Indianapolis — February 1, 2016

Bending new ideas to the purposes of speed has long been the engineering goal and technological triumph of IndyCar racing and its most-heralded event the Indianapolis 500.

Consider this: the first use of the rear-view mirror was on the winning car at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1911. A simple ladies’ compact mirror gave driver Ray Harroun a competitive weight advantage (he did not need a spotter riding alongside to identify cars approaching his from the rear) and yielded a significant safety improvement that was quickly adapted to use on the public highway.

More recently we have seen in open-wheel racing internationally the harvesting of heat during braking to enhance performance, easily one of the most interesting schemes of the early third millennium to capture kinetic energy and transform it into horsepower.

Now, with a bold move to bring solar power into the racing vocabulary, Stefan Wilson and solar’s professional advocacy organization the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) are bringing several innovations to the racetrack that may be the dawn of a new era of technological advancement surrounding the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”

The desire to bring solar energy onto the pit lane was an idea championed by Stefan’s late brother and IndyCar winner Justin Wilson. As the largest single renewable energy source available to planet Earth, solar has the capacity to “inspire an era of energy innovation and speed the transition to a sustainable energy economy” according to ASES.

Before you start imagining cars with huge energy-catching waffle-panels attached to their uppers circulating the racetrack, think conventionally and stationary with solar-powered charging stations, lights, and other electronic assets that might power the garages of Gasoline Alley and illuminate the route to a powerful alternative to coal, oil and nuclear resources. In fact, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a step ahead of you, already sourcing some of its power needs with a 9 MW solar farm operating nearby that boasts 39,312 solar panels cranking out solar-sourced watts for the Brickyard.

Let’s not dismiss the idea of solar race cars, though. The first solar car race was the Tour de Sol in 1985 which led to several similar races in Europe, USA and Australia. The two most notable solar car distance races running today are the World Solar Challenge held in remote Australia, and the American Solar Challenge run on North American highways — in its most recent event conducted in 2014 along a course from Austin, TX to Minneapolis, MN and won by an engineering team from the University of Michigan.

Both the Federation Internationale d’Automobile (FIA) and the Guinness Book of World Records have already recorded solar vehicle speeds in the neighborhood of the 55 mph speed limit many Americans follow in metropolitan areas of this country.

Design-wise these vehicles generally exhibit a small driver-cockpit beneath a closed canopy in the middle of a curved wing-like array, entirely covered in cells, with 3 wheels. However, there is a new “Cruiser Class” of competition solar vehicle that mandates four wheels and upright seating for passengers, and is judged on a number of factors including time, payload, passenger miles, and external energy use.

Just like in today’s competitive automobile racing, teams must consider strategic implications such as energy consumption and race speed optimization with on-board telemetry that relays vehicle performance data to a crew chief (generally traveling in a support vehicle behind the competitors.)

Minor changes in elevation and in course also require thoughtful analysis, as the apparent position of the sun in the sky and the vehicle’s orientation to the sun can dramatically change the amount of power needed to stay the course.

Finally successful solar car racing requires a facile understanding of the weather and reliable weather forecasting, in order to predict the power input to the vehicle from the sun during each race day.

In other words, a solar race car future is not as far-fetched or as different from the way we race today as you might first imagine.

Allan Brewer

Allan Brewer covers IndyCar and other racing series for RacingNation.com. Allan is a fixture at the race track, armed with keyboard and camera, eager to take you inside open-wheel sport where the news is being made. He comes to RacingNation.com with multiple professional awards from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AWWRBA). He began his motorsports writing career at FastMachines.com; and solely published IndyProRacer.com and A1GP.com, two award-winning websites for open-wheel racing’s junior leagues, prior to becoming IndyCar correspondent at Motorsport.com. He has also covered Formula 1, NASCAR, Formula E, the Indy Lights Series and its predecessor Indy Pro Series, NHRA events and major auto shows. His major interest outside of competition is automotive technology and its application to the cars we drive every day on the public highways.

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At 8:15 AM Carpenter/Fisher/Hartman Racing’s Ed Carpenter went airborne in Turn 2 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It was the third time in a week a car has flipped at speed after a spin.

All three cars were Chevrolet’s with a new aerodynamics package that has seen only modest test laps at Indy.

At 8:30 the track was closed for “repairs.”

Carpenter was pronounced fit by the infield hospital and emerged with these words: “I’m pissed.”

It’s worth noting that Ed is the step-son of Tony George, whose family owns the Speedway.

An emergency meeting of INDYCAR and Chevy officials followed, then Honda joined the meeting.

At 10:50 Doug Boles, President of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, emerged and reassured fans, “Racing comes with its risk, but we want to be sure our drivers are safe first.”

In the wake of that announcement rumors began circulating. What will they do? Will INDYCAR force Chevrolet to qualify with last year’s Dallara aero package (miles per hour slower than the new one)? Will Honda-powered cars only be allowed to take the track?

At 11:30 Boles returned to announce changes.

Some were schedule changes: the nine-car shoot-out for the pole was scuttled.

Some were technical modifications: cars must race what they qualify.

Some were rules changes: no points for qualifications.

By noon the changes were ratified by Mark Miles, CEO of the Human & Company parent to INDYCAR and the Speedway.

This isn’t the first time Indianapolis Motor Speedway has seen plans come asunder.

There was the infamous Formula 1 race here in 2005 in which three-quarters of the cars were sidelined by suspect tires.

There was the yellow-flag-controlled NASCAR race in 2008, again tire problems.

So what to make of the latest snafu?

When Carl Fisher envisioned this track in 1905 his intent was to build a place where automobiles could be tested before they were delivered to customers.

He was also reacting to the reality that European auto manufacturers were clearly already building superior machines for road-going transportation.

Racing on public roads, mostly dirt or gravel, was commonplace—endangering the occupants of the car and the public.

Cars, both consumer and racing, have come a long way from those days.

Confining untested ideas to the closed track was and is the ideal way to challenge the status quo and to test the courage of men.

As frustrating as it is, this is why we race. It’s why we tolerate the noise and crowds. It’s why men take a risk to reach fame and glory. It’s where important ideas that come to the highway start.

Allan Brewer

Allan Brewer covers IndyCar and other racing series for RacingNation.com. Allan is a fixture at the race track, armed with keyboard and camera, eager to take you inside open-wheel sport where the news is being made. He comes to RacingNation.com with multiple professional awards from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AWWRBA). He began his motorsports writing career at FastMachines.com; and solely published IndyProRacer.com and A1GP.com, two award-winning websites for open-wheel racing’s junior leagues, prior to becoming IndyCar correspondent at Motorsport.com. He has also covered Formula 1, NASCAR, Formula E, the Indy Lights Series and its predecessor Indy Pro Series, NHRA events and major auto shows. His major interest outside of competition is automotive technology and its application to the cars we drive every day on the public highways.

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Indianapolis—Three-time Indianapolis 500 champion Helio Castroneves suffered a spectacular, and frightening, crash at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Wednesday.

Video replay shows Castroneves react to a slight sideways movement of the car, perhaps when it touches the painted white line on the inside of the track, then a much greater correction as the car begins to spin leaving Turn 1 of the oval.

As the race car hits the outside wall of the Speedway the steering wheel begins to turn violently at terrific speed as the tires and suspension collapse, and Castroneves properly brings both hands to his chest to avoid injury.

Finally, the car lifts up and over, the blue sky silhouetting the driver, helpless, simply along for the ride. With impact, upside down, the video camera is destroyed and the tape stops.

Afterwards, team owner Roger Penske of Team Penske expressed amazement that the Dallara IR12 with super-speedway aerodynamics kit affixed went into the air. After all, a key off-season design component (triangular cut-outs in the floor of the chassis) was intended to prevent lift and airborne flight.

“We’re playing with new areas from the aerodynamic standpoint and, of course, going backwards at that speed, you don’t know what kind of lift it had,” Penske said.

Watching the video on replay it appears that the critical incident that put the car in flight was air entering the rear wheel-covers, the so-called “bumpers” intended to prevent tire-on-tire contact.

The bumpers, when the car is rolling backwards, act as huge scoops that trap the air with only one place to go: down around the rear tires and under the car.

Castroneves had just turned a lap at 219.183 mph prior to the incident.

Today, Josef Newgarden entered Turn 3 at over 200 miles per hour, spun, hit the outside wall, got backwards and flipped into the air.

Where Castroneves’ car rolled completely back onto the four tires and upright, Newgarden’s Dallara skidded along on its side, the left side-pod collapsed beneath it.

Newgarden, like Castroneves, crawled out from under and appeared substantially intact.

Newgarden, like Castroneves, was checked and released from the infield medical center inside the Speedway within 15 minutes, and cleared to drive again.

Chevy, the maker of both cars that flipped, followed a tried-and-true script to develop its aero kit. Computer-aided design created potential pieces that could be added to the car, followed by driver-testing on a simulator, and finally half-scale models tested in a wind tunnel.

The question this begs is simple: did anyone ever think to turn the model around backwards and see what happens?

For now, that question remains unanswered, and that is simply hind-sight anyway.

A bigger and more important question is “What do we do now?” because cars will get backwards during the Indianapolis 500, and based on what we now know, there is a good chance some of them will get airborne.

If, and this is just if, one gets into the catch-fence we have an incident much too familiar to the one that took Dan Wheldon’s life.

Back to the drawing board.

Allan Brewer

Allan Brewer covers IndyCar and other racing series for RacingNation.com. Allan is a fixture at the race track, armed with keyboard and camera, eager to take you inside open-wheel sport where the news is being made. He comes to RacingNation.com with multiple professional awards from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AWWRBA). He began his motorsports writing career at FastMachines.com; and solely published IndyProRacer.com and A1GP.com, two award-winning websites for open-wheel racing’s junior leagues, prior to becoming IndyCar correspondent at Motorsport.com. He has also covered Formula 1, NASCAR, Formula E, the Indy Lights Series and its predecessor Indy Pro Series, NHRA events and major auto shows. His major interest outside of competition is automotive technology and its application to the cars we drive every day on the public highways.

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Indianapolis — Chevrolet set out its aims for the INDYCAR super-speedway aero kit on Monday, drafting three of its top drivers to offer “seat-of-the-pants” impressions of the design.

Chevrolet, like Honda, created the low-drag Indianapolis version of its aerodynamic package first. Working in partnership with Pratt & Miller engineering staff the bow-tie crew then con-structed the road and street course pieces later.

Because of the INDYCAR schedule’s front-loaded non-oval nature fans are just now getting to see the sleeker, more slippery aero configuration.

Like Honda’s package, the Chevrolet super-speedway design stands in stark contrast to the road and street aero kit.

Here’s what Chevy and Pratt & Miller have come up with:

There is a mandatory underwing cutout, triangular in shape, just forward of the side pods on both sides of the car. This was deemed necessary by INDYCAR to prevent “blowover” situations where the car becomes airborne with even a slight inclination of the front of the car (e.g., a rear tire going flat could raise the front enough to create airborne flight).

Chevy also fabricated a new front wing main plane, and end-plates, to control front tire wake. That is, the exotic unfolded-traffic cone appearance of the front wing assembly, when viewed from the side, is designed specifically to move air out away from the car and the front tires (a major source of drag in open-wheel vehicles) and pass it in a smooth flow over the side-pods.

At the point of the nose of the car, there is a slight impression designed to direct air to the radiator along the side. There is also elegant side pod sculpting that is specific only to the Indy version of the kit, whose purpose once again is to minimize drag. The side pod inlet of the car is the same as the road and street configuration.

A key design point at Chevy was to create a streamlined vehicle without add-ons such as wicker-bills and fins. However, as pointed out earlier, the small wicker bill forward of the driver cockpit was added at INDYCAR request (helps prevent roll-over).

There is a set of louvres forward and inboard of the rear tires on each side of the car for areo-shaping of flow to the rear wing, and for engine cooling.

The bumper pods at the rear corners of the car are the same as the road version but the adjustable wheel wedges are unique.

Finally, the rear main plane is small and spec’ed for Indy alone. The wing is adjustable to permit aero-trimming of the race car for qualifying or race conditions. Its efficient design produces equal aero effect as the old and much larger Dallara stock rear wing. And to top it off, there is another end-plate on one side of the rear wing to help balance the car.

Sebastian Bourdais described the new Chevy aero-kit package as effective, but he admitted his team at KVSH Racing is “still searching” for the right combination of down-force and low-drag to seriously test the Indianapolis oval.

Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon was initially concerned about the small size of the rear wing, but concedes that the reduced dimensions from the stock rear main plane are not an issue.

“The good thing is the car is now more tunable for qualifications versus the race,” he said.

Josef Newgarden of CFH Racing brought the most colorful description of the aerodynamic bod-ywork to bear, describing the Chevy design as “sexy” in the variety of liveries assigned this year’s field.

“It’s fun to tool around with the kit,” he said, “to try different things with it. It lets the different philosophies show between Honda vs Chevrolet.”

Allan Brewer

Allan Brewer covers IndyCar and other racing series for RacingNation.com. Allan is a fixture at the race track, armed with keyboard and camera, eager to take you inside open-wheel sport where the news is being made. He comes to RacingNation.com with multiple professional awards from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AWWRBA). He began his motorsports writing career at FastMachines.com; and solely published IndyProRacer.com and A1GP.com, two award-winning websites for open-wheel racing’s junior leagues, prior to becoming IndyCar correspondent at Motorsport.com. He has also covered Formula 1, NASCAR, Formula E, the Indy Lights Series and its predecessor Indy Pro Series, NHRA events and major auto shows. His major interest outside of competition is automotive technology and its application to the cars we drive every day on the public highways.

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“We do expect faster speeds this year,” he said at the Honda Hospitality area inside Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “Qualifying speeds of four, five miles an hour (faster). That’s not an unreasonable improvement this year.”

Last year’s pole-sitter at Indianapolis was Ed Carpenter sitting on a speed of 231.067 mph in a Chevrolet-powered vehicle. The track record at IMS is, of course, held by Arie Luyendyk and was set in 1996 at a speed of 237.498 mph.

If Miller’s analysis holds true fans will not see a new track record at this year’s 99th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing qualifications. However, it could be very close—within a mile or two per hour.

He did, however, offer some hope for those who crave a “new track record” at the Brickyard.

“I think we started pretty conservative (last weekend during initial track testing of the Honda aero kit),” he said, “and the results were good. So we’re hoping for even more over the next week.”

Miller also spoke to the (so far) advantage Chevrolet-powered teams seem to be enjoying over their Honda-powered rivals.

He said the company is working hard to correct the deficits within the aero-kit rules, and the gap between the two manufacturers seems to be closing.

He cited Graham Rahal’s outstanding performance at Barber Motorsports Park last weekend as example.

“Without going into specifics, we’ve started to identify where we have some deficiencies,” he said.

Honda has gone back to the basics with more computer fluid dynamics and wind tunnel work, continuing up to the present day. He indicated the research has been on 50% models of the chassis in the wind tunnel.

They have also added staff, both at the track and at HPD’s California headquarters, to bring their best competitive effort to bear. HPD now has over 50 additional staff working on their Indy 500 operation.

“We’re not allowed to make drastic changes,” he continued. “We’re just trying to figure out how to take advantage of what we have now and put it back in a better performance standard.”

“We’re taking every step we can,” he said, “through testing to try to improve it.”

One area in which Honda can take particular pride is in the safety improvements they have made to the Dallara DW12 chassis at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The small midline wicker that runs from front wheel assembly to the driver cockpit that Honda introduced a week ago has now been made mandatory for all INDYCAR competitors, including Chevrolet.

The “mini-fin” along the front of the car helps to prevent rollover of the vehicle in an accident situation.

Allan Brewer

Allan Brewer covers IndyCar and other racing series for RacingNation.com. Allan is a fixture at the race track, armed with keyboard and camera, eager to take you inside open-wheel sport where the news is being made. He comes to RacingNation.com with multiple professional awards from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AWWRBA). He began his motorsports writing career at FastMachines.com; and solely published IndyProRacer.com and A1GP.com, two award-winning websites for open-wheel racing’s junior leagues, prior to becoming IndyCar correspondent at Motorsport.com. He has also covered Formula 1, NASCAR, Formula E, the Indy Lights Series and its predecessor Indy Pro Series, NHRA events and major auto shows. His major interest outside of competition is automotive technology and its application to the cars we drive every day on the public highways.

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Indianapolis—Necessity is the mother of invention.

With Honda-powered INDYCAR teams trailing badly in the 2015 competition on the track Honda looks to pull a rabbit out of the hat today when the company reveals its super speedway oval aerodynamic package at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

After four events, Honda-powered cars have won only once: James Hinchcliffe’s victory for Sam Schmidt Motorsports at New Orleans. And even though Honda is gaining on Chevrolet with a recent strong performance by Graham Rahal to lift spirits in the garage area, winning races is most important.

Honda executives make no bones about it: winning the Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day is the over-arching goal.

“Winning the Indianapolis 500 saves your year for sure,” said Honda Performance Development’s Steve Eriksen. “That’s the part that people remember.”

“The number one goal of our company is winning the Indy 500. It is the most important thing for us to do. So that was the design ethos behind the aero kit, was start with the Indy 500 and then everything else cascades on after that.”

Honda will be the first of the two INDYCAR engine manufacturers (Chevrolet is the other one) to show off their super-speedway spec aero kit. Today’s static display will be followed on Sunday, May 3rd with a “Promoter Test” where the package will see its first application on the track.

Accordingly, Honda is reaping the media attention it deserves by being first to the line. After all, one of the stated goals of the aero initiative way back in 2013 was to permit fan differentiation between Chevy- and Honda-powered vehicles.

Honda definitely got the jump on the bowtie crew there, with its exotic, scalloped and curvy street/road course and short oval design. Moreover, Chevrolet earned a black eye for its front high-plane wings that were easily sheered off during competition and later banned.

Beyond today’s aero introduction, though, lie some issues that remain to be fully resolved, among them on-going negotiation between INDYCAR and Honda to renew their engine-supplier agreement.

Both Honda and INDYCAR officials insist the renewal has been pledged “in principle,” but there’s nothing in writing quite yet.

“It’s an agreement in principle,” INDYCAR president of competition Derrick Walker told FOX Sports’ Bruce Martin earlier this month, “but the devil is in the details so until we have a written contract, it’s not finalized.”

Honda didn’t comment other than to note the company has been involved in open-wheel competition for decades and wants to be there going forward.

“It’s always been Honda’s intent to remain in open wheel racing. We enjoy the competition and we want to be here and we are working out the details for that to happen,” they said.

It goes without saying that you can’t win the Indy 500 if you aren’t in open wheel racing, and from victory at the Brickyard flows market brand identity that is invaluable to both Honda and to INDYCAR.

Allan Brewer

Allan Brewer covers IndyCar and other racing series for RacingNation.com. Allan is a fixture at the race track, armed with keyboard and camera, eager to take you inside open-wheel sport where the news is being made. He comes to RacingNation.com with multiple professional awards from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AWWRBA). He began his motorsports writing career at FastMachines.com; and solely published IndyProRacer.com and A1GP.com, two award-winning websites for open-wheel racing’s junior leagues, prior to becoming IndyCar correspondent at Motorsport.com. He has also covered Formula 1, NASCAR, Formula E, the Indy Lights Series and its predecessor Indy Pro Series, NHRA events and major auto shows. His major interest outside of competition is automotive technology and its application to the cars we drive every day on the public highways.

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What’s up with all this talk about “balance” in INDYCAR?

Setting aside ideas of life/work harmony and competitive parity, INDYCAR drivers are mainly referring to how their cars are working with regard to both mechanical (center of gravity) and aerodynamic (center of pressure) aspects of performance.

“When you have a car that’s balanced—I’m not sure if you watched Helio Castroneves’s car in Long Beach during qualifying,” said reigning Indianapolis 500 champion Ryan Hunter-Reay on Wednesday, “—but you can see the car (a Chevrolet) is very well balanced: the front is working, it’s cornering well and it’s putting the power down well.”

Race car balance is affected by multiple inputs: engine, tires, suspension, road, aerodynamics, and of course the driver.

All other things being equal, the input that has been modified most obviously in the 2015 INDYCAR season is the aerodynamic interaction between the various body components.

Chevrolet and their aerodynamics partner Pratt and Whitney have taken a straightforward wings and tunnels approach; while Honda has tuned its body kit to some exotic formations that borrow from the past and suggest the future.

Regardless of philosophy, the result is a significant, distinct competitive edge for Chevy on the track and at the podium (so far) by various methods to create and shape downforce such as inverted wings, diffusers, and vortex generators.

Hunter-Reay drives a Honda, of course.

So what has Chevy done that makes a championship-level driver like Hunter-Reay envious?

To put it simply Chevrolet and its teams have learned where to apply the external downforce generated by a number of aero parts across their cars onto the best places, where they produce the greatest gain in performance for the way their drivers drive.

In case you are wondering, the best places to apply downforce are the four tires, those decidedly last-century pieces of technology at the corners of the race car. And by so doing they have pulled more performance from their tires than the Honda crew have done (so far).

By controlling the downforce distribution between the front and rear wheels, the vehicle stability is altered favorably, and by relying on the tires’ increased performance rather than on engine, suspension, road or driver, Chevy is bringing home trophies.

So how does Honda catch up?

Typical total downforce and percent of front downforce (%F) requirements for various race track conditions are fairly consistent across open-wheel formulae and widely available.

At the beginning of the season Honda was earnest in insisting its aero changes to the Dallara DW12 add approximately 1000 lbs of additional downforce, bringing the maximum downforce on the chassis to roughly 4500-5000 lbs.

These numbers are not significantly different from Chevrolet’s.

Published literature, which is rare in open-wheel racing as teams tend to be secretive in their data-collection, suggests the following front wing downforce parameters for varying track lengths and geometries:

• Road course 45%
• Short oval 35%
• Long oval 35%
• Super speedway 33%

This means that the aerodynamic sweet spot that engineers refer to as the “center of pressure” must be behind the vehicle center of gravity. The resultant “seat of the pants” feel to the driver is referred to as balance, or more appropriately the proper ratio of downforce between the front and rear tires.

One might ask why Honda just doesn’t set the front/rear wing downforce ratios as suggested above and be done with it.

The answer is that aerodynamic downforce can be generated both by adding wings or by using the vehicle’s body.

If you open an aerodynamics book the text will explain it thus: coupled configuration downforce is much larger than the combined (but far apart) contribution of the body and the wing alone.

Again, all things being equal (e.g., ground clearance and wing angle) the interaction of the various components on the external surface of the race car create the strongest interactions to influence performance.

The author is making such a big deal of this because if you notice, on the Honda, there is a dorsal fin running along the top and rear of the engine cowling.

That fin, which was first added to race cars nearly 80 years ago, is intended to influence rotational stability at high speed.

The earliest racers were limited to the extreme by their tires. As a means of controlling the sideways slip of early tires at the limits of traction manufacturers experimented with these longitudinal wings to act as windbreaks and help keep their cars on line in an arc around a high-speed corner.

In situations of large side-slip, such as cornering at Indianapolis Motor Speedway at speeds well over 200 mph, the smaller variation in yaw (roll) derived from the longitudinal fin should result in lessened rotational moment and afford a slightly greater tire patch in contact with the diamond-ground surface.

In lay terms, a more stable car through the corners than the Chevrolet, and more rubber meeting the road when the driver unwinds the wheel and the throttle is pounded home out of the turn.

Computational fluid dynamics and shaker-rigs and conjecture can’t make up for time on the track; and it won’t be until the INDYCAR series tests at IMS on May 3rd that we will have any evidence that the kind of balance known as “parity” is restored when super-speedway racing commences.

Allan Brewer

Allan Brewer covers IndyCar and other racing series for RacingNation.com. Allan is a fixture at the race track, armed with keyboard and camera, eager to take you inside open-wheel sport where the news is being made. He comes to RacingNation.com with multiple professional awards from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AWWRBA). He began his motorsports writing career at FastMachines.com; and solely published IndyProRacer.com and A1GP.com, two award-winning websites for open-wheel racing’s junior leagues, prior to becoming IndyCar correspondent at Motorsport.com. He has also covered Formula 1, NASCAR, Formula E, the Indy Lights Series and its predecessor Indy Pro Series, NHRA events and major auto shows. His major interest outside of competition is automotive technology and its application to the cars we drive every day on the public highways.

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So what to do if your wings are definitely falling off? And what to do when your engine’s health just may be amiss?

Jeff Olson, reporting in USA Today, quotes Chevrolet motorsports leaders: “We had bad (en-gine) valve springs and replaced them. We thought they might fail.”

Bruce Martin of Fox Sports quotes a Honda chief: “We made some strengthening of (aero) parts to resist car-to-car contact. The change is immediate.”

Chevy subsequently announced it too was making wing and winglet modifications.

To be sure, some of the flying bits at the Grand Prix of St Petersburg were launched as a result of more aggressive driving of the aero-equipped 2015 Dallara chassis.

‘’We will get used to those big front wings,” said driver Scott Dixon. “It won’t be as bad’’ next time, he added.

As a practical matter, falling debris creates a nuisance to driver and to spectator. It slows the race pace with local yellows. It can, as it did at St Pete, cause physical harm to fans.

“It’s not that the aero pieces are brittle, it’s the fact that you’ve got more stuff hanging off,” said 2014 series champion Will Power.

“It does break the race up with the yellow (flags),” he added.

On the other hand, none of the drivers who raced at St Pete with a Chevrolet power-train prob-lem behind their back have complained about torque or lap-time.

In point of fact, Power (in a Chevy) twice broke the course record at St. Petersburg.

A winning Chevrolet-powered car at this week’s race in New Orleans can make it eight straight for the bow-tie in INDYCAR series competition.

So what justifies incurring a huge points penalty, one that puts the Detroit manufacturer into the red on the points ledger at the very start of the season?

“Valve springs,” said the Chevy executive. “They might fracture before the full (2500 mile) life-cycle requirement.”

Proactive.

Reactive.

Some might view the “wait until there’s a problem” approach as lazy, blinkered, denial.

Others grimace at an expensive “just in case” fix as guess-timating, over-cautious, paranoid.

In the twelve days since the checkered flag fell in Florida, Honda introduced changes to both the front-wing end plate and rear wheel guards to improve impact resistance.

These updates consist of bonded-in-place panels which further strengthen specific areas of the front-wing end plates and rear wheel guards.

So who’s right, who’s wrong?

Curt Cavin, writing in the Indianapolis Star: “Given the strength of their teams, I predict Chevrolet will be back on top of the standings by the 500, maybe sooner.”

From deep in the hole to back in the black…in only six weeks, or less.

That’s racing.

Allan Brewer

Allan Brewer covers IndyCar and other racing series for RacingNation.com. Allan is a fixture at the race track, armed with keyboard and camera, eager to take you inside open-wheel sport where the news is being made. He comes to RacingNation.com with multiple professional awards from the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association (AWWRBA). He began his motorsports writing career at FastMachines.com; and solely published IndyProRacer.com and A1GP.com, two award-winning websites for open-wheel racing’s junior leagues, prior to becoming IndyCar correspondent at Motorsport.com. He has also covered Formula 1, NASCAR, Formula E, the Indy Lights Series and its predecessor Indy Pro Series, NHRA events and major auto shows. His major interest outside of competition is automotive technology and its application to the cars we drive every day on the public highways.

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