The RACER Mailbag, May 7

Welcome to the Racer email bag. The questions for any of Racer’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love listening to your comments and opinions, but it is more likely that a question will be published. The questions received after 3 pm et every Monday will be kept for the following week.

Q: I am really worried about Indycar’s well -being. It does not pass on the track with significant results. Palou, apparently, is unstoppable, and I prefer to see a different pilot as a champion this year, but that is likely to not happen. Has the hybrid system created the inability to move on to street and road courses? Asking for a friend. You know it’s quite bad when the fox ‘Moment of the race’ was Ferrucci’s rescue after letting go a bit!

Az, Az

Marshall Testt: There are some factors, and IR hybrid is a large part of the problem, but not the whole problem. There are four contributing factors.

First, it is the weight of hybrid to have a negative effect. The energy recovery system itself is not evil that kills the wheel’s action. It is the weight. I realize that this may not matter to some, but Indycar could get the ER out of the cars, replace them with 100 pounds of rocks so that they coincide with their weight, and we would be having the same conversation.

The tires are another great taxpayer to the problem. The alternative of alternatives of silly and soft street if they are pressed too much, so drivers have had to treat them as great liabilities and lead at a specific pace to avoid crisis and total loss of performance. These tires have stolen the ability that drivers attacked, which has overshadow the action of the wheel to the wheel.

The road course alternates in thermal reacted similarly, but it was the surface of the track, instead of the tires itself, causing the great drop in performance. Therefore, drivers once again had to follow a specific rhythm and somewhat diminished to prevent the tires from boiling and give up.

Barber was the first race of the year in which both compounds could take all the abuse they were given without giving up. But since there was not much more to separate the performance between the primary and the alternatives, there are no great tasks of the racing strategy; All were flat, and without precautions, the leaders ran at similar speeds, apart from Palou, and that is not when a great step in advance is carried out.

Tons of passes occurred behind the leaders, but that is not what makes memorable races. No one looks at a NFL game and spends the next day deliring about the great blockade in the trenches. They are the great touchdowns, long races, hits that change the game and interceptions that we cannot forget. And that is a missing leg.

Back to weight again to weight, and how cars simply do not tolerate the same child of excessive passage, as they did before the 100 pounds of hybrid wood control, and has a freshly float recipe.

Weight, more tire compounds, more similar rhythms, in addition to precautions and the passing opportunities that the reset bring, and some of those factors have combined with race to the career to create the product seen duration in the four opening races.

I can think of a person who does not complain about the current quality of the careers in Indycar. Photo by Chris Jones/IMS

Q: It is with a heavy heart and a lot of guilt that Big Possum is a hand bar to write this, but the truth will come out as some said.

Big Possum is a confirmed Indycar fan who attends his first 500 in 1956 and many, many, many, since then. Little Possum has hospitalized several Indy car teams at the Speedway while heading to a mechanical engineering of Purdue and passed the tires on the wall duration stops for McLaren and Félix Rosenquist for a year.

So Big Possum tune in Barber’s career on Sunday, it is no longer necessary to say about that, and after Barber became Nascar’s career in Texas.

Big Possum is not a staunch fan of Nascar, he usually does not look, but follows: the favorite driver was the Silver Fox, David Pearson, possibly the best of all time: Texas was full, and he fell silent, but it was a better tea. The cars were becoming more together, cooler and more Pits, with most of the field arriving at the same time and a good exhibition board of who beat who left the wells, clashes, yellow flags, reset and the winner was not the four four four. Last. Larson was fleeing until he was, several newcomers, a green white checker … in general, damn entertaining. The TV transmission showed the invocation and national anthem, unlike another channel that could be appointed.

Big Possum can see the value of attraction, emotion and entertainment, and that is why the stands were full. They have their own Siriusxm radio program 24 hours a day, and so on.

The saving grace to Indycar at this time is Indianapolis 500.

It is not critical, and it is with deep sadness that Big Possum informs acts of thesis and not he does not not solve.

I hope to see you at the Speedway. Meat cake dinner at the Speedway American Legion Hall on fast Friday. HAPPY THAT YOU ON ME LIKE MY GUEST

I have

MP: Thank you for the invitation, my boy.

Reaxly Difficult moment for Penske Entertainment. How will they react?

Huge new television partner, a heavy preseason advertising campaign focused on driver’s personalities and the fastest race on Earth (*After the Earth’s speed races, air races and drag races), and in the season and the relationship of Fox, his him his him is his him his he is his he is his his his is his is his is his Itars. Racing, and all this has come out the window in two months.

I use this description several times a year, but Penske needs to think about Indycar as a product on the shelf. How do you see and feel sitting next to similar products on the same shelf? What things are the sacrifice of the product, which highlights the best ways against others? Until 2024, I think most would agree that their product was strong and attractive. And I think that most of those who have bought and enjoyed the product in recent years would recognize that the product has changed and changed significantly, in 2025, and not for the better.

It is simply not as attractive as it was last year, and for those of us who love the product, it kills us to see it buried in the back of the shelves for F1, which has gone from being like hell to be very entrusted, and IMSA, and so on.

And that is not being critical, penske or indycar; Simply that is what is real.

The good thing is that Penske has the only authority to make each and every one of the changes to improve their product. There are contracts, of course, with their car manufacturers and other official partners that cannot be ignored without the risk of being demanded, but if the product they help are not sold as it is once and the labor onion.