The RACER Mailbag, April 9

Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will be saved for the following week. 

Q: I have read eight or nine articles about Thermal in the last couple of weeks, including last week’s Mailbag. Below every article in the reader comments section, everyone is complaining about the absence of fans on the television broadcast. The main set of spectator bleachers were set high up on an embankment, about 20 feet above the track surface. The TV cameras are set up at track level. As the cameras pan around the track to catch the racing action, there is no way they will catch a view of the spectators because the bleachers are so high.

The bleachers at Thermal were packed, and it looked like there was more fans than Portland and several other races. At the beginning of the broadcast there was a brief drone shot of the bleachers and they looked full. Not sure what can be done to catch shots of the fans, but they were there – just high up and out of sight of the cameras.

Bob Gray, Canoga Park

MARSHALL PRUETT: There weren’t more people at Thermal than ‘Portland and several other races,’ unless we’re talking about Portland and other tracks and their non-IndyCar events. In that case, yes, the recent SCCA Regional at Portland had fewer fans than the Thermal IndyCar event.

The was indeed a small stretch of stands at Thermal that weren’t in a great location for TV cameras to catch, but we don’t need to dip into ‘alternate facts’ to start a narrative that it was well-attended. I wish we were talking about lots of fans, but I was there, all three days, and no false impressions were given due to camera placement. I’d happily say so if that was the case.

Q: Since it was April Fools last week, can you share any good pranking (or similar) stories from your time in the paddock?

I remember watching a Grand Am race and chuckling to myself when the broadcast team reported that a European manufacturer, Volvo maybe, was building a Daytona Prototype after reading a ‘report’ about that on April 1st.

Kyle

MP: Yeah, those were our friends at DailySportsCar who cooked up the thought-it-was-obvious-it-was-a-joke Volvo piece that was errantly raised as something real.

No April Fool’s stories to share from my days as an IndyCar or IMSA crew member, and that’s because the date was meaningless — at least in my era — because there wasn’t just one day where such things were tolerated; most days were spent messing with each other, making up nonsense to see who we could deceive, and practicing general asshattery to amuse yourselves or each other.

Don’t leave your car keys sitting out because they will end up hanging from the ceiling or tied in the middle of 20 feet of string that will take an hour to untangle. Don’t leave your car unlocked or something will get disconnected — nothing obvious and easily solvable — and leave you stranded for an hour. Don’t leave you phone untended, or your laptop unlocked…

Hell, it still goes on today. One colleague left his laptop/email open at the Nashville season-finale last year and we had plenty of fun. One person mentioned sending something, so at my urging, another colleague sent me an email from the person’s work account, saying they were burned out, tired of the company, looking for a change, and wanted advice. I replied (and copied in the owner of the company) that I was really disappointed in them for going to me first instead of the owner, chided them for the poor decision-making, and so on. All while they were out shooting and oblivious to the fake email exchange about wanting to quit. The owner, who’d grown accustomed to seeing fake and inflammatory emails when laptops were left open, knew it was a joke, but played along.

Failed to heed my own advice at Thermal in 2023 when I went for a few hot laps with Stefan Wilson. Put my phone and whatever else I had in my pockets on the pit wall, donned my helmet, strapped into the passenger seat, and off we went for 10 minutes. Sadly, Anders Krohn, who loves finding untended phones, knew that while he couldn’t unlock my phone, there was (still is?) an exploit where you can access and use the camera from the lock screen.

Stef pulls in, I hope out, and Krohn has that big dumb smile on his face. I knew I’d been ‘Krohn’d’ and found at least 100 obnoxious selfies he took — maybe more — during our lapping session. I’ve kept them on my phone as a reminder.

Yes, we’re all a bunch of idiots. But we do have fun…

Q: I’ve seen this on RACER comments: If IndyCar is going to lose both manufacturers, which means their marketing money is also gone, why not adopt IMSA’s model of fuel flow and torque limit to cut development, with manufacturers free to supply engines to as many teams as they want? If they want to have a factory team only, fine. If they want to supply it to more teams, fine too. Everyone would still build a V6. And Ilmor could be used to supply engines for teams that can’t make a deal with an OEM or some other independent engine builder (if it’s financially viable for them to join). Charge the same fees as IMSA and see where the series goes this way.

I mean, what else does IndyCar have to lose (in a scenario where they are already losing Chevy and Honda)?

One more question. How much did it cost to lease the Honda V8 back then? Did Honda subsidize the whole grid?

William Mazeo

MP: Honda supplied CART engines for many years, so there’s no single answer. In many cases, the engines were free, or free plus a lot of cash, which was a common practice for every manufacturer with its best teams (or teams that had a driver whose national origin was the same as the manufacturer) during CART’s best days in the 1990s. Adjusted for inflation, millions for the select teams without the right ties or driver, or ran towards the back.