Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers could be despatched to mailbag@racer.com. We will’t assure that each letter will likely be printed, however we’ll reply as many as we will. Printed questions could also be edited for size and readability. Questions obtained after 3pm ET every Monday will seem the next week.
Q: Thermal. What a joke! I turned it off firstly of the second race. Silly thought, worse than F1.
Wealthy Shiroky, Toms River, NJ
MARSHALL PRUETT: A lot of the feedback I’ve learn on social media have been extremely essential of all points of the racing, and the opposite feedback have been supportive of the try made by IndyCar to create one thing cool and particular throughout a protracted break.
Since I doubt this occasion will return in the identical format, there’s no must throw haymakers on the collection, however I’d like to see a correct all-star race in some unspecified time in the future. This simply wasn’t it. I additionally hope the flamethrower that’s been aimed on the collection since Sunday doesn’t scare its super-thin-skinned government management into by no means attempting one thing new or attention-grabbing sooner or later.
Granted, if historical past has been a information, we ought to be looking out for a reality-bending launch from Penske Leisure that hails this as one of the best factor to occur to humanity. However I hope they don’t. That might be unhappy. It was a loss. A nasty one. Settle for it, give you concepts to forestall it from taking place once more, and do higher subsequent time, if there’s a subsequent time. It’s what racers do.
Q: After watching that glorified check at Thermal I’ve a couple of ideas. The NBC broadcast staff ought to win an Emmy for greatest faux pleasure as a result of they really tried to promote this rubbish as an thrilling race. As a fan, I couldn’t care much less about how the über-wealthy dwell and was not even remotely within the venue that produced a processional of dangerous “racing.” There was no pleasure with out followers, grandstands, sponsors, and so forth. There was no power in any respect.
If IndyCar desires us to get enthusiastic about non-points races, wouldn’t an precise race be a greater strategy to do it? Why not Motegi, Surfers Paradise and even Argentina? I do know the associated fee is larger, however curiosity must be, too. Thermal membership is nothing however a snoozefest. Is there any method IndyCar lets this useless canine lie and finds precise races to run?
Brian Z, Phoenix, AZ
MP: If I needed to guess, I’d think about the observe had some form of stipulation in its settlement the place lots of heavy lifting was executed in the course of the broadcast to advertise its existence and membership alternatives. There are lots of fantastic properties there which have leatherbound books and odor of wealthy mahogany, however there are additionally lots of unsold tons to be bought by new members to construct extra trackside mansions, so within the absence of an occasion sponsor like Pennzoil or Firestone, it appeared like Thermal, which forked out some huge cash to make the occasion occur, bought the title-sponsor remedy in the course of the broadcast.
Since Thermal was the principle backer of the occasion, it is smart for them to be handled as such in the course of the broadcasts.
Solely simply seen now that the novelty verify is bigger than the rostrum. Yikes. Josh Tons/Motorsport Photographs
Q: The final 10 laps at Thermal had been fairly thrilling, and from the interviews it gave the impression of the driving force goes to maintain that whole prize cash awarded. Doesn’t that usually get cut up up throughout the staff to some extent?
CAM in LA
MP: Prize monies are paid to the staff, so it’s not one thing the drivers get straight and might preserve. All is dependent upon the staff and the contracts the drivers have executed with their groups. One instructed me it could be a 50-50 cut up between driver and crew, and one other instructed me they don’t do event-specific prize cash distributions; they pool all the winnings throughout the season and pay an end-of-year bonus for his or her crew who take residence no matter proportion they’ve negotiated.
Again once I was an IndyCar crew member within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, the common proportion I bought was 1% with lesser groups, and a fraction of that with the higher groups. I additionally recall having to get artistic one 12 months, when our little TKM/Genoa Racing staff was rattling close to broke from the beginning of the season, by accepting a small wage — I feel it was $45,000 as assistant staff supervisor/engineer — with a 3% prize cash take within the hope of attending to a correct quantity by the top of the 12 months. My optimism for our staff’s fortunes will need to have been increased than our staff house owners’ as a result of they accepted my little technique and it labored. Particularly after we certified second for the Indy 500 and led 18 laps with Greg Ray.
That led to a really testy alternate the week after Indy the place it was conveniently forgotten that I used to be now not on 1%… however they lastly, and begrudgingly, paid what they owed.
In order for you a driver-keeps-the-money story, our Genoa Indy Lights staff put in lots of effort to follow for a downtown pit cease problem in Quebec in 1996 forward of the Trois Rivieres race. We beat the Participant’s staff, which was a giant deal; I modified the right-front, our crew chief Jon Ennik did the left-front, and our driver Dave DeSilva did an awesome job of launching the automobile, stopping for us to do the fronts-only change, and firing throughout the end line.
I’ve forgotten how a lot it paid — possibly a few grand — and the promoters did hand him that wad of money later that evening at a Lights celebration. Dave, a paying driver whose father owned the second-largest building firm in California — constructed the brand new Oakland Raiders/Oakland A’s stadium, as properly — was a candy man who was value greater than all of us mixed, was actually hyped after successful the pit cease competitors, and determined it was his prize cash to maintain.
No matter bond he had left with us was largely damaged after that. We’d put in time in sweltering summer time warmth in our tiny East Lansing, Michigan store, to follow pit stops — take into account that pit stops weren’t executed in Lights — and handled this because the one occasion in the course of the 12 months the place we because the pit crew had a tiny second to shine. So, understanding the prize cash was like pocket change to our driver, I badgered him for the subsequent day or two, and at first, he peeled off one thing like 100 bucks apiece for every of us. Felt like we had been being tipped as his servers on the nation membership in his thoughts.
That was a good larger insult than getting nothing in any respect, so I stored after him and he upped it to possibly $300. Ennik got here to me afterwards and stated, “Hey man, I wouldn’t ask him to present out any more cash… he’s actually pissed.” I feel my response was one thing like, “Good, he ought to be pissed, at himself, for attempting to s*** on us and take cash that belongs to his crew.”
