Overheard in Long Beach

Lovebirds Courtney Force and Graham Rahal in the IndyCar paddock Friday

It's great to be back in Long Beach! In talking to Toyota GP of Long Beach president Jim Michaelian the 41st running of the 2nd best street race in the world (behind Monaco) continues to hit on all cylinders. Friday's attendance under sunny southern California skies was fantastic and let's remember, Friday is not a 'free' day like at other venues.

"A hell of a lot of people pay $30 to be here today," Michaelian told AR1.com. "Yes there are some free tickets given out by sponsors of this event, but they are in exchange for people buying something in their stores. We also added a 2nd day of Robby Gordon's Super Truck series, which is very popular.

We hear Zach Veach could be close to a deal that will see him behind the wheel of an Andretti Autosport Honda staring after the Indy 500.

As you have read elsewhere, IndyCar has asked Chevy to remove their 'rabbit ear' winglets or tether them for fear if they fly off they could cause injury to a spectator, as happened in St. Pete, or a driver since there are no canopies to protect their head.

As for performance loss "It doesn’t make a difference on a slow street circuit," Will Power said of the loss of the rabbit ears. "We used a little bit more front wing; that’s it. Let’s not make a big deal about it."

Chevrolet and Honda were allowed to design different aerodynamic wings before this season. There was carnage in St. Petersburg, where cars collided and parts of wings seemingly flew everywhere, injuring one fan. That race had 21 laps of caution flags to clean up the debris.

Rather than tether the rabbit ears, Chevy teams removed them for Long Beach. We hear the focus is now on getting the speedway aero kits ready for the 500 in May and Chevy may not have enough time to do anything before Barber next weekend. However, with the high speed corners at Barber (compared to Long Beach), the drivers are going to feel the loss of downforce more. Will some teams try to tether them, therefore?

Chevrolet had the option to secure the rabbit ears better, but apparently did not have enough time on Friday to make changes. Honda also has been told to strengthen its car’s wings, too.

"Fan safety is a huge part of this," Graham Rahal said. "Driver safety is a huge part of this, too. I don’t want to get hit in the head. Open-wheel racing is not hitting each other. We’ve all become accustomed to using our front wheel to hitting and nothing happening. We need to make the wing stronger, but we cannot make it so strong we're punting each other."

"Frankly, it’s really not my decision, it’s IndyCar's," Pagenaud said. “For the safety of the fans, it’s great, but you’ve got to make it fair for the manufacturers as well. As long as it doesn’t slow down one manufacturer or accelerate the other one, then it just has to be fair."

With the new wings, speeds are creeping close to the series track record, set by Sebastien Bourdais at 66.882 seconds MPH in 2008; Power is just less than 0.6 seconds behind Wilson’s time. Ryan Hunter-Reay had the pole last year with a time of 67.8219 seconds.

Ryan Hunter-Reay is not happy with the penalty he received for the collision with Simon Pagenaud in New Orleans. He called it "b.s."

"I really do, and I told them that," he told The Indianapolis Star on Friday. "I've had a lot of guys come to me, a lot of drivers come to me, a lot of ex-drivers come to me, and tell me the same thing. They all disagree with the call."

Hunter-Reay said he held his racing line while Pagenaud went for "a low-percentage move on the outside on a wet track."

"Did you see the incident with Will Power and Tony Kanaan on the first lap?" Hunter-Reay asked. "(Power) ran him off the road; no call." The Brian Barnhart led officiating team will always be questioned, because although this was an arguably a tough call, Barnhart's past reputation makes it hard for anyone to trust his judgment now. With that said, decisions are made by committee now, so blaming just Barnhart is unfair.

Changing subjects, who will be in Dale Coyne's cars at Indy? With Dracone done after Barber next week (he only bought the first 4 races) and with Carlos Huertas unexpectedly replaced in the 11th hour at Long Beach (when in doubt – follow the money) only Pippa Mann is confirmed for the 500. We hear Coyne is in talks with James Davison (see separate rumor on AR1.com) and a deal may be close.

I spoke to Coyne about the accident in New Orleans that saw his driver Dracone, take out tire changer Todd Phillips.

"He saw Todd, But when he hit the brakes the rear tires were on the water. That's when he spun. You can see it on the video. There were streams of water running across the track before out pitbox. The data showed he came in slow enough and even braked 50 feet sooner than normal."

As for Moran replacing Huertas, Coyne felt Moran did a heck of a job his first day. "His times are closer to the front than anyone expected considering he has been out of an IndyCar for so long. Rocky always wanted to do this race. Every year he's called me, and this year the stars aligned. I don't think he slept last night."

As for the carnage in New Orleans, I asked some of the drivers why IndyCar always seems to put on a poor show when it rains. Is it the rain tires (are they too hard?), the lack of wet-weather testing because preseason testing is so limited no one wants to waste a test day on a wet track, is it the car? I got several different answers. One is that an IndyCar is much heavier than an F1 car. But because so much weight is on the back tires instead of the fronts, it makes the hard harder to control in the wet.

Will Power said the rain tires are fine when the track is wet, it's when the track is partially wet and drivers switch to the harder slicks – they have very little traction when they hit wet patches and they are not pre-warmed with tire warmers. Another explanation is that cautions breed cautions – the tires cool down during a caution and when the track goes green again, drivers get caught out – especially if they are on cold slicks vs. cold rain tires.

From my perspective, the solution is intermediate tires need to be added by Firestone. That raises cost but most of the carnage we see in the races is because the track is not wet enough for rain tires and not dry enough for slicks. But what's the 'cost' to IndyCar's reputation when you put on an exhibition like we saw in New Orleans? It's not the first time and it won't be the last. Give IndyCar drivers the right tools and we feel they are as good as anyone in the wet.

I hear IndyCar would like to have 4 races on the schedule before the St. Pete in late March every year. They will have to be in warm-weather locations. You know my opinion, and it has not changed for the past 10 years – the season needs to start in late January the week before the NFL Super Bowl (when hardly anything else is on TV that weekend to compete for viewers), include two races in February, the 4th race in early March, then continue with St. Pete and the rest of the schedule.

I also hear IndyCar is not considering my other recommendation, which I have also said every year for the last 10 years – the season finale needs to be a Labor Day weekend 400-miler on the Indy Speedway oval under the lights where IndyCar can control its own destiny and where the IndyCars put on a spectacular show. Instead they will probably go with a street race somewhere like Boston. Street races can be great events (Long Beach is my favorite race every year) but the racing itself is never as close as we see at Indy and when the political party someday changes in a place like Boston, IndyCar will get yet another black eye having lost what was supposed to be their 'grand finale' every year. Control your destiny IndyCar. Control it! Mark C. reporting from Long Beach