F1 Debrief – Insanity personified in a circle Christine: This is F1 Debrief - Insanity personified in a circle. Coming up on this show, we bring out the big guns to talk all things Indy 500. Our last F1 Debrief show was all about Fernando Alonso’s Indy 500 adven- ture, which is now just days away - very exciting! We got quite a bit of feedback telling us we didn’t know what we were talking about, which is a fair assessment. So to rectify the situation, we’ve roped in Pat W of the I Watch Too Much Racing blog, and Lukeh, both of whom are IndyCar fans and experts and can tell us where we’re going wrong. So, hopefully from this chat we can all learn a bit more about what to expect this weekend, and I'll be taking copious notes in case this situation should ever arise again. Mr C: Pat, firstly, give us the rundown on what's going. What is Fernando Alonso doing? Pat: Well first of all, hello, it's good to be back. It's been a while. What's he doing? He says he's going for the triple crown which is the three biggest races in the world, arguably. Which is the Monaco Grand Prix, which he's won already, the Indy 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Part of me wonders if that's what he's doing, whether that's his real motivation, or whether he just wanted to do something different because he's bored. But I think he does want to do Indy, genuinely. Whether he has a chance of winning the triple crown, maybe we'll come onto that later, but I think he just wants a fresh challenge, something to get his teeth into, a change of scenery whilst he has the opportunity. Just to test himself against a different genre of racing, a different niche, against different drivers. Mr C: And is he wise? Would you say this is a wise strategy? Like, are you backing him to do this? Pat: I'm backing him because it's been a long time since this sort of thing has happened. Apart from Nico Hülkenberg at Le Mans, an active F1 driver going to a different big race, big championship event, it just hasn't really happened certainly in my lifetime. Unless they've switched wholesale to that championship, like Jacques Villeneuve did, or Montoya. Whether he's wise in doing it, I don't know, because he's obvious- ly got the rest of the F1 season to go, so if he has an accident or something then he could be out for the year. But arguably you could say, well, he's not going to achieve much this year in Formula One anyway, so if he does break his leg or whatever then, does it really matter? Mr C: Well, let's discuss that because this is a concern. So on the podcast that we previously mentioned, my concern was this is dangerous. So ovals are a more, or my understanding is, ovals are a more danger- ous form of racing than we are used to in Formula One. Is that true, have I got that right? Or has safety been improved? Pat: It is, yea. As we saw last weekend, with Sébastien Bourdais, it is very dangerous. It has improved. I know we used to watch, a few years ago, when we had the old cars and they were a lot more dangerous. They've definitely improved since then. And even since the new cars have come in, the Dallara DW12, they aren't the specification they were in in 2012, when they were introduced. There have been other accidents since then, as a result of which they've added side impact protection into the cockpit. So they've been up- graded. They've added extra, you know in NASCAR where they've got the roof flaps, when a NASCAR car spins round and goes backwards, you've got the flaps on the roof which slows it down? ©Copyright Sidepodcast 2006-2017. All rights reserved. F1 Debrief – Insanity personified in a circle 1 Mr C: Yes. Pat: They've put those flaps on the back of the rear wing of the IndyCar. So when that spins round, the flaps are supposed to flip either up or down, it might be upside down, and that's supposed to stop it flip- ping the car, because in like 2014, I might have the year wrong, in practice leading up to the 500, lots of cars went upside. I say lots, it was three or four, but that's still too many. Mr C: Far too many, yes. Pat: Yea, it's very dangerous. So they did those improvements and possibly some others, so for the last two or three years, going upside down hasn't really happened as much, but obviously it did with Bourdais. I'm sure they'll be looking into why that was. But they are quite proactive. Mr C: So, can you explain the Bourdais thing to me? Going into this race, my understand was this is gonna be a disaster, Alonso's not going to come back in one piece, oh my goodness, please don't hurt him. And then you open up social media and there's a picture of an upside down Bourdais and a couple of hours lat- er, there he is in hospital. And it sort of looks like, okay, this really is exactly as bad as I thought it was. What happened to Bourdais and what's the likelihood that might happen to Alonso? Pat: It looked like, if you watch... a lot of the clips only show him entering that corner, but if you watch the whole run... in qualifying in Indy, I should probably first explain, they really trim the cars out. No downforce at all, even the rear wing is actually negative wing. I don't quite know, I don't understand, I'm not an aero- dynamicist so I don't know why it's negative but rather than creating downforce it reduces drag. But that unsettled the back of the car. So if you watch him going through the turns, the back end is sliding out to- wards the wall, so he caught it to correct it but he ran out of road and went straight into the wall at 220- something, 230 maybe, which is why it's such a violent impact, unfortunately. And there's not a lot you can do about that. Mr C: So his experience didn't help him. Like, if Alonso was in the same situation, it wouldn't be worse for him but it arguably wouldn't be any better either? Pat: It would be just the same, to be honest. Mr C: You can't catch that. Pat: At that speed, it's just reactions. I mean, Bourdais, like Alonso, is a road course driver, he's not some- one who has spent decades of his life on ovals. He's done some ovals, perhaps someone who'd spent twenty years doing oval might correct it in a different way but his instinct was to catch the slide, drive into it, and he ran out of road. I think Alonso would have just done the same thing, he would have just instinc- tively corrected it and that would have been it. I think it would have been a similar incident. The race may be better... well it will be different, because you won't have... you have more downforce in the race, so the car won't be so on edge but you will have more traffic and a lot of disturbed air, especially if you're lap- ping traffic, in a lot of traffic. So that could upset a car, and also at the end of some of the races in the past, in the last five or six years, there's fuel saving, there can be, not every year. So at that point in time, you might find some cars going a lot slower, the way that Rossi did last year, but there are faster cars who are ©Copyright Sidepodcast 2006-2017. All rights reserved. F1 Debrief – Insanity personified in a circle 2 pushing like crazy trying to get to the finish and that mis-match in speed causes an accident. And Mike Conway had a terrible accident in 2010 I think, 2011. Mr C: Is Mike Conway the guy who said he will continue to race in IndyCar, but he won't do ovals? Pat: Yes. That's it. Mr C: That's the kind of voice in my head saying, of all the tracks, of all the races, why is Alonso doing an oval if it's so dangerous Conway won't even consider it. Pat: Because it's the Indianapolis 500. And he wants to win it. He wants that trophy. Mr C: This is a good time to bring Lukeh in. Is he crazy, Lukeh? Lukeh: Yep. I think he is... oh and hello, by the way. Nice to be back. It is crazy! Indy, the Indy 500 is dan- gerous, it's insanity personified in a circle. It's just, I mean, you've got that, and the only thing I can think of that would match it in terms of the craziness is probably the Isle of Mann TT, because that is just at the same level of, the amount of speed, the amount of average speed per lap, the constant Gs on your neck, it is..