IndyCar $500k Challenge @ The Thermal Club

FLRacingFan

FLRacingFan

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This race is actually called the $1M Challenge, but in typical mystifying IndyCar fashion it actually is $500k to win.

Qualifying tonight 8 PM ET/Peacock, field split into two groups. Two heats and the “feature” race tomorrow at 12:30 PM/NBC. Fortunately it sounds like 10-lap segments should eliminate the need to fuel save.

 
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FLRacingFan said:
This race is actually called the $1M Challenge, but in typical mystifying IndyCar fashion it actually is $500k to win.

Qualifying tonight 8 PM ET/Peacock, field split into two groups. Two heats and the “feature” race tomorrow at 12:30 PM/NBC. Fortunately it sounds like 10-lap segments should eliminate the need to fuel save.

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12:30 eastern?
 
Doc Austin said:
The track looks really nice.
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I’m not sure how it’ll race, but it’s definitely a very high-quality club track. Very tough driver’s track, especially when the wind is whipping that sand all over the place like it was today. Lots of long sweepers where you really have to hustle the car.
 
Unless this strategy really does work like Hertas team think I don't expect anyone to beat Palou
 
RLL genuinely can not unscrew their head from their ass even when their cars have decent speed.
 
kkfan91 said:
Unless this strategy really does work like Hertas team think I don't expect anyone to beat Palou
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Herta is gonna pick up maybe two or three spots and it’ll be hilarious.

This track looks really fun to drive your Porsche or BMW or whatever on a track day but it’s just not a good track for racing. And there’s pretty much no sense of place, can’t tell where they are on track besides a couple of corners maybe.
 
FLRacingFan said:
Herta is gonna pick up maybe two or three spots and it’ll be hilarious.

This track looks really fun to drive your Porsche or BMW or whatever on a track day but it’s just not a good track for racing. And there’s pretty much no sense of place, can’t tell where they are on track besides a couple of corners maybe.
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Esses are fun for driving not great for racing. It's neat to see a different track, but your right it just feels odd. Plus the fact you can't see anyone there actually watching with how it's set up. Plus the announcers talking it up when let's face it most people watching this will never be able to afford to be a member there.
 
kkfan91 said:
Esses are fun for driving not great for racing. It's neat to see a different track, but your right it just feels odd. Plus the fact you can't see anyone there actually watching with how it's set up. Plus the announcers talking it up when let's face it most people watching this will never be able to afford to be a member there.
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NBC was certainly trying to play it up too much. Seemed a bit tone deaf imo. Diffey made some weird analogy about a bunch of PGA golfers turning up at your local golf club…not even remotely the same.

If they come back they gotta look at the format and the layout. 3-mile track with 20 turns and 10-12 cars just isn’t going to lead to much excitement. I’m sure they have half a dozen different configurations they can use there.
 
FLRacingFan said:
NBC was certainly trying to play it up too much. Seemed a bit tone deaf imo. Diffey made some weird analogy about a bunch of PGA golfers turning up at your local golf club…not even remotely the same.

If they come back they gotta look at the format and the layout. 3-mile track with 20 turns and 10-12 cars just isn’t going to lead to much excitement. I’m sure they have half a dozen different configurations they can use there.
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I'm aware of 2 layouts, but most courses like that can have dozens more.
 
It's just not a good look for the series when you have an event that you spent 2 hours fellating rich people and their country club to the point of shutting the average fan out, only to end up with a dull show and apathetic drivers, and the most half assed victory lane I have ever seen. Not to mention the NASCAR race, a series that is stereotyped as being for "rednecks" offering a 10× bigger purse than what IndyCar was avertising.
 
Shame they couldn’t get an oval for this slot instead of whatever that was. I’m grateful they tried to fill a hole on the schedule , but this was a swing and a miss imo. This is legit my favorite American motorsports series, I just want to see them succeed
 
The race could have been better but everyone got a lot of testing and maybe Indycar impressed a few of those billionaires.

Indycar simply had to do this. Phoenix got cancelled and they had to plug a the hole in the schedule. Thermal put it all together in short order and gave them an out, and a good one too. They go to Thermal, give them a great show and hope some of those guys would want to play too.
 
Mispeedway15 said:
How!? Man there was some angry racing through the field and Herta’s strategy was wild. It’s just Palou is absurdly dominant
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I won’t be one to tell you you’re wrong, and if you enjoyed it, that’s great! Herta’s strategy worked better than I expected, though I thought the sandbagging in the first segment kinda made a mockery of the format. The McLarens - especially Rossi - genuinely raced like they wanted it. They were probably the highlight of the midpack. Overall I just thought it was a bit lacking. But ultimately I suppose it was much more of a networking event than anything else. I think it’s just really unfortunate the vibes around IndyCar are so off right now, because a year or two ago I wouldn’t have said that.
 
FLRacingFan said:
I think it’s just really unfortunate the vibes around IndyCar are so off right now, because a year or two ago I wouldn’t have said that.
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Every racing series has good and bad times. If you look at how fast they turned WEC around, it's not unreasonable to think Indycar can do the same thing too. We still have some pretty good racing and lots of cars, and lots of new talent, so there is definitely plenty to build on, and that's before we talk about the Indianapolis 500.

I've seen so many series fail that I don't get too wound up when a series has a dip in fortunne. WEC has made a comeback before and so has nascar, Indycar, and lately the big winner is F1. If you're going to be a race fan you have be tough and roll with the punches. It will get better. We did that for a few years with WEC, and while we grumbled it all worked out better than we could have hoped for. Indycar can do the same thing, but we have to be patient.

Admittedly I was extremely negative about WEC, because it had been 50 years since everyone was on the same page. The came the convergence. WEC is the shining example of how to be delightfully wrong about something, and hopefully Indycar will prove the doubters wrong soon.
 
Doc Austin said:
Admittedly I was extremely negative about WEC, because it had been 50 years since everyone was on the same page. The came the convergence. WEC is the shining example of how to be delightfully wrong about something, and hopefully Indycar will prove the doubters wrong soon.
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Experience tells me that "the vibes" are something which can be greatly impacted by journalism, and journalism in turn is impacted greatly by the relationships they build with the subjects they cover. More often than not when things are bad or off, that's when people talk. I would venture to guess that you've seen in the very recent history is the result of someone (probably Honda) starting to say things off the record.

Lemme put this a different way. Indycar and the issues it has could fill an academic textbook. Journalists are not academics and neither have nor necessarily seek the counsel of a diverse, multidisciplinary group of people to get information from when confronted with that which they are unfamiliar. Nor is what they are asked to produce as journalists conducive to that kind of thinking: they write 750 words about an event within 2 hours of it concluding. Comms education in the now is more about engagement strategies than it is good beat reporting (because the former is valued and the latter is not because that is our information economy now) so you don't get the quality of writer that you once did. You get people writing thinly veiled op-eds on topics written only slightly above the level of the YouTube comments section on topics they are grossly uneducated about instead of informational pieces that actually have value. What we have then is this: The vibes are off. What does that mean? Could mean anything and everything, but without any clarity because we don't have people capable of providing that, we just have the vibes.
 
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