250 MPH barrier at Indy

The relatively flat corners at Indy are not conducive to a 250 MPH lap

A reader asks, Dear AR1.com, I know there is a lot of talk about breaking the lap record of 239.260 MPH set by Arie Luyendyk at Indy in a 2005 CART IndyCar but given the new Dallara IndyCar is inferior to the 10-year old CART IndyCar cars, is there any chance of that happening and what about the 250 MPH barrier, which would be huge? Dan Black, Missouri

Dear Dan, 240 or 250 MPH will be difficult to achieve with today's Dallara. The Indy track is only banked 9-degrees, which is fairly flat for a race track at those speeds. The best way to break the 250 MPH safely would be to add 2 or 3-degrees of banking to the corners. It really would not make the track look different. The track has to be designed properly to 'safely' run 250 MPH and the current track is not conducive to a 250 MPH run. Put an IndyCar on the Daytona or Talladega 33+ degree high banks and they can do 250 MPH easily, but not on 9-degrees – it is going to require more downforce and more HP. So do you artificially change the car to go faster or do you bring the track up to the standards it would need to break the 250 MPH barrier? One last point – the heavy NASCAR stock cars would race better at Indy if it had, say, 12-degrees of banking. Mark C.