re: 2025 Indycar and IMSA Thread (Indycar Toronto)

Team Penske going all red this weekend.

A front row lockout for the BMW GTPs! The Cadillacs were slow and no one expected them to be.

Thanks for replies. The track sounds awesome. My son’s been to a few, including three Indy 500s. I’m so excited to go to my first INDYCAR race!

So thankful nascrap, didn't get control of long beach.

Nascrap has no place at long beach.

That would've meant no Indy car, no IMSA, no super stadium tucks, no formula drift.

Let's keep it out of nascraps hands.

They are still salty over losing Fontana. When they had a chance to save it.

That was an excellent and exciting race!

Kirkwood and the Andrettis are just so darn good on street circuits.

Onto Barber!

As for IMSA, ho hum, more of the same Porsche Penske dominance.

6 Hours of Imola WEC race is going right now. Streaming on MAX and maybe TNT Sports, finishes up at noon. Ferraris continuing to dominate is of right now.

I remember when 80-plus cars would be practicing at Indy to get one of those 33 spots.

There used to be so many teams that would only go to Indy. In those days, you stayed all month. But, for drivers, it was the place to be seen, and a moneymaker.
One driver put it like this: Last place at Indy pays $100,000. ( In those days, it was fairly standard that drivers got forty percent of the purse). So, if you just make the race, you can pay the rent.

On the YouTube live broadcast of practice, I got mocked for saying in the chat that it makes no sense to have a hybrid powertrain on an oval where there is no braking. Someone responded with "Is this your first time watching oval racing? The drivers lift into Turn 1 and 3, blah blah blah."

Well, I just read this Marshall Pruett article that explains how it works. Aero / engine braking into Turns 1 and 3 doesn't provide enough energy. The harvesting actually happens with a manual activation (pushing a button or pulling a lever) at full throttle along the 2-3 and 4-1 straights. The harvesting saps top speed, so there's a net loss of energy, not a recover of energy. So this description I think supports my argument that it's dumb because the batteries aren't being replenished by passive mechanical harvesting (thus restoring some of the lost energy), but rather by using more energy (the engine) for tactical reasons (to provide a future boost of power for passing). So as a tactical tool the hybrid might make things interesting, but the hybrid system is not being used for its original intended purpose. And yes, I know that in high performance street cars, hybrid systems are primarily used to boost transient performance, not be more energy efficient.

racer.com/2025/04/23/lots-for-drivers-and-teams-to-learn-at-indy-open-test/

And why do we need hybrid power trains?