Indy Qualifying 230+

They are over 230mph again. I get nervous every time I see speeds this fast.

Me too. Accidents become extremely serious

Flat all the way. One small mistake and not nice.

I get worried for the crowds in the stands at that point.

Hello is a machine. Currently qualified in 3rd.

What the hell is going on? Why are you people typing like this?

Racing is great. Keeping it in the 220s and things seem to be ok. Step I to the 230s and things seem to speed up exponentially. I have always wondered if there really is a threshold that the human brain can not keep up and as such it keeps cutting things out so as not to have overload. When things happens you either can not react fast enough even if you see/feel it or because of the brains built in filter removing what it thinks is not relevant you miss it all together.

The danger to spectators is a whole separate issue.

dean1484 wrote: Racing is great. Keeping it in the 220s and things seem to be ok. Step I to the 230s and things seem to speed up exponentially. I have always wondered if there really is a threshold that the human brain can not keep up and as such it keeps cutting things out so as not to have overload. When things happens you either can not react fast enough even if you see/feel it or because of the brains built in filter removing what it thinks is not relevant you miss it all together.

Within in my chumpcar team we call this bandwidth. Some people have a higher threshold for dealing with all of the inputs of 100cars on track AND driving the car quickly and safely.

I imagine at 230 the bandwidth gets eaten up quickly.

Remember that they give them 50 extra hp for qualifying. Race day will be back in the low 220's.

drdisque wrote: Remember that they give them 50 extra hp for qualifying. Race day will be back in the low 220's.

That I did not know.

I remember watching qualifying at Nazareth in the early nineties. I don't remember what the speeds were, but Nazareth was tiny compared to Indy.

They looked like slot cars, as in unrealistically fast.

I can't imagine 230 in a walled oval.

IIRC, Indy car drivers are exposed to more sustained G's than fighter pilots or astronauts.

I'm not sure what other sport has the play-by-play commentator competing at the top level, but Townsend Bell has a good chance at winning the pole tomorrow!

HappyAndy wrote: IIRC, Indy car drivers are exposed to more sustained G's than fighter pilots or astronauts.

Yes, and they found the limit once: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600

Go Hinch. Do it again tomorrow, man.

dean1484 wrote:

drdisque wrote: Remember that they give them 50 extra hp for qualifying. Race day will be back in the low 220's.

That I did not know.

Plus they are allowed qualifying aero packages. (Which I don't like)

Guys like Buddy Lazier can't afford that, so he's qualifying with a race package.

Tom_Spangler wrote:

HappyAndy wrote: IIRC, Indy car drivers are exposed to more sustained G's than fighter pilots or astronauts.

Yes, and they found the limit once: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600

Wow.

Speer records won't make Indy relevant again, the publicity they seek may not come in the form they desire.

Love the 500 for the history & have no idea what could be done to make it great again, but 2 versions of the same flavor car that have no link to anything production isn't what made the old days great...it was Millers and Deusies and Novii and Turbines and Diesels and Krafts...pushing speed barriers by application of dreams plus technology. And balls.

There's so much more to it than simply Speed.

Someone at Indycar should read Smokey Yunicks book sometime.

Trackmouse wrote: What the hell is going on? Why are you people typing like this?

Typing like what ?

In reply to etifosi:

All that stuff you mentioned was in the history books before I was even born. Indy stayed great because of the speed and the competition. They were in the 230s in the 90s, and safety equipment back then would fail muster in Indy Lights today. CART ran faster than Indy at Michigan during the split, as well.

The increased speed makes me nervous insofar as I'm nervous about cars leaving the surface in an accident. It seems like they've put a decent effort into preventing that with the "dome skids" and NASCAR-esque flaps on the rear beam-wing. The extra tethers for the nosecones and wheel shrouds are a good thing, too.

I am not too worried, though, even though force and such are squared with respect to velocity, going from 225 to 230 isn't that big a jump. I'm not worried as much about driver bandwidth, either, as to me the biggest concern would be long-duration g-loads, and since Indy is flatter than Michigan (and way flatter than Texas, see Firestone 600 link above), it's less of an issue. I still think they should reduce downforce a little more or something to prevent the driver's from being able to do a whole lap flat. Even a small lift before corner entry will be enough to separate the field a bit by driver skill and spread the cars out.

A little story.

I use to love watching Indy. The 500 was the race. Speeds were in the mid and upper 230s. Yes there were crashes. Big crashes and many ended a drivers crear. It was exciting. Watching on the edge of your seat and when that crash happened you wanted to see it over and over. It was almost a morbid fascination. I then got in to racing and over the years had my fair share of accidents. Some serious (broken pelvis) others quit spectacular. I also lost friends. It was just part of it. It was an accepted part of racing. You look around the paddock at the start of a season and you coil almost guarantee someone would not be there come fall. It was just the way it was.

Over the last 15 years or so things have changed. The hanz device. Safer tracks and huge leaps in car design have made things so safe that I almost see a complacency developing with in racing. There is now a whole generation of drivers and crew that don't have the "experience" of that racing was like with out as much risk. This leafs to people wanting to go faster while not having the wisdom of what it can mean. I am starting to see the speed envelope being pushed so that it once again will eclipse the safety envelope. This is not only a racing issue. Hell look at any modern high end performance car. It still passes the 5 mph bumper test and a 45 mph offset impact test but years back even the fastest cars were still limited to a top speed of 130-140. Not only that but 0-60 was a 6-7 second event. By today's standards that is slow. and yet have the safety standards evolved to match this evolution of performance?

I know I am probably comming across as an old fuddy duddy. I just don't see the need for 230 plus. Untill they build a better human I think they are reaching the limits of the human factor in indycar. I can see a day where the rule set will require a human to run the computer that will actually be doing all the driving. It would be silly but then they could do 300 mph with the humans strapped in using G suites.

It was exciting. Watching on the edge of your seat and when that crash happened you wanted to see it over and over.

I've never understood how people can think like this. I've never seen crashes as "exciting", they detract from the racing and can end badly for the driver, or even for the spectators. This mentality is typical of what I see in NASCAR crowds.

Hell look at any modern high end performance car. It still passes the 5 mph bumper test and a 45 mph offset impact test but years back even the fastest cars were still limited to a top speed of 130-140. Not only that but 0-60 was a 6-7 second event. By today's standards that is slow. and yet have the safety standards evolved to match this evolution of performance?

Yes, they have. First of all, the 5-mph bumper test has zero to do with safety and everything to do with repair costs. Second, the IIHS offset tests are at 40 mph, NHTSA's frontal test is full-width and at 35 mph. Third, the overhaul in 2010 of the NHTSA testing is significant enough that some cars that would have scored 5 stars in 2009 would score 3 or 4 post-2010. Even without all of that information, just look at some crash test videos themselves. The difference between cars from 1995 and 2015 is night and day. Side-impact structural improvements have been noticeable as have been the advances in crumple zones, later-gen airbags, side curtains, etc. Seriously, go on Youtube and look, there are a ton of videos on there both from IIHS and another channel that shows NHTSA recordings. Cars from the 70s and 80s? Eff that. Those videos alone basically talked me out of having a 240Z or 914-6 as a future project car, even with a cage.

So that's street cars covered. Race cars? Just as stark a difference. Look at early 90's F1 cars: no HANS, no head protection, the most technologically-advanced barrier was a stack of tires. You could see the driver's shoulders and elbows from outside the car. And speeds were similar. I looked up the qualifying times for Spa 1993 and Spa 2015 (I was going to use '94 to '14, but both were wet quali sessions, oddly enough). The 2012 pole time was nearly identical to the 1993 pole time, and 2015's pole time was just a half second faster. Look at Suzuka, the early 90's pole times were about 5 seconds slower than the end of the modern V8 era. (I picked these two examples since both are on the schedule now and with similar, if not identical, layouts). But the safety differences are staggering. 1993 had, again, no head protection, no HANS, no side-impact attenuators or anti-intrusion panels, significantly lower standards for nose cone crushboxes, etc. Same thing for Indy. They were going FASTER before the split. I've stood next to Jacques Villeneuve's '95 car, right next to an IRL-era car, a few cars down from a DW12 at the Indy Museum. Again, even without tech specs, the difference in safety features is visible externally. It isn't as if they're venturing into the unknown (you can make the case they sort-of are in the aero department), they're not leaping from 220 to 245 in a single year. They are just inching back to what speeds were 20 years ago, but with the benefit of safer cars, safer personal gear, safer walls. It will never be 100% safe, but they are not going somewhere they haven't been before.

They aren't at the limit of the human brain yet, and the banking is shallow enough that they won't be overloaded by more g's than the body can handle. The things to worry about are downforce levels and preventing pack racing. They need a rule package that will prevent drivers from being able to do a full lap flat.

jsquared wrote: They need a rule package that will prevent drivers from being able to do a full lap flat.

So lose the aero or make the tires a lot narrower.

In reply to Knurled:

That's what I think would work, aero reduction or slightly narrower/harder tires. Some drivers have said similar. But I am not at a technical level to be able to do much more than copy/paste the opinions of people who know more than me on that topic

etifosi wrote: Love the 500 for the history & have no idea what could be done to make it great again.

Make the drivers all run cars from [insert a specific pre-1980 year]?