2019 TireRack.com Indy Grand Prix

[Bill Strong]

 

Brick Yard Images
https://photos.app.goo.gl/KfXuUYHr9HPKeYzx5

Saturday results

https://speedhive.mylaps.com/Events/1693245

 

 

Race 1 - Saturday Interviews

 

 

Saturday Checkered Flag Images
https://photos.app.goo.gl/eDa8PtLtcgy3xtXS7
 

Sunday Race Start - Turn 1
https://photos.app.goo.gl/MNwWj8SqphMzPcou7
 

Sunday Checkered flag images
https://photos.app.goo.gl/pC7gutFv25GcDAHF8

 

images by John Dahlhausen

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Sg9dJk6kxLogY9z6A

Tire Rack E36
https://photos.app.goo.gl/4eRFVjabqPei7p6A8

 

ChampCar Live presented by AutoZone RAW In-Car video archive
https://forum.champcar.org/topic/19503-champcarlive-presented-by-autozone-in-car-archive-indy-dbl10/

 

[csx135]

Simply an amazing event. The staff at Indy were incredible. Friendly, professional and everywhere. They had a ton of staff and they did hot pulls!!!!!  I was not expecting that, and it kept the green flag racing going almost all day long.  As always, Champcar staff were equally amazing. Mike, Andrea and the entire crew were awesome!! Thank you from the Drunken Squirrel race team for fulfilling a dream.  

[Andrew D Johnson]

Thank you Champcar Endurance series staff and volunteers for giving us the opportunity to race at such an amazing place. I know many people worked extremely hard to make this happen, and it is much appreciated! 

[turbogrill]

Looks great!

 

Curious what car is #462, very confusing name and make and model:

Van Buren Boys/Kruse Racing

462

2006

Datsun(Nisson)

Altima"

 

Is it a Altima swapped Datsun?

[notbob]

6 minutes ago, turbogrill said:

Looks great!

 

Curious what car is #462, very confusing name and make and model:

Van Buren Boys/Kruse Racing

462

2006

Datsun(Nisson)

Altima"

 

Is it a Altima swapped Datsun?

Its an Altima. i'm currently working on a 2010 altima. When you lookup parts online for it, some sites just have it as a Nissan and some have it as a Datsun(Nissan).

[turbogrill]

4 minutes ago, notbob said:

Its an Altima. i'm currently working on a 2010 altima. When you lookup parts online for it, some sites just have it as a Nissan and some have it as a Datsun(Nissan).

 

Aha! thank you for the clarification

 

I hoped that someone had swapped a VQ into a 240z or a built QR

[Andrew D Johnson]

35 minutes ago, turbogrill said:

Looks great!

 

Curious what car is #462, very confusing name and make and model:

Van Buren Boys/Kruse Racing

462

2006

Datsun(Nisson)

Altima"

 

Is it a Altima swapped Datsun?

 

[skierman64]

A huge thanks to Mike and the staff for a excellent weekend.  Things went very smooth from our perspective.  Also thanks to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for allowing amateur races to be blessed by racing at such a historic location.  For me, there is not bigger bucket list track.  It's not even close.  

 

We had a great time despite some car issues on both days.  A special thanks to our crew chief Ian McClure who helped keep us on track and minimized the amount of time we were off track.  Also thanks to drivers Mandy McGee, Bill Kniep, and John Holds for joining Chris and I at 4CGM.    

 

I wasn't sure how we'd compete against the top runners, but I was able to get up to 2nd overall early on Sunday for a brief period, it was good to be able to still show pace against the ChampCar top teams.  Speed creep wasn't as bad as anticipated.  

 

It was also cool that multiple Indy 500 racer,  Pippa Mann, was able to stop by our garage after Saturday's race and say hi.   

 

We couldn't do any of this without our sponsors, Kinetic Motors, who keeps our car in top shape and makes it fast and Frozen rotors, who's durability allows us to get two seasons out of a set of rotors.  We also ran stickers for Shift Up Now, an organization that promotes women in motorsports.  

 

We were able to get a 4th in class both days despite issues. 

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by skierman64

[Hammerheads]

We heard some teams running the Chillout System had issues. Anyone care to share their experience - bad or good?

[riche30]

Not the best weekend for the John Allen Special.  About 1.5hrs into the race we installed a view-port into the side of the block for better visibility of our crankshaft.  Upon inspection we noticed parts had become detached from it.

Also, big apologies to at least two, if not three, cars that I just plain hit in turn 12 during the first hour Saturday.  I never caught the car numbers or details so that I'd be able to walk down and apologize in person, but it wasn't from lack of trying.  Corner stations never called me in for contact and had no record I'd even touched anyone.  I KNOW that I did.

[hotchkis23]

So working as a pit marshal and having a radio for almost the entire weekend, what would everyone that drove say they felt led to all of the contact and PUY?  I know on Sunday I had teams telling me that certain corner workers were not holding the flags out far enough and even that one station the worker set the flag down and was on her cell phone looking away from the race?  Saturday we were hearing PUY calls from before noon that we were still making drivers serve at 4pm trying to catch up on them all.

 

I'm assuming the high car count had something to do with it, but on Sunday after the 12:00hr it seemed like people forgot how to drive for about 50 minutes or so when there were only about 50-60 cars on track.

 

Also, thank you to everyone for being very courteous towards us as we were asking you to remember visors, gloves, putting a jack stand under the car when you are working on it, etc.  With the heat I was expecting some less than happy responses and was pleasantly surprised!

 

One last thing too, if you are in a hurry and carrying a full fuel container, do not run with it!!!  During the first cycle on Saturday I watched an individual do this and he went down hard and emptied most of a full hunsaker on himself, the car, and the pit wall!  Take your time, 5 seconds extra to walk vs. running the risk of a fire breaking out or hurting yourself in a fall isn't worth it!

Edited July 15, 2019 by hotchkis23

[pintodave]

What an awesome event - first of all a huge thanks to the Champcar staff for this event. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway staff was also amazing, I'd say the only other experience we've had at a track that was as friendly/organized/genuinely happy to see racers would be VIR. 

 

Beer exchange went well and it was great to put some faces with some of the regular forum peeps, nice to meet you @FlorahDorah @wvumtnbkr @E. Tyler Pedersen @MBulls @jakks @mcoppola @Cam Benty

 

A huge shout out to @Team Infiniti crew: Ed, Mike, and Luis for being extremely inviting and letting Mike and I come play and partake in this event. 

 

The car is super quick, the automatic definitely takes some getting used to, I was able to adjust and adapt reasonably quick to get my lap times comparable to theirs, so that was good. 

 

Track was very fun & fairly challenging to drive for being "a roval". I really hope we have the go-pro footage (or can get the link of the raw CCL feed from Sunday), man there was some INTENSE battling that should make for some great highlight reel material. I was in some pretty aggressive battles, but I'd call them fair. I felt there was give and take. In traffic I was not super courteous with point by's as it was kind of every man for himself, once we'd get some separation I'd try to let super fast cars past me fairly painlessly. 

 

The only contact I had all weekend was at the gas station not minding the clearance between Ed's trailer & truck bumper  Ed said he'd save it for me and I can fix it at Sebring....

 

Day 1 had a couple of small mechanical issues that allowed us just to focus on learning the track with a more laid back approach. I was in approx 11 to 12, so good bad or ugly, if y'all have some video post it up. I remember having some good battling with @Doc 's Brew Crew Machine!

 

Day 2, I kicked off the first stint from 8-10 with a full as-planned 1:55 stint. Local yellows made it an interesting dynamic as you were only racing half of the track sometimes. Very intense racing, lots of thick gaggles of cars to get through. I managed to start in 80-something and get to the top 20 by our first pit stop. Unfortunately there was some contact in the 2nd stint, but Ed & crew have a never-say-die attitude and were able to patch it back together in about an hour. With such a stout field, obviously we had zero shot at anything but still wheeled the hell out of it the rest of the day. Ed went last and said he was going to burn it down - he literally almost did he came to pit in at the checkers and something caught fire in the passenger side of the engine compartment (large chunk of tire? Plastic?), big thanks to the One Piece At a Time guys for being Johnny on the spot with an extinguisher! I have a Facebook live post I will share the link, I happened to catch it. 

 

It was funny - as soon as I was in the car, I was in "race mode", at that point Indy was just another track. I did make it a conscious effort to take the last lap in my stint to just absorb the view, the vibe, and the history of where we were actually racing. Good times. 

 

Looking forward to seeing all of the pics and vids - should be some good stuff. I'll contribute what I can when we make it home. 

Edited July 15, 2019 by pintodave

[skierman64]

1 hour ago, hotchkis23 said:

what would everyone that drove say they felt led to all of the contact and PUY? 

 

I had contact on Sunday running P2 overall, it was 100% my fault, looking at the video replay I went into T1 side by side with a Cayman, attempting to out brake him, the E36 in front of us had been on the front straight at similar speed to us, but we closed rapidly on him in the braking zone and I just ran out of room,  brake pedal, and talent to give him any room at the apex.  In my judgement the E36 over braked for the corner and I didn't leave any allowance for that.  Totally my fault.  

 

Luckily both of us were able to continue and he had no body work damage.  

I talked to the team immediately after the stint.

 

Regarding PUY on Saturday, i saw about 20 cars pass on the front stretch under yellow when the S/F flagger took down the double yellow and displayed a furled green (or black) to signify one to go under yellow.  Something none of us were briefed on and something I have never seen in road racing (it's an Indy thing according to and Indy 500 driver i talked to about it).  The yellow lights on the fence were also turned off at this point.  It caused a lot of confusion.  

Edited July 15, 2019 by skierman64

[c_leffe]

First off, many thanks to the ChampCar staff and IMS, it was a fantastic weekend all around!

 

I have to commend the sportsmanship during the last 2 hours on Sunday.  We (A327) were in a good battle for first in class, and while working our way through traffic, everyone was very courteous to point us by and not hold us up.  In particular, the A63 miata was very helpful.  Additionally, the C462 car was fantastic.  The driver could've blown by me on the front straight with ease, but he/she held off for almost 40 minutes, presumably to avoid holding me up in the infield.  Finally, with only a lap or so left and no traffic issues, he/she let it rip down the straight.  Hopefully you saw the huge thumbs up as you went by.  I owe you a beer or six.  

 

It was hard to find everyone in the pits after the race, so I wanted to post here and thank everyone for how they drove near the end.

[David Haines]

Wow. I went from thinking I didn't have a seat on Wednesday, to having one of the best weekends of my life. 

 

I'm not sure anyone travelled further than I did from Brisbane, Australia to be there, so I'm beyond grateful to Chattahoochee Motorsports for taking me on very last minute. 

 

I don't feel like we got the results the car was capable of, but I'm very proud of setting the team's fastest lap in my very first ever car race. 

 

I'm sure I'll see plenty of you again, some at VIR 24, and for the rest make sure you tune in to my coverage of the ChampCar Sim Series. 

[Hurljohn]

20 minutes ago, David Haines said:

Wow. I went from thinking I didn't have a seat on Wednesday, to having one of the best weekends of my life. 

 

I'm not sure anyone travelled further than I did from Brisbane, Australia to be there, so I'm beyond grateful to Chattahoochee Motorsports for taking me on very last minute. 

 

I don't feel like we got the results the car was capable of, but I'm very proud of setting the team's fastest lap in my very first ever car race. 

 

I'm sure I'll see plenty of you again, some at VIR 24, and for the rest make sure you tune in to my coverage of the ChampCar Sim Series. 

Good to finally meet you, wasnt hard to spot you! 

[Jer]

I'm having a ton of remorse for passing on this event, but I'll be there next year.  Glad everyone had fun.

[Richard]

I'm curious to know what happened to the RBR Crx on Sunday. Anyone have info?

[Racer28173]

16 hours ago, hotchkis23 said:

So working as a pit marshal and having a radio for almost the entire weekend, what would everyone that drove say they felt led to all of the contact and PUY?  I know on Sunday I had teams telling me that certain corner workers were not holding the flags out far enough and even that one station the worker set the flag down and was on her cell phone looking away from the race?  Saturday we were hearing PUY calls from before noon that we were still making drivers serve at 4pm trying to catch up on them all.

 

I doubt my explanation is universal, but I was one of the PUYs on Saturday:

 

I watched lots of hours of the runoffs and faithfully marked a map with all of the corner stations and then memorized them.  On race day, I discovered that we only had about half as many as they did.  That totally threw me, because I found myself looking for stations that didn't exist, but with the challenge of learning a new track and fighting off 100+ cars, I didn't successfully "remap" until I got out of the car.  So I did a pass in a location that I thought was one of the un-manned locations and then saw yellow out of the corner of my eye after the pass was over.

 

As far as contact goes, we just had too many cars and too many people learning a new track on Saturday.  Normally, if you go to Daytona or Atlanta or one of those sold-out races, at least half of the drivers know the track and the best places to pass (and where to watch mirrors for dive-bombs).  On Saturday, almost everyone was a "virgin" and so there was a lot of trial and error.  Also, the track isn't at all like Road America were there are millions of good places to get by someone. 

 

On Sunday, that excuse goes away. The car count was down and almost everyone was familiar with the track.  I wasn't driving at the peak of the mayhem (just after the peak), but I saw some pretty questionable moves in terms of dive-bombs.  Turn 11 was really bad for that.  I had at least one car do a "Hail Mary" and force me to abort turn-in because their line went straight through my car (and they were still more than 2 car lengths BEHIND me but carrying so much speed that I knew they'd hit me if I didn't yield).

Edited July 16, 2019 by Racer28173

[hotrod]

We got clobbered one hour in on Sunday. We built the car with safety in mind. It doesn't seem like much but I built a foot box around the drivers legs & feet.   One of our veteran drivers Dennis Neel was in the car. He has some soreness on his right shoulder from the shoulder belt & Hans device and remembers hitting the inside of the foot box with his feet & legs but suffered no injury's. All our guys have to go to work on Monday. IndyCar, NASCAR, NHRA, Super V8's & others have this in the rule book & its  easy to do.   

[Chappy]

First and most important, thank you to the Champcar staff for putting this event on at Indy!  Over the past 30 years I've probably been to 50 events at IMS as a spectator, I never thought I would have a chance to race over the yard of bricks myself!  Thank you for putting in all of the work to get the event organized ran!  Coming into it, I didn't think I would really enjoy the layout, but as my team was calling me in for the drivers change on Sunday, I was begging for just a few more laps!  

 

PUY -  My team (#341 OST Racing Miata, Black with White stripes/hardtop) was served a PUY penalty on Saturday at around 2pm for an incident that happened sometime around 11 (as reported by the pit out marshal).  I haven't had a chance to review the video from around that time to see if the driver did PUY.  I will say I had some close calls (or might have PUY) due to lack of visibility of the corner workers.  I felt like the stations were not setup in easy to see locations while trying to pass.  A couple of examples of what I mean... coming out of turn 7 onto the back straight.  You are generally pointed straight at the flagger location at 8 entry, if you''re behind a car(s) or on the left of some cars, you aren't going to see the flag until your on top of it or nearly on top of it.  Going through 8-10, you can't see the yellow flagger that would come out from behind the barrier where the trucks were parked until you were basically in the short shoot from 9-10.  If you're going to the inside on 10, and there are cars in front, you won't see him.  Exiting 10 the flagger for 11 seemed to be too far down the track, you' could be passing someone on the inside of 11 and not see the flag until you're almost on top of it, whereas the guy on the outside will see it a little sooner.  Consistency of waving the yellow also didn't seem to be there also, some full course yellow laps, not all of the stations had yellow shown.  IMS doesn't do a lot of events like this, so I'm doubting their corner workers have a ton of experience at it, so I'm sure they got some calls wrong also... 

 

Contact - Less than 2 laps after the end of the afternoon "drivers get your s*** together yellow" we got hit going into 13.  Can't say exactly what the car behind us was trying to do as there didn't seem to be any way they would be able to slow down enough to make the corner.  But they lightly side swiped the LF corner of the car, very little body damage, but hard enough hit to break our front wheel immediately, and to spin them out.  Fortunately it happened right at pit in, so the driver was able to bring it in without a tow or something worse happening.  I reviewed the in-car video with Mike C after the incident, as we got black flagged for initiating avoidable contact, he reversed the call and also mentioned that the same car (driver?) had been in ~20 min before for a similar issue.  

 

Ultimately we didn't finish as well as we hoped for the weekend due to many random issues, but we finished both days... so that's still a good weekend in my book!

[pintodave]

1 hour ago, hotrod said:

 

 

Dude, that is nice!!! Thanks for sharing. You should throw this pic in a new thread in the technical channel so it doesn't get buried in this thread. 

[pintodave]

55 minutes ago, Chappy said:

You are generally pointed straight at the flagger location at 8 entry, if you''re behind a car(s) or on the left of some cars, you aren't going to see the flag until your on top of it or nearly on top of it. 

 

There were so many local yellows throughout the weekend, I made it a habit to pop out of line on the front and back straight just to try and get a sneak peak of the flag station to prevent any "surprises". Going to waving did help visibility from a distance. Agree if you were inside of someone relative to the wall and didn't have line of sight, it was difficult until you were up on the yellow.

[Chris Huggins]

Just made it back to NC.  Definitely not the longest round trip, but I put over 1400mi on the Wagon, 10 hours plus each way.

 

I was not sold on Indy, but the true scale and impact of the place hit me once I got there and was able to take it all in.  This was such an awesome experience. 

I can now check off the bucket list - not only did I get to Go to indy, Walk on the bricks, Race on the track, but also got to stand on the PODIUM!  What a rush!

 

Thanks to Champcar for making this happen.  The volunteers and staff cruising pit road and the paddock all weekend in the heat were troopers,  hats off to you.  I hid in the shade and a lawn chair with a big fan and was still dying.  

 

It was nice meeting @mcoppola and @JDChristianson, among others.  @elongoran, you and your family are awesome, thanks for the hospitality.  The famous empanadas were worth the drive if nothing else.

 

I had a blast spending the weekend with @Burningham and co as usual.  The car was awesome to drive, we just needed 20 more HP and a smattering of better luck.  I'll let him tell the details.

 

The Good:

Its INDY!  The BRICKYARD!!  YEAH

 

The Track is pretty dang cool.  Not super technical or exceptional, but overall it's a well done track.  It has excellent surfaces, good curbing, clear sight lines (except entering back onto the front straight), good runoff, and adequate facilities.  The track, in my opinion, is well balanced between "power" and "handling" cars. 

I think it's fun to drive, but hard to master.  I think I only got maybe 1 or 2 laps within 90% of my potential.  I will know more when I see the data.

 

The Wrecker and EMS crews were awesome.  Hot pulls was NOT what I expected.  They were on point all weekend.  Thanks for your work, all day, in firesuits, in 100 degree heat.  WOW!

 

The area around the track is cool too.  "main street" in speedway is awesome.  10 or so good resturants/bars/brewerys to choose from, walking/biking distance from the track Trailer Park

 

The Bad:

The initial entry into the track, Just LOL.  Thanks to Tuttle Motorsports for a good laugh, I hope your rig is OK.

 

Fueling was a shitshow, as expected.  Someone made out like a bandit at $4.12/gal.  I was in line for 1.5 hours, and I definitely had it better than some.

 

Flagging was awful.  Waving yellow and standing yellow were used interchangeably.  At one point, the S/F flagger had the green flag out with the yellow flag, as the pace car led cars past the bricks. What?  The black flag was shown randomly it appeared, not pointed/shown at a specific car.  The blue flags were pretty worthless (as usual).  As noted above, the flag stations were terribly placed, and not the same as for SCCA runoff.  They also changed between Saturday and Sunday.  I saw so many PUY at T2/3 that the flagger there did not call in.  Napping, I guess?

 

The pit/paddock security yellow-shirts were, excessive, to say the least.  We did not need 14 people telling us where to go each time we came and went.  Every time you came and left, you had to stop 4 times to be told where to go.

 

I really needed to get my car to pit road to unload and load stuff, but we weren't allowed to drive onto pit road, or even to the back side of the wall, on saturday or sunday.  I felt really bad for the teams down near pit out. 

 

Lots of gates/fences were left locked for what appeared to be no reason.  This made navigation, difficult to say the least.

 

No golf carts/scooters/mopeds made for lots of (needless) walking. Most of it in the wrong direction to get around a locked gate or fence.  Bikes, Skateboards, and Razor Scooters are not necessarily safer (probably less so, per the few accidents I saw)

 

Being kicked out each night.  I don't understand.  The trailer park experience was, notable, to say the least.  We probably set a trailer park world record for the fastest a car has ever been on and off of blocks.  The locals spectating really added to the experience too.  I lost count on how many times the trailer was hooked and unhooked from the RV when I ran out of Fingers and toes.

 

Overall, I felt like Indy treated us like kindergarteners.  Hopefully they figure out we aren't idiots, and let us have some sort of respect if we ever return.

 

 

 

Finally, Shoutout to @Round3Racing.  I really enjoyed my battles with 2 of your cars on Saturday afternoon.  See here for the footage, it really lasted for 30+ minutes as I tried to wheel the big girl around and keep you in sight.   It was a heart breaker for us at the end, with your black and white car passing us for P3 with 2 laps to go.   I don't have many finger nails left after that one.

 

What happened on Sunday?!?!?  I know that was a heart breaker for your team, since we got past you for P3 with less than 10 minutes left.

 

 

Congrats to the Jacky Ickx team for your Saturday P1 (and Sunday P4 and P5), awesome job, class acts as always

Congrats to Premium Dudes for your Sunday P1 (and Saturday P2), Well done.  Awesome driving, that thing is a rocket!  Orange E30 FTW

 

 

 

2 hours ago, hotrod said:

 

 

What Kinda Foam/Where did you get it?

Edited July 16, 2019 by Huggy

[mostmint]

5 hours ago, hotchkis23 said:

So working as a pit marshal and having a radio for almost the entire weekend, what would everyone that drove say they felt led to all of the contact and PUY?  I know on Sunday I had teams telling me that certain corner workers were not holding the flags out far enough and even that one station the worker set the flag down and was on her cell phone looking away from the race?  Saturday we were hearing PUY calls from before noon that we were still making drivers serve at 4pm trying to catch up on them all.

 

 Thanks to everyone who helped out with the race.  I saw a lot of good clean racing out there side by side in most every place with no incident.  

 

Here are some of my thoughts on the topic. 

 

1) enforcement.  We were way behind on enforcement - on Saturday I got called in for PUY at the end of my stint for the driver in the prior stint - that was over two hours late.  We got punted on the last lap Saturday and there was no consequence - no one came and asked us any questions.  I have word from another team who had video that we were not at fault but I saw no black flag issued the next day, or even discussion with the other team from race officials.  Personally I saw a lot more PUY on Sunday than I did on Saturday so I wonder if teams were able to figure out which corner workers were not paying attention?

 

2) unclear instructions.  This may be minor, but I saw the starter pointing a yellow flag at cars (Saturday before noon only).  I saw some corner workers showing a white flag only.  I am not 100% on this but I swear they had a white flag for slow moving race cars.  So can I pass other cars with only a white flag? 

 

3) human error.  I saw plenty of passing under yellow when the flag was plain to see.  The error may be the driver or the corner worker not paying attention.  On Sunday AM I saw the corner worker at turn 3 with the yellow flag not in hand but draped over the table.  I saw a car on back straight on Sunday with a hot pull and no flags at all.  Well I treated that like a yellow but unclear if everyone else did.  I try to look past most of this since these are people out in the hot sun all day and are not machines - what is important is that what is seen is handled appropriately.   

 

4) This is still an amateur/beginner series.  Most of us race once or twice a year.  I apparently didn't read my team the riot act about avoid PUY or contact.  Did not think that would be necessary - had one driver who is a somewhat regular in ChampCar but only second race on my team.   I also ran a tire too long and the RF on cords is not nearly as good at stopping than one that has rubber which was a contributing factor to one of our gaffs. 

 

I appreciated the extended FCY and warnings from Mike instead of a red flag driver meeting.  

 

ChampCar has had these issues before I expect next year will be improved substantially.