IndyCar a 2-class series

The Honda teams are out to lunch
The Honda teams are out to lunch

A reader writes, Dear AutoRacing1.com,

It’s official IndyCar is a Two Class Series.

They should label the Chevy entries IndyCar1 and the Honda entries IndyCar2 like IMSA does for the United States Sports Car Series for LMP1 and LMP2.

I am so sick and tired of hearing a driver say ‘we were the fastest Honda’! It’s a race. Being ‘Best of The Rest’ is NOT going to attract fans, much less sponsors and IndyCar better recognize it in a hurry or Chicken Little will have turned out to be an optimist.

Driver, Engineer, Team, experience, skill; irrelevant.

The mental midgets ruined the best motorsports racing on the PLANET and spent $50M doing it with the bodykits. They put a huge financial burden on the teams when they could least afford it, at $1,000,000 per entry (two different new aero kits one for ovals another for road/street circuits, plus R&D, shaker rigs, CFD, etc.). Before the ‘updated’ aero kits we didn’t have ‘Flying Chevy’s and Mystery Driving Honda’s).

The Chevy teams are like LMP1 in WEC.
The Chevy teams are like LMP1 in WEC.

Despite this calamity being clear to everyone except IndyCar last year, in the off season IndyCar in its wisdom REFUSED to grant any dispensation to Honda Teams for Superspeedway aero kits for 2016 despite 2015 being a two class series and the dominance of one engine manufacture being most evident on the superspeedways. Watch last year’s Indy 500. A two class race.

Most of the Honda Teams sponsors will be gone after this year, count on it. For that matter why would Honda stick around to be humiliated race after race, year after year? To hope for a couple of races where a series of ‘Lucky Yellow’s’ or all the stars align (Fontana & Mid-Ohio last year) a few times a year?

Heck, after another year of one manufacture dominating and no matter how good the team or driver is unable to be competitive on merit even ride buyers will only be willing to write checks to Chevy teams.

A Disillusioned IndyCar Fan, Alan Fields
Long Island N.Y.

RANK DRIVER CAR NO. LAP 1 TIME LAP 2 TIME TOTAL TIME AVERAGE SPEED Class
1 Helio Castroneves 3 19.0997 19.1607 00:38.2604 192.324 Chevy
2 Tony Kanaan 10 19.2046 19.2182 00:38.4228 191.511 Chevy
3 Juan Pablo Montoya 2 19.2375 19.2145 00:38.4520 191.366 Chevy
4 Charlie Kimball 83 19.2278 19.2535 00:38.4813 191.220 Chevy
5 Ed Carpenter 20 19.2647 19.3053 00:38.5700 190.780 Chevy
6 Scott Dixon 9 19.3563 19.2956 00:38.6519 190.376 Chevy
7 Josef Newgarden 21 19.3675 19.3418 00:38.7093 190.094 Chevy
8 Max Chilton 8 19.3636 19.3705 00:38.7341 189.972 Chevy
9 Will Power 12 19.4637 19.3160 00:38.7797 189.749 Chevy
10 Simon Pagenaud 22 19.4464 19.3526 00:38.7990 189.654 Chevy
11 Marco Andretti 27 19.4680 19.4508 00:38.9188 189.071 Honda
12 Ryan Hunter-Reay 28 19.4653 19.4750 00:38.9403 188.966 Honda
13 Mikhail Aleshin 7 19.6250 19.5159 00:39.1409 187.998 Honda
14 Alexander Rossi 98 19.6821 19.6804 00:39.3625 186.939 Honda
15 Sebastien Bourdais 11 19.8148 19.6312 00:39.4460 186.544 Chevy
16 Luca Filippi 19 19.8442 19.7567 00:39.6009 185.814 Honda
17 Jack Hawksworth 41 19.8224 19.9429 00:39.7653 185.046 Honda
18 Conor Daly 18 20.0226 19.9121 00:39.9347 184.261 Honda
19 Graham Rahal 15 20.3621 20.5702 00:40.9323 179.770 Honda