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IndyCar: Zanardi slams ‘no talent' pack racing

Former CART champion and Formula One driver Alex Zanardi has joined the chorus of those who are speaking out against “pack racing” in IndyCar after Dan Wheldon died on Oct. 16 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Zanardi, a two-time Champ Car champion, lost both of his legs in a crash during Champ Car's race at Germany's Lausitzring in 2001. He never experienced IndyCar's pack racing, but the Italian competed in Champ Car's similar high-speed, slipstream racing at ovals such as Michigan International Speedway and Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.

“As I often say, it's not speed the cause of such a crash. If anything, it could be an aggravating factor,” Zanardi told Autosprint magazine.

“My early years of oval racing, up to 1998, were always very dangerous. Back then, setting up the car meant finding a compromise on the car's speed. You would let [the car] slide until the downforce [didn't get so] low in a way that penalizes turning speed too much.

“It was drift driving, and tire degradation was an important parameter. If a driver crashed against the wall, it was usually his own mistake after he had underestimated these factors.

“Nowadays, instead, driving has become too easy. At turn entry, mid-turn and turn exit, the car is attached to the road surface. In the name of safety--in principle it was even right--the intention was to slow down the cars by giving them an exaggerated amount of downforce, and therefore high drag.

“[But] the result was that, in order to find speed, you now see setups with the front being seven centimeters higher than the rear to lessen the wing's influence! This is nonsense, but it's a necessity to beat the stop watch.

“At the beginning of 1998, the Handford wing was introduced in our series. It was a sort of an L-shaped Gurney flap attached backwards, and it was supposed to slow down the cars by generating drag. After the first race, I, Michael Andretti and Greg Moore were literally assaulted by enthusiastic journalists who would say what a great race it was, what a spectacle.

“We looked at each other and, without having agreed beforehand, we replied simultaneously, ‘Have you seen the same race as us?'

“For us it had been crap. With the Handford, you couldn't open up a gap to your rival anymore.

“Our job wasn't to race anymore; it was to wait to catch the final slipstream. No more talent, just strategy and that's it. In the long term, this has made the Indy audience fall out of love too.

“At Las Vegas it wasn't a race between drivers anymore. It was a pack of cars moving all together, bunched up with no chance of breaking off. Now, when you race for five minutes with your rival right next to your side, [to] the point that you notice if his sponsor stickers are not straight, when it's too easy to drive even on the outside line. . . . At that point it's like driving with a tutor. An obscenely idiotic thing, because then you distract yourself for not concentrating enough. After a while, even if you are traveling at [more than 200 mph], you don't realize it anymore.

“In my times, if you went racing on a road course, Paul Tracy would bang wheels [with you all the time] when you got by his side. [But] at Michigan, a super-quick track, he would have enormous respect for anyone.

“With these cars, instead, you drive by always keeping the inside white line as your reference, just because that's the shortest line [around the track]; the car is glued to the track anyway. But I prefer to race with 1,000 hp while having to manage the car, instead of nowadays 650 hp and these absurd levels of grip.”

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This dude understands racing and what it is all about. The inherent problem is, advancement of technology, costs, and reliability.

We really have taken the driver out of the equation on a positive level. They can only hurt the car’s performance or other individuals. Zanardi is really a smart man. I love the commentary.

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