. Only Turns 2 and 3, where the extra aero kit downforce led to an exit speed increase, delivered a notable climb in top speed.

LADDER TALENT ON DISPLAY

Team USA Scholarship winners Neil Alberico (Pro Mazda) and Jake Eidson (USF2000) dominated their series at St. Pete. The young Americans impressed at every stage, and in USF2000, Wisconsin’s Aaron Telitz added to the Team USA theme by finishing second to Eidson in both rounds. Along with Ed Jones in Lights, the Mazda Road To Indy featured the same winners in all three doubleheaders last weekend, and proved once again that serious talent is being cultivated in IndyCar’s farm leagues.

MISCELLANEOUS

• After spending most of the offseason tending to his health, it was great to see IndyCar’s Arni’s Sribhen back in action at St. Pete.

• JPM’s win could have been lost during prior to his penultimate pit stop. He acquired a slow puncture and was one lap away from pitting under green – while sitting third – to have it replaced. A caution on lap 47 and the pits opening on lap 48 ended up saving him, preventing the extra stop that would have taken the No. 3 Chevy out of contention.

• The fairytale IndyCar return didn’t last much beyond qualifying, but it was nice to see Simona de Silvestro (RIGHT) come into St. Pete with the bare minimum of miles in her Andretti Autosport Honda and wind up the second-fastest Andretti driver in time trials.

• They wanted more, but taking ninth and 12th in their first race as a blended team felt like something CFH Racing should be proud of.

• From Ganassi’s Scott Dixon encountering a rear airjack failure to Team Penske failing to drop Will Power after his final stop has been completed, pit lane was as much of an influence on Sunday’s race as anything that happened on track.

• Brembo’s latest brake package has received almost universal praise from drivers and teams.

• It was far from a trouble-free run, but Bryan Herta Autosport’s Gabby Chaves was the top rookie at St. Pete, finishing 17th.

• If you listened to nothing but Graham Rahal’s radio transmissions on the ABC broadcast, you might have come away thinking the 26-year-old could use a calming cup of tea in his drink bottle.

• A.J. Foyt’s Jack Hawksworth improved 13 positions on Sunday, climbing from 21st to eighth.

• I’m not sure a single driver is deserving of The Golden Bowling Ball award from St. Pete, but I’ll nominate Ganassi’s Charlie Kimball as everyone’s favorite bowling pin.

• In another Ganassi note, Sage Karam had a rather quiet event. After a brief and expensive trip to Spring Training, staying under the radar might not have been a bad thing. Provided he’s back for NOLA, let’s hope the little badass uncorks the raw speed he’s shown elsewhere.

• If you’re a fan of car control, KV Racing’s Stefano Coletti is a joy to watch. The Monaco native, who was given the nickname “Stevie Spaghetti” by his team, isn’t afraid of getting sideways.