People bash ovals, but fail to realize the razor thin margins of adjustments and driver input that needs to be made to make the difference. A 10th of a mph is everything at Indy.
And the speed! 220mph in the corners and 240mph on the straights, passing and weaving through traffic is truly awesome. And the race distance takes concentration and endurance. The is nothing faster or goes longer than Indy.
@@ronbelanger4113 And you think modern F1 is interesting with Max Verstappen winning everything? At least with Indycar we get different winners consistently.
Curious thing about Indy. The vast majority of fans were rooting for Fernando. I can't think of another sporting event where an interloper shows up and the fans root for them. No them vs. us. The general feeling seems to be "If you're going to go 240mph and turn left without lifting your right foot then....God's Speed Fernando."
I think the Indy500 has a unique allure to it, in part because drivers do come from other series and try their luck. That's why fans will cheer for the underdogs, because people like Fernando come and take the race (and Indycar as a sport) on it's own terms and compete like everyone else, which shows a lot of respect for the event. It's not about trying an exhibition or a test, it's a proper race and you'll sink or swim, and anyone who understands that is welcome to try.
On a related note, I hope Colin Braun is impressive enough to go full-time in Indycar next year. I really like how Indycar still has crossover with other non-open wheel series Edit: What other series has: Its own ladder talent Former F1 drivers Former F1 ladder drivers Former sportscar drivers Former TINTOP drivers All in one open wheel series and all reasonably competitive regardless of background
On Twitter maybe the Indy Fans gatekeep, but if you come to IMS and persist & do well, They/we will LOVE you... Huge fan bases for Dan Wheldon, JPM, Pato, Kannan, Castroneves & Takuma Sato to name a few.
I noticed it a lot with NASCAR's fanbase too. If you watched NASCAR in the late 2000s-early 2010s, Juan Pablo Montoya and Marcos Ambrose were fan favorites.
My biggest complaint with Indycar is that the marketing and coverage suck. I remember TV cutting away from an Indycar race with a handful of laps left because they had to show live golf.
In Australia in the 1980s onwards we had the BBC feed. A number of times the British Open (Golf) was on at the same time as the British F1 race. We were shown (live) the start and finish of the F1 race. We did usually get the full races.
@@simonkevnorris there were a few years in the late 90's that we woke up for the 1st F1 race of the season in the US not knowing what channel the race was race, or if it was even being aired. They were signing TV deals at the last minute!
@@AeroGuy07 Yes, the F1 coverage of motor sports in the USA is strange at times - even Champcars/Indycars is a bit weird. I think the one network will cover some races and another network the rest (if you're lucky). Bernie Ecclestone took hold of F1 and sold the TV rights as a package rather than let Networks pick and chose.
dude, ~10 years back i was in the Michiana area ( north central Indiana along the Michigan state line ) and they cut away from the Indy 500 with 10 laps to go so retarded bint could give an "emergency weather alert" about straight line winds exceeding 80mph and that people needed to take cover, blah, blah, blah. and they stayed on the "alert" for the next 20 minutes, until well after the finish of the race. . the supposed straight line winds? yeah, nothing ever came of that.
Being born and raised in Indianapolis is the reason I’m a huge fan of Motorsport. I remember as a kid my most favorite day of the year was the day my dad took me to the track for practice. I remember Christmas 1990 one of my presents was a race day ticket for the 1991 500. From about 1993 on I became more aware of F1 and started watching every so often. Because I was a Villeneuve fan I started watching every race religiously starting in 1996. I won’t say any one racing series is better than the other. Each series has its positives and negatives.
I think what is massively overlooked about this bump day qualifying of Alonso and McLaren. What many fans who are dismissive about Indycar spec nature is that the failure here wasn't about whether Fernando Alonso an extremely talented and exalted driver was good enough. No, what people really need to understand is that despite Indycar's spec nature, there is significant amount of engineering to get the car to run at peak qualifying, let alone avoiding bump day. The problem is Indycar series doesn't talk about the engineering of individual teams. The media generally talks about engineering as league when it's a safety or performance of a track. So nobody hears about the individual engineering differences between the teams and assumes that all the cars are the same. Not the case at all. Besides the choice of engines there's huge differences in dampers, which heavily effects the performance of the car. The top teams are more invested in the quality of their dampers, as well as the setups. It's not obvious to fans like it is with F1 where you can literally see the aero body and suspension stance changes. However as much as I've expressed about the significance of Indycar's engineering, the driver skill, talent and experience plays a bigger role in Indycar than F1. You can't put Verstappen in a Williams car and expect him to make podium, But you can put Palou in a DCR (Dale Coyne Racing) car and have a better chance of making podium. In a lot of ways the disparities between teams is actually very similar for both F1 and Indycar, both leagues have their podium teams and perennial backmarkers. The difference is that drivers have a better chance of overcoming whatever engineering deficiencies there are in Indycar. Still engineering matters, even if it's spec racing.
I was there for that Bump Day in 2019. You could feel the tension in the McLaren/Carlin garage that day. It was just one thing after another...the Texas test, Honda and Chevy hedging on an engine, having the car painted wrong, etc. Just a bad week altogether. One of my best moments, though, was getting Fernando's autograph in the garage area that day. I still got in my collection.
I have always thought that Bump Day was as exciting as Race Day, with drivers often shedding tears of joy just to be in the last starting position of the Indianapolis 500. It still amazes me that some of the best drivers (Unser, Fittipaldi, Hinchcliffe, Alonzo, etc.) can be knocked out of the race, but no matter who you are, you still have to earn your spot on the grid.
The 500 miles of turning left is so accurate but also so wrong, I'm sure you have tried it in a sim and it's not as easy as they make it look, and doing that speed and keeping your foot in while others are crashjng takes some serious balls
Yes, F1 races to 200 mph for a split second, in single file and passes in the slow corners. Indy races at 240 mph all race long, passing at that speed with changing track conditions and cars handling. There is no track faster than Indy.
It's a mixture of the acceleration and deceleration along with directional changes that make F1 stand out. In the early 1990s I was getting a bit blase about F1 and I travelled to Montreal in 1991 or 1992. I had seen the braking and acceleration into the hairpin (where Kubica had his accident) before but I took a wander along towards the pits and stopped at an opening in the fence and had a view of the chicane near the casino (I think that may have become the last chicane) and I saw Mansell to through there and the,direction change was something else. I've been at a number of CART/IndyCar races Detroit (before it moved to Bell Isle), St Louis, Indy 500 (1993), Mid Ohio and Elkart Lake (both 1997) and do enjoy the different series and tracks.
Paul Page, one of the main ABC commentators, would say it as Jill de Ferran, a combination of the two. That’s how I thought it was supposed to be pronounced for years, it was only recently I learned it’s Fe-ran
This will always be one of my favorite underdog stories in auto racing. Juncos Racing had no sponsors and have to turn a road course car to an oval car after it got wrecked during practice. After Kyle Kaiser and Juncos Racing bumped McLaren out one of their original sponsors came back onboard after getting free advertisement because the team was cash strapped on replacing pit uniforms. McLaren came to Indy and got humbled horribly bad.
I remember watching the live timing of 2019 Bump Day while listening to the radio feed. As a recall, nobody gave Kaiser a chance in hell of making it with 4 laps to do in a thrown together ex-road course car. *I* didn't think Kaiser would do it until I saw the live timing at turn 4, lap 4. "Bloody hell," I thought "this is gonna be something once the fans get hold of it." Sadly, it was KK's best ever achievement in racing. He was overlooked when Juncos went full time in IndyCar and the seats went to Callum Ilott, and later Agustin Canapino. Kyle Kaiser gave up racing and now works as a financial analyst.
On the opening point. F1 to the majority of people represents motorsport as a whole. So when F1 sucks, they think motorsport sucks too. That's my reason for wanting to bring up different series' to people. It's a shame the series that arguably sucks the most for parity and actual racing, is the one that represents motorsport as a whole to the majority of people, at least outside of the United States. The general perception of motorsport would be a lot better in the alternate universe where e.g. WEC, Indycar, SRO GT3 etc were in that position, or at least were more mainstream. That's why fans of those get annoyed at how things are. Gatekeeping however I agree is counterproductive to trying to grow interest in a series.
I never understood this modern obsession for parity at all costs. The governing body coming in and modifying team's cars race to race to keep them even (WEC/GT3) or just giving up and turning the series into a spec series (Indycar/Nascar) is so underwhelming. It just kills so many stories before they can even take place, the tales of Smokey Yunik, Porsche 917, Godzilla, Lotus ground effect, Penske super secret engine, Bill Eliott making up 2 and a half laps under green at Daytona, the Underbird, T-rex, acid-dipped camaro, the Can-Am vacuum cleaner. All that is amazing stuff that stands the test of time. That's why F1 is and will continue to be king, because they allow these stories to take place, and then they do their best to promote them. Meanwhile other series are just pushing to make the on-track action more and more intense with little regard for everything else. Yes, the on track action matters, improving it will bring viewers assuming all else being equal, but it pales in comparison with the stories. If the chase for action undermines said stories (looking at you, BoP), then you just have a net negative.
@@-ragingpotato-937 For me it's a case of the athletes (in this case the drivers) having a fair/level playing field. If the playing field isn't level for the athletes, it stops being a sport. It'd be like if a football team showed up with robotic enhancements. Formula 1 for example, inherently isn't fair to 18 of the 20 drivers who can't compete because of their respective cars. Some worse off than others. There's no true way of knowing who the best driver in a season was. I'd say it's more of a "contest" than a "sport" in that regard. I do get what you mean about it not allowing much room for the stories of the old days though. Motorsport used to be like the wild west, but nowadays through rule refinement and the closing of loopholes, that era has largely been left behind. We now have the ability to have a level playing field, so that's what people generally want. I think sim racing has played its part in this mentality change. The cost cap & windtunnel time rules in F1 I think are a good compromise for that series, at least in theory. It's like an alternative form of BoP, while still keeping that wild west somewhat alive to keep the hardcore F1 fans happy. That's just my take on it anyway. Good to read and understand the different perspectives on the subject, as it does divide opinion.
@@-ragingpotato-937the problem is that to get manufacturers to enter cars into a street-based or street-look-a-like series, there has to be some sort of playfield-levelling, otherwise they wouldn't bother as some street car designs are going to be noticeably more competitive than others (because the street car pursues a different market or different goals than one from another brand). The other side of that is budget. Without rules to limit the creativity and such, the budgets spiral out of control, which will drive some sponsors away and some teams into bankruptcy or closing up shop.
Hey, it happens. Back in 1993 (Mansell's rookie year at Indy) Bobby Rahal was not only a past winner of the race but the series defending champion and he missed, which, though not an international story, is a lot more unlikely than a guy coming from another series with a new team and missing, even if the guy was an F1 champ. If I remember correctly, the Rahal-Hogan team made an attempt at building their own chassis that year and it just wasn't good enough. They ended up getting bumped and time ran out before he got another chance to get back in. It's a long time ago so I'm a little fuzzy on the exact details. I think the only reason there was a lot of fun in Alonso missing was nothing against Alonso. I think even IndyCar fans would have been disappointed to see Alonso miss because who doesn't want to see how an F1 champ would do at Indy, just out of curiosity, but F1 fans are so insufferable that it made Alonso's miss a cause of satisfaction.
I was there at the 1993 Indy 500 on a trip from the UK along with some mates from Toronto and Cleveland. Someone had one of those full sized card board cutouts of Bobby Rahal and had added the words "I want tickets" (for a lot of people including us that is how you sourced tickets - from one of the touts. There wasn't a huge mark up though.) Edited: Fixed some auto correct
Rahal actually had purchased rhe rights to the Trusports chassis and rebuilt it as his own. It had promise but I don't think the execution was right. In 94 Rahal dumped the chassis for Honda and almost failed to qualify again he rented two 93 Penske Ilmors so he and Mike Groff would make the race and did. Frankly that's the greatest part about indy NO ONE IS SAFE.
@@M1ggins I can see JB having a crack at Indy one day… but recently, I did hear him speaking about what his goals are and he sounds really committed to the WEC. Because he had been trying out lots of different racing these last few years, but he was quite adamant about giving the WEC a really proper go with JOTA. (Personally, I really want to see him win Le Mans, and not just because I’m a Porsche fan.) Kimi, I honestly don’t see him trying endurance racing. I think it would be too great of a commitment for him.
@@Nikelaos_Khristianos I can see him dong the road races, but he was good friends with Wheldon and swore he'd never do open wheel racing on an oval after he died.
Tribalism. The lowest form of conflict resolution. None more so obvious than seeing proverbial "fans" of motorsports up in arms over quite literally nothing but their egos. The best part is the fact that they are typically engaging in an argument that would remain completely unaffected with or without their opinions.
Beautifully said. Even if you had just left it at the end of your second sentence (if one considered a one-word fragment a sentence) it would have been great.
It’s a little bit of both, Indy requires you to move to America which not all driver are willing do to. Formula E being based in Europe makes it easier for European drivers to adjust.
@@rexthewolf3149 The sad thing is a lot of the F1 "rejects" aren't rejects because of lack of talent or ability but because of lack of money and connections. These drivers will get stuck with the reject label as if they were lousy drivers when many times it was they were lousy in not choosing to be born to billionaire parents.
@@RRaquello yeah. Also simply being there at the wrong time. Verstappen was in Mercedes court for a good while but they couldn’t guarantee seat in 2016. While RB could. That directly lead to the creation of the Mercedes Junior program.
The other teams were watching them make these mistakes from the beggining, and offered help, but their Euro-elite crew didnt listen to anyone. They were running their garage like an F1 or euro feeder series garage. Here in the USA, its different on ovals. The entire operation from where and what parts you keep readily available and handy, changes on an oval as opposed to a street or road course. Things like where you keep equipment, what you have on hand, and the biggest, the backup car needs to be instanly available. Any change you make to your primary car should be immediately made to the backup. They didn't give a shit and their backup was down the street being painted while their primary car was a total mess. Afterall, they had to looks shiny and pretty on raceday. My dad works in the series and saw a lot of guys in orange realize that oval racing is 100x harder than they ever imagined. My comment isnt here to bash europeans, its bashing the errogance that team had, and their lack of respect for oval racing. Plenty from others people from other countries have come here, learned, and succeeded at ovals. Its very very technical, and difficult.
The best part about the Kaiser wreck was some of the team was watching from the shop. They saw it happen and immediately started throwing spares in their pickup trucks. They rolled in with all these IndyCar body pieces in the bed of a truck and a guy in the back holding them making sure they don't fall out.
Sebastien Bourdais was asked about the possibility of McLaren buying their way into the 500, and he said they shouldn’t bother; they’ll still have a slow car and will be miserable running at the back of the field all day.
Im literally the most open minded person if we talk about motorsports, I literally watch every single one of them, Indy, NASCAR, IMSA, F1, WEC, WRC, World of Outlaws, but if Alonso had a Honda he would have won without a doubt.
i honestly dont think that he would have won, he could have a chance of winning, but winning the Indy 500 is even more than have the perfect balanced car with the perfect strategy, it helps a lot but that place is... magical, if it doesn't want a driver to win he won't, look at Hilldebrand, Carpenter and the infamous Andretti's Curse. Dixon and TK besides being oval masters to this day "only" won 1 time each. Indy 500 chooses his winners, and even if it means that Marcus Ericsson is an Indy 500 winner and Fernando Alonso don't, it is what it is
I remember attending that race after qualifying; there was so much Alonso items at clearance prices while all the regular team items were at your regular prices.
This is why Indy 500 qualifying is my favorite qualifying session every year. It doesn't care about your reputation, success, etc. You have to qualify on merit to be one of the Fastest 33. Bump Day creates many great stories of success and failure Watching Graham Rahal get bumped 30 years after his father did was astromically mental
I remember in the old days on Bump Day there'd be a guy who'd hang out of a window and shoot a starter's pistol signifying it was 5pm and the track was closed, except for the 1 car out qualifying. Bump Day used to equal riveting drama.
I will say while I couldn't have predicted McLaren 2019 effort to be the disaster it was, it was predictable that they would struggle. Zak Brown handled it well though and he earned alot of respect for that. I don't think most F1 bosses would have done the same.
Man, open cockpit racing was cool and all, and we were all collectively weirded out by the halo, but god damn. Dixon was incredibly lucky but I'm super glad the halo is now a thing that exists.
I will never understand knocking an oval track race car set-up for only turning left. In an oval track set-up every corner of the car is different, it has to be in order to maximize cornering speed. If you lose speed in the turns, you can't get it back on the straights easily. I can take an oval track car, give it 50/50 side bias. 50/50 front to rear. Some negative camber all the way around. Caster in the front, with some toe out. Equal tire pressure across the front, then on the rear. A touch rear brake bias. A little downforce and I'm on my way. It may not be the fastest right off, but I can go out and push the car enough to learn the next adjustments without knocking a wall down and hurting myself. I'll have a better feel of the car for those pesky right hand turns. Oval track racing the word we use that I rarely hear with road racers is split. As in "What kind of split you running in your front springs." And 'split' meaning the difference of the left and right or any particular adjustment. Again because EVERY corner of the car is different.
Unfortunately, nobody in Indycar gave Gordon, or Smoke the time of day. Even John Menard had to be given a bump. "You're gonna want him in your car John!" @@RRaquello
@@jonnyspa27 That was in the days just before the World Wide Web and the main online racing board was the Compuserve Racing Forum and I remember there was going to be a fan revolt if Stewart, who went into the first IRL race without a secured ride, didn't get an opportunity to drive since he was exactly the type of driver the IRL hype was saying the series was created for. Tony George had to beg John Menard to give him one of his spare cars, and Menard, with all his billions, said OK to save Tony's face. The whole episode created an immediate atmosphere of skepticism even among IRL supporters.
It was very nice to see European motorsport elitists get served a fat slice of humble pie that day. Thankfully a lot of Euro fans aren't like this, but a large amount have this notion that IndyCar is some cute little series that requires no skill to succeed in, and that any F1 driver can just rock up and win immediately.
@@AidanMillward Mansell coming into Indycar driving a car that Michael and Mario Andretti helped develop for '93 with one of the top tier teams in Newman-Haas was diametrically opposite experience to what Alonso had. Nigel got the job done, but didn't get on well with Mario... a different story altogether that. Great vid Aidan.
@@jonnyspa27 The thing with Mansell was he was all sunshine and sweetness when everything went his way but turned into a big baby when things went a little sour. None of the "stiff upper lip we'll muddle through" British stoicism from him. He picked up his toys and went back home.
Brown has grown on me over the years. At first he seemed to be the typical loud boisterous yank. Now seems a very competent and sensible CEO/Team Principal/Mouthpiece for McLaren.
Another wonderful one, Aidan. Definitely Alonzo was welcomed by all the Indycar fans and I know there's a hope he'll come back someday. BTW, small point. I think capacity at Indy is 400,000 including the infield. They may have only the second sellout ever this year. Ticket sales are running only a tad behind the sellout of 2016. I think that's close to 300,000 seats (not sure about that. Maybe closer to 250).
Jack Brabham's first attempt at the Indianapolis 500 came as the reigning World Drivers' Champion in 1961 when he and Cooper turned up with a rear engine car that started a revolution in a racing world then dominated by front engine roadsters. He qualified 17th and finished a credible 9th completing the full 200 laps in a car that only lacked for straight line speed.
While a number in the USAC paddock dismissed rear engine cars as being for drivers who "Liked to be pushed around" ... the more observant saw that while Brabham's Cooper lacked straight line speed, none of the Roadsters could match its cornering ability. It was quickly figured out that all a rear engine car needed to beat the roadsters was a powerful enough engine. And by 1965....27 of the 33 cars on the grid were rear engine, including the entire front row including eventual first rear engine winner Jim Clark.
Great video! I enjoy both open wheel series equally. I did a video once explaining how much toll is taken on the human body comparing Indy to F1. Both are hard on the drivers and the car. F1 drivers get punished with up to 6’s under heavy braking. Most of the G Forces are lateral (side to side & front to back). In oval racing an Indycar driver can experience up tp 5.5 positive G’s on the banked ovals.Think of a fighter jet pulling 5.5 G’s in a turn. Or Think of it like driving through Eau Rouge and into Radion 4 times ever 40 seconds or so for 500 miles. They are both brutal.
Great job! The eye-opener for me as a Formula 1 fan vs. NASCAR drivers, was the old IROC series. I was astounded to see those oval track "guys who could only turn left (or right)" winning as often as not on road courses against endurance race drivers and other road course drivers. That was almost 5 decades ago now, but I have never doubted the abilities of any professional racing driver, regardless of venue. Driving a car fast in a controlled, high traffic setting requires monster skills regardless of whether it's open wheeled or closed wheeled, stock car, LMP, or F1.
Being a F1 follower since I was a kid (TIfosi, of course)... now i'm 36 and from time to time I watch the races because the passion for a team is soemthing that never fades away. But I fell in love with Indy due to Fernando's first run at Indy. Loved the race, the dynamic, the strategy, the colors of the cars. Everything was new for me. Last year, thanks to Canapino participation, I followed a complete Indy season for the first time. Followed the whole Month Of May for the Indy 500 and man... those guys made me remember why I love racing. The liveries, the celebration of a historical race like the 500... it's another championship insde the Indy championship. I have several friends who LOVED the race and are counting the days to watch the one this year. Canapino described Oval racing perfectly... it's another type of racing. Very subtle, very precise, it's totally different. For sure, Indy needs to improve in a lot of topics. But I really love the racing series and i think F1 should learn a thing or two about it.
I remember hearing about this but not really knowing what it was about. For what it’s worth I never thought the “wrong colour” thing cost Alonso a place on the grid, more it was symptomatic of a balls-up of an attempt.
I don’t get motorsports elitism, I feel like this is a niche enough thing already and we don’t need to be bashing each other for our preferences. I have an older coworker who’s into NASCAR, and I grew up an Indycar/F1/rally fan. We might not understand each others sports, but every NASCAR race I ask how he’s doing in his fantasy draft and he tells me when he hears about something in my world (example, even NASCAR fans heard when Max got 10 in a row.)
I'd say there's two types of fans There's people who just like racing and all it entails. Then there's people who like the entertainment side of it, things like 'drive to survive', drama between people, that sorta thing.
I think there's more of it now than there used to be because the media in general, not just auto racing, has become more departmentalized and focuses on specific audiences and demographics. Compare it to something like popular music, where the big radio stations used to play every type of music that was selling at the time (the traditional top 40 station) and you could hear Led Zeppelin on the same station that was playing the Carpenters and the O'Jays. Back then (in the US) most racing would be on shows like ABC's Wide World of Sports or the CBS Sports Spectacular, and it could be anything from F1 to Sports Cars to NASCAR to IndyCars to Figure 8 racing from Islip to Evel Knievel. There wasn't that much racing on TV so if you were a racing fan you'd watch whatever they were showing and you enjoyed each for what they were. Nowadays it's all specialized and each big time series (and a lot of small series) show all their races on their own channels and it seems most fans will follow just one category and never even give other categories a look.
If I'm not mistaken Kaiser's car that bumped Alonso was later sold to Meyer Shank Racing and in 2021 Castroneves took that car to victory lane for his 4th win
Attended my first Indy 500 in 2017. What a bonus to have Alonso competing. What an amazing experience! Watching them race at average speeds F1 never achieves even for seconds is quite something, and more appreciated seeing in person. Had a ring side seat for Dixon's unbelievable flight. Put it on your bucket list. You'll be glad you did.
In 2017, Fernando managed to get a high position because he entered with Andretti, a juggernaut, and had drivers and engineers who were extemely experienced at the Brickyard. One thing that many F1 fans don't understand about oval racing is how setup can be more important in order to go fast--you can't "carry" a bad car around an oval the same way you can on a road course, so Fernando benefitted massively with having 3 teammates who knew what he was doing. And one of his teammates ended up winning, former F1 star Takuma Sato, who won it again in 2020. His two other teammates, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Alexander Rossi, were 500 champions, too, though Rossi's win the year before in large part due to an extremely bold strategy by Bryan Herta ("clutch and coast"). Still, a lot of data and experience to draw from. So, Alonso's car was capable of winning. The engine failure was a luck of the draw and HPD had a string of failures since the beginning of the 2017 season. Otherwise, he did everything right. Speaking of 2017, I always like to show Scott Dixon's crash--where his car literally split in half--as a demonstration of how safe modern motorsport is, even during the pre-halo/aeroscreen era. Dixon "only" suffered a broken ankle. Then, after the 500, Lewis Hamilton had the nerve to use Alonso's strong performance as "proof" that Indycar isn't as good as F1, never mind that Fernando spent so much time learning and preparing for the race. The reason FA is one of the greatest of his generation is because he works extremely hard to understand how to extract the best performance from the car and how to drive the track. I remember how much Zak Brown and Alonso himself talked about watching an onboard of the previous year's race to see how things were done. I somehow knew that 2019 won't be his year. Drama with the engines was one thing (even though HPD and American Honda don't have beef with him but they had to still answer to the big bosses in Japan) so going back with Andretti was not an option. Without the comedy of errors, they could have made it, because FA was due to drive with a number 66, the car number that was on a McLaren chassis that won the race back in 1972. And yes, it was because of the arms race with aero that Indycar pulled the plug of the manufacturer aero kits. That had drama early on, too, with Honda going to Indycar to intervene so that they could catch up in development (the Indycar rulebook contains provisions for that). The IR-18 aero kit were actually improved in 2019 because the superspeedway package of 2018 was such that it created bad racing, mainly because it took out too much downforce and the drivers crank the bias the cars so far forwards that a lot of the crashes were to the rear end coming loose.
Bad luck and stupid drama follows Alonso wherever he goes. I hope he takes a few more shots some day, but it seems like that won't be the case, at least for now. Thank you for putting some respect on his name... and the issue with how lewis approached the situation. Some mfs will really see a guy prepare as a genuine fan of a race, get absolutely ready with the perfect setup, and claim it was an effortless diff. Others will see him fail in 2019 and call him a loser. It's a stupid tribalist stance, and I'm glad to see someone actually analyze the facts.
@@Ryzard It seems that since 2007, Alonso couldn't catch a break until recently enough. He is an amazing driver, and certainly more willing to dip his toes in competition outside of F1, something that few of his fellow drivers have done--and I am not counting Max Verstappen's sim racing stuff. If I remember correctly, Hulkenberg and Alonso are the only two current F1 drivers who have won Le Mans. Speaking of Lewis, he kept mentioning how much he likes NASCAR and has expressed an interest in doing the Daytona 500. I'm still waiting for him to actually do it and face the mighty names in NASCAR.
@@TheOz91 yeah, that would be interesting for sure with Lewis. Iirc, Alonso also has put a lot into junior series/karting and such, but I only recall vaguely. I hope to see him hit Indy again, perhaps for full seasons? Or go into the endurance hypercars (there's a superteam with max in the cards since both have been interested) even sports cars or NASCAR with their road and street courses would be awesome. I just hope to see his hunger continue. I do hope he gets more success, because he really deserves some more than his stats show. Edit: Side note, watching in 2023 interviews after Monaco was hilarious, with both max and Fernando squirming and asking members of the press/each other if the 500 had started yet. Drivers are drivers, they love racing regardless of where it is. I wish some fans could pick up that trait.
@@Ryzard That particular Sunday every year is a great one for race fans, especially those on the west side of the pond. Monaco in the morning, Indy 500 in the afternoon, and the Coca Cola 600 in the evening. And F1 drivers do watch NASCAR. Otherwise, Shell wouldn't have released a video featuring a conversation between Joey Logano and Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc. Interesting thinga they talk about even when it's obviously to promote Shell products--and shows that fans of either series need to stop hating on the other, especially F1 fans on NASCAR.
This is a good comment but I'm sure Honda could not give less of a damn about Alonso "beef" but they vetted him because he was a Toyota-sponsored driver who had just won the 24h. Honda is historically way way way more bitter towards Toyota than any animosity they could build towards Fernando. They also officially congratulated him on his podium on Qatar 21.
Crashing a car at jndy is an especially big deal. Teams spend all year getting as much friction out of the wheels and transmission, plus perfecti g the body work to eliminate as much drag as possible. As tight as the margins are, binning your race car is going to cost you no matter the team.
Great work, more than just a repaint of the car caused them to miss the race. You also nailed how many fans talk of their series in comparison to others. They all have pros and cons but fan is shot for fanatic and if we didn't have them what would we do with all the blank comment boxes?
I like Alonso but yeah being beaten by kaiser was certainly a story. I think it was briefly in the front page of the sports bit of the bbc website, which only ever covers Indycar when something bad happens. Unfortunately Lauda died shortly afterwards and that overshadowed everything.
i watched last years indy 500. was my first one and my god you can just feel how important that race is and what prestige it holds. the daytona 500 doesnt even come close to it nor does monaco or any f1 race. i would even go as far as saying that the indy 500 is miles above the 24 hours of le mans
i know f1 being embarassed is more a bait title, but for real more than that is the legendary effort of Juncos Racing, imo the biggest sports moment of 2019 in any sports, and its even crazier that it didn't turned into a movie... but the fact that he never returned neither no one in f1 tried again makes an excellent joke :D :D and they want to end the bump day as we know in favor of locked grid!!!
There's people that have seen what the Indy 500 looks like on tv and then there's what it is really like being there. The cars loud and the speeds are violent. You can't get it watching it on tv and being stuck on f1 and how quiet and boring it is.
While i dont agree with the idea that F1 drivers can just show up to another series and win immediately. The fact that the scenario has occured multiple times within a short timeframe only added to that belief for the f1 elitists. Hulkenberg winning Lemans on his first try in 2015 Jenson Button winning the 2018 Super GT Championship on his first try Alonso winning Lemans twice along with the Daytona 24H with another former F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi in 2018-19 And Pastor Maldonado (yes, really...) also winning the Daytona 24H in the LMP2 class in 2019
If anything, endurance racing is even more teamwork, not to mention the Hulkenberg and Alonso Le Mans wins are in wildly advantageous cars, and Super GT being a japanese domestic series isn’t as competitive as international series. I’m not disregarding F1 drivers, just saying that those examples aren’t really that good.
@@iceblade019definitely agreed on the teamwork and car aspect but we all know how easy it is to inflate an F1 elitist ego. I still see some people treating F1 drivers winning endurance races like they won it singlehandedly or acting like they were the one that carried the whole team which isn't true at all. Btw I respectfully disagree on the super GT take. I'd say the gt500 class Jenson won in is one of the most competitive championships in the world. He only won by 3 points with 1 win and the drivers he fought against were factory pro drivers from the big 3 brands, former F1 drivers and junior talent. On top of that there's a ballast system that scales with your points to make things closer and harder.
Yea ok I would challenge that to a feat done only in Indiana race a sprint car in TerraHaute I N on Friday night win, then race in Indy on Sunday and win. A feat that’s only a racer like AJ Foyt could do. That’s the racers life!
Excelent video. One opf the most interesting moments in the last few years in terms of motorsport. I agrre with you about the eliteesim and snobbery problem.
I was there, in the media center / paddock that year. This is not a "comedy of errors" but rather massive McLaren screwups with consequences. 1) From the start, the consensus in Gasoline Alley that year was that McLaren was doomed. The Indy500 crowd might not be cool F1 folks, but they do know Indy 500. 2) Late start? Hell, no one in their garage until after the road course race??? 3) It was obvious to me that McLaren was trying to do this effort with pocket change -- using Carlin for tech support, for starters. They didn't hire people who even knew where to find orange paint or a steering wheel. This caused me to take a look at McLaren's finances, and yeah, that year, they were probably grim. Perhaps McLaren only had a Juncos budget??? 4) Gil told the presser (in response to my question!) that they would NOT buy their way in -- but at exactly that moment my editor told me that Zak was walking around with his checkbook trying to buy a ride.
As far as "superiority" -- a midl-pack driver in F1 will be a mid-pack driver in IndyCar. Perhaps vice-versa, but FIA locks out our best drivers with the Superlicense setup, so we'll never now. Logan Sargent would run back-pack in IndyCar. Rossi saw some success in IndyCar, but can we really say that he had an F1 chance or career to show what he could do? On the other hand, top F1 drivers would come to IndyCar and do well -- Mario, Emmo, Nigel come to mind.
@@geek49203 I do not agree with this, because F1 is not a spec series. Marcus Ericsson was mid to back of the pack in F1, I don't think I need to tell you who that is.
@@FrcNeru I don't think you know my background -- media hard card, etc. I've seen lots of F1 guys come over and give it a go. I'll give you a list of names and how they did if you'd like. But we can't compare drivers 'cause NASCAR and IndyCar doesn't count to a superlicence, does it? Logan, if he comes to IndyCar, will be in the back, bet on it.
I mean, from the way the story is told I would almost say it's a case of the Indi-car being more about the bureaucratic exercise than about the race.... *(which is not actually true) in this case, Alonso's failure to qualify had nothing to do with him being a good or bad driver... the team, yes, could have prepared better, but not on the driver/mechanical side!
LOL - dpnt feel bad, as a "home mechanic" [ie, "Honey, can you fix this? We cant afford another one."] and I have to have two sets of tools [Metric and imperial] handy if I hope to get any projects done!
A few of the more famous European Pre - war Championship and F1 Championship drivers that failed to qualify at Indy: Rudolf Caracciola, Chris Amon, Lucien Bianchi, Richie Ginther, Giuseppi Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio, Rene Dreyfus, Achille Varzi, Pedro Rodriguez, Tazio Nuvolari, Alberto Ascari. Just for fun.
This sheds a ton of light on what was going on in the background. McLaren showing up that unprepared is a joke.. I used to think it had alot more to do with Alonso, but I guess not.
In my lifetime I’ve watched cars that were cobbled together from a parts bin, rule Indy “Buick V6”, never to win! Porsche bring an amazing program and fail miserably! Expectations high for this new stud who thought he was better than Mears, and Tracy was absolutely not good enough to carry Ricks lunch! This race has the need of highly skilled drivers with support from very specifically trained crews and enormous amounts of luck! I’ve seen guys I admired die in practice while holding pole position. Guys I despised win. Lost friends in the traffic mayhem of the post race evacuation from Speedway Indiana. I loved Indy, rule makers have ruined racing with rules, and bringing F1 drivers and designers just puts more Mario lifetimes onto a single win. This race belongs to AJ, Rick, Big Al. And no name will appear more on the trophy than Unser. This is the place for crushed dreams of F1 drivers it’s never easy, always hard and only a win for the very best and luckiest on that given day in May! All hail the king for a day, pack it up do it again, it is a love of racing here in Indy.
Funny thing to add to the Metric vs Imperial, as a veteran the US Army basically works exclusively in metric for distances. Mostly due to the Army needing to be able to function with allied militaries and not look like twats. In addition, I worked at Ford for repairs for a while and shocker there was a lot of Metric on those American cars.
I remember when th 15:15 e Ford 302 cubic inch engine started to be the 5.0 litre and Chevrolet 350 became the 5.7. Mercury 7.0 litre was used for their 428 in the early ‘70’s too.
On the note of F1 drivers in Indy, there were also Villeneuve and Montoya who both won the Indy 500 before even becoming F1 drivers - I also just wanted an excuse to mention the legend that is JPM. 🤩👏
Some fractions turn into really weird decimals 😅 The SAE wrenches in my tool chest were all confined to a drawer labelled "stupid fractions" for what is closing in on two decades, but now that I have an old Jag (XJ-S V12) those quarters, eighths, and sixteenths are suddenly relevant 😂
You can accuse the F1 guys of a lot of things - but since I'm Canadian and maybe I'm not seeing it but they have always been quite complimentary of Indycar or it's predecessor, CART. They also generally praise Super Formula. Some modern Indycar fans, particularly the "Oval Mafia", are incredibly dismissive of not only F1 but they continually deride Super Formula as a series of "bad road racing pay drivers". I recent years I've seen more of this than elitism from F1 fans. Sportscar fans also need to put a lid on the current elitism - not only has Sportscar racing been revived and collapsing since the end of the Group C era in 1992/1993 (how many reg changes are we at now? I lost count.), but their current prototypes are actually slower than Boy Racer Silhouette Super GT GT500 cars.
I would say that from my time paying attention to Motorsport at least here in the US. F1 elitist reputation comes from the sport itself rather than the fans. Most either speak really positively of other series or simply don’t care. What I have have seen though is a lot of “punching up” like they have an inferiority complex.
@@rexthewolf3149 IMSA guys basically hate every other series (F1 is boring and all about money, WEC "won't let Americans win", Indycar is a a series of F1 rejects driving antiques, Super Formula is a bad ride buyer series, Super GT are bunch of Ricers racing F&F Supras, etc.)
@@palm92 sounds about right, the WEC remarks is funny cause corvette racing has always done well. Last week Porsche Penske an Corvette won their classes in Qatar.
Super GT are fast right now because of the tire war and because Hypercar was purposely designed to limit budgets in order to attract more manufacturers. I do wish there were more readily-available options to watch GT500/300, though.
Bump Day is kind of like a reverse Pre-Qualifying session, in that it happens at the end rather than the start. And long gone are the days where you could rock up for your first stab at the 500 and stick a Buick engine in the back to qualify and get the wonga.
@@palm92 Charlie Kimball was the only Carlin car that made it while Pato O’ Ward and Sage Karam failed. Basically 3 out of 4 Carlin cars failed to make it
Anyone who has watched the Indy 500 knows the last 20, 10 and 5 laps the field ramps up the aggressiveness to the point where they are absolutely willing to risk crashing to win. He never got to see those laps in 2017. I still wonder how Alonso would have coped with that... While I like to think he'd have ramped up with it, we'll seemingly never know. :(
Minor nitpick: we use the "US Customary System" in the US, not Imperial measurements. It's actually closer to the OLD Imperial system, before England changed it. That's why there are "long tons" (Imperial) and "short tons" (US), which are both different from metric "tonnes." We also use the Metric system pretty commonly as well in the US. Customary is more common for everyday measurements (weather forecast, cooking, etc.), while Metric is more common for science and industry. There are a few exceptions, like IndyCar setups, apparently. I don't know of anywhere that uses audio jacks that don't originally come from inch measurements though.
I had a co-worker bet me a dollar he wouldn't last 5 laps. I lost the bet long before the race even started. Props to Zak for walking away, instead of throwing money at it and essentially running someone else's team.
Great video mate keep it up, always gives me smile when i come home from highschool and see aiden new video, and i always check it out, of not that day, than in the near future
That Dixon crash you described is in essence what happened to Greg Moore. Still the most disturbing crash I’ve seen. And I watched Senna crash at Imola
Not quite. Dixon was launched into Low Earth Orbit for several meters while Greg Moore stayed on the ground until his wheels caught the concrete path in the backstretch grass dumping him just high enough mash his head into the wall.
Tbh, if you watch Barrichello’s crash from that same weekend, his honestly looks so much worse than Senna’s. But Senna died instantly, Barrichello survived almost unscathed barring minor injuries. That whole race has such a cursed vibe to me. Also, Massa’s at Hungary in 2009 is honestly one of the most disturbing because you just see him go limp in the cockpit and his foot stuck on the accelerator. If that crash had happened 10-15 years earlier he would not have survived. I think he had Ayrton’s angel looking out for him that day.
Oval racing isn't just road racing without the right hand turns. As you pointed out, there's the precision. You got to put the car in the right place at the right time, or else you're losing a position, or time each lap. The aero demands are quite different (in fact, if you ran a current spec F1 car and a current spec IndyCar on a superspeedway, the IndyCar probably beats it, because it can reduce the drag further. Put them on a road course and it's the other way around, of course.) Brakes aren't used on superspeedways on most green laps. It's a different discipline as much as drag racing is, and the general similarity of the shapes of formula cars (F1, IndyCar, their feeder series, Formula E, and the like) doesn't change that.
It's also likely that the current F1 engines would blow up because they aren't designed to run at redline for 90% of the race (which is very different to 90% at full throttle).
Ahem, it’s the “Alboreto Curve” now. 🤭 And it’s not that it’s the “hardest” - Eu Rouge at Spa is harder because of the gentle change of direction at high speed, uphill with a blind exit. So like Alboreto, it’s not wholly the difficulty in getting the corner right, it’s the disproportionately high price you pay for getting it wrong. Hence why circuits like Imola and Monaco are seen as very demanding, there’s no margin for error (same logic applies to the Indy 500 and ovals in general, you don’t get a second chance if you get it wrong.) And hence why nobody really likes Paul Ricard - it’s seen as a test track.
Zak Brown is spelled without the C.
I blame this Zach guy who has all the images credited in the video. Also contains community submitted images!
Very Poetic final word mate.
but i genuinely laughed out loud at too dumb to turn right.😂😂😂
“Non Athletic Sport Centred Around Rednecks” got me! 🤣
McLaren’s sheer hubris, public humiliation, and their response to go full time instead of running away is an amazing and respectable story
People bash ovals, but fail to realize the razor thin margins of adjustments and driver input that needs to be made to make the difference. A 10th of a mph is everything at Indy.
And the speed! 220mph in the corners and 240mph on the straights, passing and weaving through traffic is truly awesome. And the race distance takes concentration and endurance.
The is nothing faster or goes longer than Indy.
You can try as hard as you wish to make it sound better. It is boring , pack drafting racing.
@@ronbelanger4113 And you think modern F1 is interesting with Max Verstappen winning everything? At least with Indycar we get different winners consistently.
@@456MrPeople Was not commenting toward F1.
@@456MrPeopleSame in nascar, just a shame they have play-off stupidity.
Curious thing about Indy. The vast majority of fans were rooting for Fernando. I can't think of another sporting event where an interloper shows up and the fans root for them. No them vs. us. The general feeling seems to be "If you're going to go 240mph and turn left without lifting your right foot then....God's Speed Fernando."
I think the Indy500 has a unique allure to it, in part because drivers do come from other series and try their luck. That's why fans will cheer for the underdogs, because people like Fernando come and take the race (and Indycar as a sport) on it's own terms and compete like everyone else, which shows a lot of respect for the event. It's not about trying an exhibition or a test, it's a proper race and you'll sink or swim, and anyone who understands that is welcome to try.
On a related note, I hope Colin Braun is impressive enough to go full-time in Indycar next year. I really like how Indycar still has crossover with other non-open wheel series
Edit:
What other series has:
Its own ladder talent
Former F1 drivers
Former F1 ladder drivers
Former sportscar drivers
Former TINTOP drivers
All in one open wheel series and all reasonably competitive regardless of background
On Twitter maybe the Indy Fans gatekeep, but if you come to IMS and persist & do well, They/we will LOVE you... Huge fan bases for Dan Wheldon, JPM, Pato, Kannan, Castroneves & Takuma Sato to name a few.
I noticed it a lot with NASCAR's fanbase too. If you watched NASCAR in the late 2000s-early 2010s, Juan Pablo Montoya and Marcos Ambrose were fan favorites.
Most racing fans don't realize how brave he was to compete.
My biggest complaint with Indycar is that the marketing and coverage suck. I remember TV cutting away from an Indycar race with a handful of laps left because they had to show live golf.
In Australia in the 1980s onwards we had the BBC feed. A number of times the British Open (Golf) was on at the same time as the British F1 race. We were shown (live) the start and finish of the F1 race. We did usually get the full races.
@@simonkevnorris there were a few years in the late 90's that we woke up for the 1st F1 race of the season in the US not knowing what channel the race was race, or if it was even being aired. They were signing TV deals at the last minute!
@@AeroGuy07 Yes, the F1 coverage of motor sports in the USA is strange at times - even Champcars/Indycars is a bit weird. I think the one network will cover some races and another network the rest (if you're lucky).
Bernie Ecclestone took hold of F1 and sold the TV rights as a package rather than let Networks pick and chose.
dude, ~10 years back i was in the Michiana area ( north central Indiana along the Michigan state line ) and they cut away from the Indy 500 with 10 laps to go so retarded bint could give an "emergency weather alert" about straight line winds exceeding 80mph and that people needed to take cover, blah, blah, blah. and they stayed on the "alert" for the next 20 minutes, until well after the finish of the race.
.
the supposed straight line winds? yeah, nothing ever came of that.
It`s just good enough for that competition!
Being born and raised in Indianapolis is the reason I’m a huge fan of Motorsport. I remember as a kid my most favorite day of the year was the day my dad took me to the track for practice. I remember Christmas 1990 one of my presents was a race day ticket for the 1991 500. From about 1993 on I became more aware of F1 and started watching every so often. Because I was a Villeneuve fan I started watching every race religiously starting in 1996. I won’t say any one racing series is better than the other. Each series has its positives and negatives.
Fun fact: Both of the Indy 500's Alonso qualified for were won by Takuma Sato.
And Sato overtook Alonso at the 2007 Canadian GP in a Super Aguri.
Apparently these newer generations have never heard of being able to complement somebody without s******* on somebody else
Back in the day we saw this as football (soccer) fans getting into motorsport.
Apparently, these older generations are arrogant enough to believe they didn’t do the same thing.
I think what is massively overlooked about this bump day qualifying of Alonso and McLaren. What many fans who are dismissive about Indycar spec nature is that the failure here wasn't about whether Fernando Alonso an extremely talented and exalted driver was good enough. No, what people really need to understand is that despite Indycar's spec nature, there is significant amount of engineering to get the car to run at peak qualifying, let alone avoiding bump day.
The problem is Indycar series doesn't talk about the engineering of individual teams. The media generally talks about engineering as league when it's a safety or performance of a track. So nobody hears about the individual engineering differences between the teams and assumes that all the cars are the same. Not the case at all. Besides the choice of engines there's huge differences in dampers, which heavily effects the performance of the car. The top teams are more invested in the quality of their dampers, as well as the setups. It's not obvious to fans like it is with F1 where you can literally see the aero body and suspension stance changes.
However as much as I've expressed about the significance of Indycar's engineering, the driver skill, talent and experience plays a bigger role in Indycar than F1. You can't put Verstappen in a Williams car and expect him to make podium, But you can put Palou in a DCR (Dale Coyne Racing) car and have a better chance of making podium. In a lot of ways the disparities between teams is actually very similar for both F1 and Indycar, both leagues have their podium teams and perennial backmarkers. The difference is that drivers have a better chance of overcoming whatever engineering deficiencies there are in Indycar. Still engineering matters, even if it's spec racing.
I remember how crazy this was, I almost couldn't have believed this the moment
I was there for that Bump Day in 2019. You could feel the tension in the McLaren/Carlin garage that day. It was just one thing after another...the Texas test, Honda and Chevy hedging on an engine, having the car painted wrong, etc. Just a bad week altogether.
One of my best moments, though, was getting Fernando's autograph in the garage area that day. I still got in my collection.
Yay.!!!More discussion of Indycar. Can't wait for the season opener at St. Pete
I have always thought that Bump Day was as exciting as Race Day, with drivers often shedding tears of joy just to be in the last starting position of the Indianapolis 500. It still amazes me that some of the best drivers (Unser, Fittipaldi, Hinchcliffe, Alonzo, etc.) can be knocked out of the race, but no matter who you are, you still have to earn your spot on the grid.
Qualifying weekend in general is more interesting then the race a lot of years IMHO. I keep saying I am going to go to qualifying weekend one year.
The 500 miles of turning left is so accurate but also so wrong, I'm sure you have tried it in a sim and it's not as easy as they make it look, and doing that speed and keeping your foot in while others are crashjng takes some serious balls
Yes, F1 races to 200 mph for a split second, in single file and passes in the slow corners. Indy races at 240 mph all race long, passing at that speed with changing track conditions and cars handling.
There is no track faster than Indy.
It's a mixture of the acceleration and deceleration along with directional changes that make F1 stand out. In the early 1990s I was getting a bit blase about F1 and I travelled to Montreal in 1991 or 1992. I had seen the braking and acceleration into the hairpin (where Kubica had his accident) before but I took a wander along towards the pits and stopped at an opening in the fence and had a view of the chicane near the casino (I think that may have become the last chicane) and I saw Mansell to through there and the,direction change was something else.
I've been at a number of CART/IndyCar races Detroit (before it moved to Bell Isle), St Louis, Indy 500 (1993), Mid Ohio and Elkart Lake (both 1997) and do enjoy the different series and tracks.
Yyooooo Aidan finally figured out how to pronounce Gil de Ferrans name
Only to stop Brazilians saying IT'S JILL DE FE-RAN with loads of Brazilian flags after it.
Gil de Ferran sounds more natural.
Paul Page, one of the main ABC commentators, would say it as Jill de Ferran, a combination of the two. That’s how I thought it was supposed to be pronounced for years, it was only recently I learned it’s Fe-ran
This will always be one of my favorite underdog stories in auto racing. Juncos Racing had no sponsors and have to turn a road course car to an oval car after it got wrecked during practice. After Kyle Kaiser and Juncos Racing bumped McLaren out one of their original sponsors came back onboard after getting free advertisement because the team was cash strapped on replacing pit uniforms. McLaren came to Indy and got humbled horribly bad.
I remember watching the live timing of 2019 Bump Day while listening to the radio feed. As a recall, nobody gave Kaiser a chance in hell of making it with 4 laps to do in a thrown together ex-road course car. *I* didn't think Kaiser would do it until I saw the live timing at turn 4, lap 4. "Bloody hell," I thought "this is gonna be something once the fans get hold of it."
Sadly, it was KK's best ever achievement in racing. He was overlooked when Juncos went full time in IndyCar and the seats went to Callum Ilott, and later Agustin Canapino. Kyle Kaiser gave up racing and now works as a financial analyst.
On the opening point. F1 to the majority of people represents motorsport as a whole. So when F1 sucks, they think motorsport sucks too. That's my reason for wanting to bring up different series' to people.
It's a shame the series that arguably sucks the most for parity and actual racing, is the one that represents motorsport as a whole to the majority of people, at least outside of the United States. The general perception of motorsport would be a lot better in the alternate universe where e.g. WEC, Indycar, SRO GT3 etc were in that position, or at least were more mainstream. That's why fans of those get annoyed at how things are.
Gatekeeping however I agree is counterproductive to trying to grow interest in a series.
I never understood this modern obsession for parity at all costs. The governing body coming in and modifying team's cars race to race to keep them even (WEC/GT3) or just giving up and turning the series into a spec series (Indycar/Nascar) is so underwhelming.
It just kills so many stories before they can even take place, the tales of Smokey Yunik, Porsche 917, Godzilla, Lotus ground effect, Penske super secret engine, Bill Eliott making up 2 and a half laps under green at Daytona, the Underbird, T-rex, acid-dipped camaro, the Can-Am vacuum cleaner. All that is amazing stuff that stands the test of time. That's why F1 is and will continue to be king, because they allow these stories to take place, and then they do their best to promote them.
Meanwhile other series are just pushing to make the on-track action more and more intense with little regard for everything else. Yes, the on track action matters, improving it will bring viewers assuming all else being equal, but it pales in comparison with the stories. If the chase for action undermines said stories (looking at you, BoP), then you just have a net negative.
@@-ragingpotato-937 For me it's a case of the athletes (in this case the drivers) having a fair/level playing field. If the playing field isn't level for the athletes, it stops being a sport. It'd be like if a football team showed up with robotic enhancements.
Formula 1 for example, inherently isn't fair to 18 of the 20 drivers who can't compete because of their respective cars. Some worse off than others. There's no true way of knowing who the best driver in a season was. I'd say it's more of a "contest" than a "sport" in that regard.
I do get what you mean about it not allowing much room for the stories of the old days though. Motorsport used to be like the wild west, but nowadays through rule refinement and the closing of loopholes, that era has largely been left behind. We now have the ability to have a level playing field, so that's what people generally want. I think sim racing has played its part in this mentality change.
The cost cap & windtunnel time rules in F1 I think are a good compromise for that series, at least in theory. It's like an alternative form of BoP, while still keeping that wild west somewhat alive to keep the hardcore F1 fans happy.
That's just my take on it anyway. Good to read and understand the different perspectives on the subject, as it does divide opinion.
@@-ragingpotato-937That’s a lovely way of admitting F1 sucks as an actual RACING series
@@NukeshotMedia F1 technically isn't a drivers series, it is a constructors one.
@@-ragingpotato-937the problem is that to get manufacturers to enter cars into a street-based or street-look-a-like series, there has to be some sort of playfield-levelling, otherwise they wouldn't bother as some street car designs are going to be noticeably more competitive than others (because the street car pursues a different market or different goals than one from another brand).
The other side of that is budget. Without rules to limit the creativity and such, the budgets spiral out of control, which will drive some sponsors away and some teams into bankruptcy or closing up shop.
Hey, it happens. Back in 1993 (Mansell's rookie year at Indy) Bobby Rahal was not only a past winner of the race but the series defending champion and he missed, which, though not an international story, is a lot more unlikely than a guy coming from another series with a new team and missing, even if the guy was an F1 champ. If I remember correctly, the Rahal-Hogan team made an attempt at building their own chassis that year and it just wasn't good enough. They ended up getting bumped and time ran out before he got another chance to get back in. It's a long time ago so I'm a little fuzzy on the exact details. I think the only reason there was a lot of fun in Alonso missing was nothing against Alonso. I think even IndyCar fans would have been disappointed to see Alonso miss because who doesn't want to see how an F1 champ would do at Indy, just out of curiosity, but F1 fans are so insufferable that it made Alonso's miss a cause of satisfaction.
I was there at the 1993 Indy 500 on a trip from the UK along with some mates from Toronto and Cleveland. Someone had one of those full sized card board cutouts of Bobby Rahal and had added the words "I want tickets" (for a lot of people including us that is how you sourced tickets - from one of the touts. There wasn't a huge mark up though.)
Edited: Fixed some auto correct
Rahal actually had purchased rhe rights to the Trusports chassis and rebuilt it as his own. It had promise but I don't think the execution was right. In 94 Rahal dumped the chassis for Honda and almost failed to qualify again he rented two 93 Penske Ilmors so he and Mike Groff would make the race and did. Frankly that's the greatest part about indy NO ONE IS SAFE.
Alonso is the perfect candidate to be the second only to hill to win the triple crown
I want to see him join Kimi and Button in doing some nascar road course races, I think he'd do really well.
JPM could do it as well
@@suysauce007 JPM would need to win Le Mans.
@@M1ggins I can see JB having a crack at Indy one day… but recently, I did hear him speaking about what his goals are and he sounds really committed to the WEC. Because he had been trying out lots of different racing these last few years, but he was quite adamant about giving the WEC a really proper go with JOTA. (Personally, I really want to see him win Le Mans, and not just because I’m a Porsche fan.)
Kimi, I honestly don’t see him trying endurance racing. I think it would be too great of a commitment for him.
@@Nikelaos_Khristianos I can see him dong the road races, but he was good friends with Wheldon and swore he'd never do open wheel racing on an oval after he died.
I hope Alonso takes another crack at Indy. It would be great to see more F1 Champions race at Indy and fill in the extra cars if they can qualify.
Tribalism. The lowest form of conflict resolution. None more so obvious than seeing proverbial "fans" of motorsports up in arms over quite literally nothing but their egos. The best part is the fact that they are typically engaging in an argument that would remain completely unaffected with or without their opinions.
Beautifully said. Even if you had just left it at the end of your second sentence (if one considered a one-word fragment a sentence) it would have been great.
0:49 Surely Formula E is for F1 rejects these days! 😅
It’s a little bit of both, Indy requires you to move to America which not all driver are willing do to. Formula E being based in Europe makes it easier for European drivers to adjust.
@@rexthewolf3149 The sad thing is a lot of the F1 "rejects" aren't rejects because of lack of talent or ability but because of lack of money and connections. These drivers will get stuck with the reject label as if they were lousy drivers when many times it was they were lousy in not choosing to be born to billionaire parents.
@@RRaquello yeah. Also simply being there at the wrong time. Verstappen was in Mercedes court for a good while but they couldn’t guarantee seat in 2016. While RB could. That directly lead to the creation of the Mercedes Junior program.
@@RRaquellocough cough Mazepin cough cough
It's had that label since the series started 10 years ago
The other teams were watching them make these mistakes from the beggining, and offered help, but their Euro-elite crew didnt listen to anyone. They were running their garage like an F1 or euro feeder series garage. Here in the USA, its different on ovals. The entire operation from where and what parts you keep readily available and handy, changes on an oval as opposed to a street or road course. Things like where you keep equipment, what you have on hand, and the biggest, the backup car needs to be instanly available. Any change you make to your primary car should be immediately made to the backup. They didn't give a shit and their backup was down the street being painted while their primary car was a total mess. Afterall, they had to looks shiny and pretty on raceday. My dad works in the series and saw a lot of guys in orange realize that oval racing is 100x harder than they ever imagined. My comment isnt here to bash europeans, its bashing the errogance that team had, and their lack of respect for oval racing. Plenty from others people from other countries have come here, learned, and succeeded at ovals. Its very very technical, and difficult.
The best part about the Kaiser wreck was some of the team was watching from the shop. They saw it happen and immediately started throwing spares in their pickup trucks. They rolled in with all these IndyCar body pieces in the bed of a truck and a guy in the back holding them making sure they don't fall out.
Sebastien Bourdais was asked about the possibility of McLaren buying their way into the 500, and he said they shouldn’t bother; they’ll still have a slow car and will be miserable running at the back of the field all day.
Im literally the most open minded person if we talk about motorsports, I literally watch every single one of them, Indy, NASCAR, IMSA, F1, WEC, WRC, World of Outlaws, but if Alonso had a Honda he would have won without a doubt.
i honestly dont think that he would have won, he could have a chance of winning, but winning the Indy 500 is even more than have the perfect balanced car with the perfect strategy, it helps a lot but that place is... magical, if it doesn't want a driver to win he won't, look at Hilldebrand, Carpenter and the infamous Andretti's Curse. Dixon and TK besides being oval masters to this day "only" won 1 time each. Indy 500 chooses his winners, and even if it means that Marcus Ericsson is an Indy 500 winner and Fernando Alonso don't, it is what it is
The year he DNQ’d Chevrolet had the better engine.
Love the Indycar Content, especially enjoy hearing a europeans stance on the event.
I remember attending that race after qualifying; there was so much Alonso items at clearance prices while all the regular team items were at your regular prices.
Hearing Gil de Ferran's name hurts right now. Crazy to think him and Fontana gone within in the same year.
This is why Indy 500 qualifying is my favorite qualifying session every year. It doesn't care about your reputation, success, etc. You have to qualify on merit to be one of the Fastest 33. Bump Day creates many great stories of success and failure
Watching Graham Rahal get bumped 30 years after his father did was astromically mental
I remember in the old days on Bump Day there'd be a guy who'd hang out of a window and shoot a starter's pistol signifying it was 5pm and the track was closed, except for the 1 car out qualifying. Bump Day used to equal riveting drama.
I will say while I couldn't have predicted McLaren 2019 effort to be the disaster it was, it was predictable that they would struggle. Zak Brown handled it well though and he earned alot of respect for that. I don't think most F1 bosses would have done the same.
Man, open cockpit racing was cool and all, and we were all collectively weirded out by the halo, but god damn. Dixon was incredibly lucky but I'm super glad the halo is now a thing that exists.
I will never understand knocking an oval track race car set-up for only turning left. In an oval track set-up every corner of the car is different, it has to be in order to maximize cornering speed. If you lose speed in the turns, you can't get it back on the straights easily.
I can take an oval track car, give it 50/50 side bias. 50/50 front to rear. Some negative camber all the way around. Caster in the front, with some toe out. Equal tire pressure across the front, then on the rear. A touch rear brake bias. A little downforce and I'm on my way.
It may not be the fastest right off, but I can go out and push the car enough to learn the next adjustments without knocking a wall down and hurting myself. I'll have a better feel of the car for those pesky right hand turns. Oval track racing the word we use that I rarely hear with road racers is split. As in "What kind of split you running in your front springs." And 'split' meaning the difference of the left and right or any particular adjustment. Again because EVERY corner of the car is different.
Wait Kyle Larson is going to try the Indy-Charlotte double. As a former nascar fan that’ll be fun to watch.
It will & I think he's got a good chance to win both
I think he'll do quite well. Hoping for a top-5 there.
In an earlier day, Kyle Larson would have been a career Indy driver. So would Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart.
Unfortunately, nobody in Indycar gave Gordon, or Smoke the time of day. Even John Menard had to be given a bump. "You're gonna want him in your car John!"
@@RRaquello
@@jonnyspa27 That was in the days just before the World Wide Web and the main online racing board was the Compuserve Racing Forum and I remember there was going to be a fan revolt if Stewart, who went into the first IRL race without a secured ride, didn't get an opportunity to drive since he was exactly the type of driver the IRL hype was saying the series was created for. Tony George had to beg John Menard to give him one of his spare cars, and Menard, with all his billions, said OK to save Tony's face. The whole episode created an immediate atmosphere of skepticism even among IRL supporters.
I'm an F1 and Indy fan. F1 cars are superior however Indycar is better racing. Best pure driving is probably in the WRC.
It was very nice to see European motorsport elitists get served a fat slice of humble pie that day. Thankfully a lot of Euro fans aren't like this, but a large amount have this notion that IndyCar is some cute little series that requires no skill to succeed in, and that any F1 driver can just rock up and win immediately.
Last one who did was Nigel Mansell in... 1993...
@@AidanMillward Zanardi came very, very close in 1996 - and likely would have if he wasn't hit by PJ Jones in Vancouver.
@@AidanMillward Mansell coming into Indycar driving a car that Michael and Mario Andretti helped develop for '93 with one of the top tier teams in Newman-Haas was diametrically opposite experience to what Alonso had. Nigel got the job done, but didn't get on well with Mario... a different story altogether that. Great vid Aidan.
@@jonnyspa27 The thing with Mansell was he was all sunshine and sweetness when everything went his way but turned into a big baby when things went a little sour. None of the "stiff upper lip we'll muddle through" British stoicism from him. He picked up his toys and went back home.
@@jonnyspa27 he also did it with a broken back.
Brown has grown on me over the years. At first he seemed to be the typical loud boisterous yank. Now seems a very competent and sensible CEO/Team Principal/Mouthpiece for McLaren.
Bro his motor sport knowledge is unbelievable
Another wonderful one, Aidan. Definitely Alonzo was welcomed by all the Indycar fans and I know there's a hope he'll come back someday. BTW, small point. I think capacity at Indy is 400,000 including the infield. They may have only the second sellout ever this year. Ticket sales are running only a tad behind the sellout of 2016. I think that's close to 300,000 seats (not sure about that. Maybe closer to 250).
David land covered the saga from beginning to end and he was the first to predict it…
Aidan is always a touch of class and sanity! Thanks bud!.also endurance sports car racing is relevant to us mere mortals..
Jack Brabham's first attempt at the Indianapolis 500 came as the reigning World Drivers' Champion in 1961 when he and Cooper turned up with a rear engine car that started a revolution in a racing world then dominated by front engine roadsters.
He qualified 17th and finished a credible 9th completing the full 200 laps in a car that only lacked for straight line speed.
While a number in the USAC paddock dismissed rear engine cars as being for drivers who "Liked to be pushed around" ... the more observant saw that while Brabham's Cooper lacked straight line speed, none of the Roadsters could match its cornering ability. It was quickly figured out that all a rear engine car needed to beat the roadsters was a powerful enough engine.
And by 1965....27 of the 33 cars on the grid were rear engine, including the entire front row including eventual first rear engine winner Jim Clark.
@@Holden308and then in 1966 the grid was made up of Lotus 38 clones cos Clark’s car was so good.
Great video! I enjoy both open wheel series equally. I did a video once explaining how much toll is taken on the human body comparing Indy to F1. Both are hard on the drivers and the car. F1 drivers get punished with up to 6’s under heavy braking. Most of the G Forces are lateral (side to side & front to back). In oval racing an Indycar driver can experience up tp 5.5 positive G’s on the banked ovals.Think of a fighter jet pulling 5.5 G’s in a turn. Or Think of it like driving through Eau Rouge and into Radion 4 times ever 40 seconds or so for 500 miles. They are both brutal.
Great job! The eye-opener for me as a Formula 1 fan vs. NASCAR drivers, was the old IROC series. I was astounded to see those oval track "guys who could only turn left (or right)" winning as often as not on road courses against endurance race drivers and other road course drivers. That was almost 5 decades ago now, but I have never doubted the abilities of any professional racing driver, regardless of venue. Driving a car fast in a controlled, high traffic setting requires monster skills regardless of whether it's open wheeled or closed wheeled, stock car, LMP, or F1.
Being a F1 follower since I was a kid (TIfosi, of course)... now i'm 36 and from time to time I watch the races because the passion for a team is soemthing that never fades away. But I fell in love with Indy due to Fernando's first run at Indy. Loved the race, the dynamic, the strategy, the colors of the cars. Everything was new for me.
Last year, thanks to Canapino participation, I followed a complete Indy season for the first time. Followed the whole Month Of May for the Indy 500 and man... those guys made me remember why I love racing. The liveries, the celebration of a historical race like the 500... it's another championship insde the Indy championship. I have several friends who LOVED the race and are counting the days to watch the one this year. Canapino described Oval racing perfectly... it's another type of racing. Very subtle, very precise, it's totally different.
For sure, Indy needs to improve in a lot of topics. But I really love the racing series and i think F1 should learn a thing or two about it.
I remember hearing about this but not really knowing what it was about.
For what it’s worth I never thought the “wrong colour” thing cost Alonso a place on the grid, more it was symptomatic of a balls-up of an attempt.
Kaiser knocking out Alonso was a David vs Goliath moment and my favorite Indy 500 story ever
I watched the Indy 500 for the first time last year. It was FUCKING NUTS! Definitely going to watch it again.
I don’t get motorsports elitism, I feel like this is a niche enough thing already and we don’t need to be bashing each other for our preferences. I have an older coworker who’s into NASCAR, and I grew up an Indycar/F1/rally fan. We might not understand each others sports, but every NASCAR race I ask how he’s doing in his fantasy draft and he tells me when he hears about something in my world (example, even NASCAR fans heard when Max got 10 in a row.)
I'd say there's two types of fans
There's people who just like racing and all it entails.
Then there's people who like the entertainment side of it, things like 'drive to survive', drama between people, that sorta thing.
I think there's more of it now than there used to be because the media in general, not just auto racing, has become more departmentalized and focuses on specific audiences and demographics. Compare it to something like popular music, where the big radio stations used to play every type of music that was selling at the time (the traditional top 40 station) and you could hear Led Zeppelin on the same station that was playing the Carpenters and the O'Jays. Back then (in the US) most racing would be on shows like ABC's Wide World of Sports or the CBS Sports Spectacular, and it could be anything from F1 to Sports Cars to NASCAR to IndyCars to Figure 8 racing from Islip to Evel Knievel. There wasn't that much racing on TV so if you were a racing fan you'd watch whatever they were showing and you enjoyed each for what they were. Nowadays it's all specialized and each big time series (and a lot of small series) show all their races on their own channels and it seems most fans will follow just one category and never even give other categories a look.
If I'm not mistaken Kaiser's car that bumped Alonso was later sold to Meyer Shank Racing and in 2021 Castroneves took that car to victory lane for his 4th win
Correct
Attended my first Indy 500 in 2017. What a bonus to have Alonso competing. What an amazing experience! Watching them race at average speeds F1 never achieves even for seconds is quite something, and more appreciated seeing in person. Had a ring side seat for Dixon's unbelievable flight. Put it on your bucket list. You'll be glad you did.
In 2017, Fernando managed to get a high position because he entered with Andretti, a juggernaut, and had drivers and engineers who were extemely experienced at the Brickyard. One thing that many F1 fans don't understand about oval racing is how setup can be more important in order to go fast--you can't "carry" a bad car around an oval the same way you can on a road course, so Fernando benefitted massively with having 3 teammates who knew what he was doing. And one of his teammates ended up winning, former F1 star Takuma Sato, who won it again in 2020. His two other teammates, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Alexander Rossi, were 500 champions, too, though Rossi's win the year before in large part due to an extremely bold strategy by Bryan Herta ("clutch and coast"). Still, a lot of data and experience to draw from.
So, Alonso's car was capable of winning. The engine failure was a luck of the draw and HPD had a string of failures since the beginning of the 2017 season. Otherwise, he did everything right.
Speaking of 2017, I always like to show Scott Dixon's crash--where his car literally split in half--as a demonstration of how safe modern motorsport is, even during the pre-halo/aeroscreen era. Dixon "only" suffered a broken ankle.
Then, after the 500, Lewis Hamilton had the nerve to use Alonso's strong performance as "proof" that Indycar isn't as good as F1, never mind that Fernando spent so much time learning and preparing for the race. The reason FA is one of the greatest of his generation is because he works extremely hard to understand how to extract the best performance from the car and how to drive the track. I remember how much Zak Brown and Alonso himself talked about watching an onboard of the previous year's race to see how things were done.
I somehow knew that 2019 won't be his year. Drama with the engines was one thing (even though HPD and American Honda don't have beef with him but they had to still answer to the big bosses in Japan) so going back with Andretti was not an option. Without the comedy of errors, they could have made it, because FA was due to drive with a number 66, the car number that was on a McLaren chassis that won the race back in 1972.
And yes, it was because of the arms race with aero that Indycar pulled the plug of the manufacturer aero kits. That had drama early on, too, with Honda going to Indycar to intervene so that they could catch up in development (the Indycar rulebook contains provisions for that). The IR-18 aero kit were actually improved in 2019 because the superspeedway package of 2018 was such that it created bad racing, mainly because it took out too much downforce and the drivers crank the bias the cars so far forwards that a lot of the crashes were to the rear end coming loose.
Bad luck and stupid drama follows Alonso wherever he goes. I hope he takes a few more shots some day, but it seems like that won't be the case, at least for now.
Thank you for putting some respect on his name... and the issue with how lewis approached the situation. Some mfs will really see a guy prepare as a genuine fan of a race, get absolutely ready with the perfect setup, and claim it was an effortless diff. Others will see him fail in 2019 and call him a loser. It's a stupid tribalist stance, and I'm glad to see someone actually analyze the facts.
@@Ryzard It seems that since 2007, Alonso couldn't catch a break until recently enough. He is an amazing driver, and certainly more willing to dip his toes in competition outside of F1, something that few of his fellow drivers have done--and I am not counting Max Verstappen's sim racing stuff. If I remember correctly, Hulkenberg and Alonso are the only two current F1 drivers who have won Le Mans.
Speaking of Lewis, he kept mentioning how much he likes NASCAR and has expressed an interest in doing the Daytona 500. I'm still waiting for him to actually do it and face the mighty names in NASCAR.
@@TheOz91 yeah, that would be interesting for sure with Lewis.
Iirc, Alonso also has put a lot into junior series/karting and such, but I only recall vaguely.
I hope to see him hit Indy again, perhaps for full seasons? Or go into the endurance hypercars (there's a superteam with max in the cards since both have been interested) even sports cars or NASCAR with their road and street courses would be awesome.
I just hope to see his hunger continue. I do hope he gets more success, because he really deserves some more than his stats show.
Edit:
Side note, watching in 2023 interviews after Monaco was hilarious, with both max and Fernando squirming and asking members of the press/each other if the 500 had started yet. Drivers are drivers, they love racing regardless of where it is. I wish some fans could pick up that trait.
@@Ryzard That particular Sunday every year is a great one for race fans, especially those on the west side of the pond. Monaco in the morning, Indy 500 in the afternoon, and the Coca Cola 600 in the evening.
And F1 drivers do watch NASCAR. Otherwise, Shell wouldn't have released a video featuring a conversation between Joey Logano and Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc. Interesting thinga they talk about even when it's obviously to promote Shell products--and shows that fans of either series need to stop hating on the other, especially F1 fans on NASCAR.
This is a good comment but I'm sure Honda could not give less of a damn about Alonso "beef" but they vetted him because he was a Toyota-sponsored driver who had just won the 24h. Honda is historically way way way more bitter towards Toyota than any animosity they could build towards Fernando. They also officially congratulated him on his podium on Qatar 21.
Crashing a car at jndy is an especially big deal. Teams spend all year getting as much friction out of the wheels and transmission, plus perfecti g the body work to eliminate as much drag as possible. As tight as the margins are, binning your race car is going to cost you no matter the team.
Great work, more than just a repaint of the car caused them to miss the race. You also nailed how many fans talk of their series in comparison to others. They all have pros and cons but fan is shot for fanatic and if we didn't have them what would we do with all the blank comment boxes?
And Mario Andretti became F1 camp after winning The 500
I like Alonso but yeah being beaten by kaiser was certainly a story. I think it was briefly in the front page of the sports bit of the bbc website, which only ever covers Indycar when something bad happens. Unfortunately Lauda died shortly afterwards and that overshadowed everything.
i watched last years indy 500. was my first one and my god you can just feel how important that race is and what prestige it holds. the daytona 500 doesnt even come close to it nor does monaco or any f1 race. i would even go as far as saying that the indy 500 is miles above the 24 hours of le mans
I’ve always said Indy has more prestige than any other race. The series as a whole has less prestige than F1, WEC and NASCAR
Well, being finished in about 3 hours DOES improve the watchability of the event. (If you don't count the 500 TV Commercials)
The 2000 USGP had 200k but there were seating areas not open.
i know f1 being embarassed is more a bait title, but for real more than that is the legendary effort of Juncos Racing, imo the biggest sports moment of 2019 in any sports, and its even crazier that it didn't turned into a movie...
but the fact that he never returned neither no one in f1 tried again makes an excellent joke :D :D
and they want to end the bump day as we know in favor of locked grid!!!
I remember watching it and pissing myself laughing and that is coming from a life long F1 fan
I have a piece of Alonso's crashed sidepod that I picked up at a McLaren event.
There's people that have seen what the Indy 500 looks like on tv and then there's what it is really like being there. The cars loud and the speeds are violent. You can't get it watching it on tv and being stuck on f1 and how quiet and boring it is.
F1 cars are a lot louder than they sound on tv too.
While i dont agree with the idea that F1 drivers can just show up to another series and win immediately. The fact that the scenario has occured multiple times within a short timeframe only added to that belief for the f1 elitists.
Hulkenberg winning Lemans on his first try in 2015
Jenson Button winning the 2018 Super GT Championship on his first try
Alonso winning Lemans twice along with the Daytona 24H with another former F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi in 2018-19
And Pastor Maldonado (yes, really...) also winning the Daytona 24H in the LMP2 class in 2019
If anything, endurance racing is even more teamwork, not to mention the Hulkenberg and Alonso Le Mans wins are in wildly advantageous cars, and Super GT being a japanese domestic series isn’t as competitive as international series. I’m not disregarding F1 drivers, just saying that those examples aren’t really that good.
A Toyota not winning would have been a bigger story than Alonso winning
@@iceblade019definitely agreed on the teamwork and car aspect but we all know how easy it is to inflate an F1 elitist ego. I still see some people treating F1 drivers winning endurance races like they won it singlehandedly or acting like they were the one that carried the whole team which isn't true at all. Btw I respectfully disagree on the super GT take. I'd say the gt500 class Jenson won in is one of the most competitive championships in the world. He only won by 3 points with 1 win and the drivers he fought against were factory pro drivers from the big 3 brands, former F1 drivers and junior talent. On top of that there's a ballast system that scales with your points to make things closer and harder.
Yea ok I would challenge that to a feat done only in Indiana race a sprint car in TerraHaute I N on Friday night win, then race in Indy on Sunday and win. A feat that’s only a racer like AJ Foyt could do. That’s the racers life!
Nigel mansell winning the indycar championship right after leaving f1 as the reigning world champ there too
Excelent video. One opf the most interesting moments in the last few years in terms of motorsport. I agrre with you about the eliteesim and snobbery problem.
I was there, in the media center / paddock that year. This is not a "comedy of errors" but rather massive McLaren screwups with consequences. 1) From the start, the consensus in Gasoline Alley that year was that McLaren was doomed. The Indy500 crowd might not be cool F1 folks, but they do know Indy 500. 2) Late start? Hell, no one in their garage until after the road course race??? 3) It was obvious to me that McLaren was trying to do this effort with pocket change -- using Carlin for tech support, for starters. They didn't hire people who even knew where to find orange paint or a steering wheel. This caused me to take a look at McLaren's finances, and yeah, that year, they were probably grim. Perhaps McLaren only had a Juncos budget??? 4) Gil told the presser (in response to my question!) that they would NOT buy their way in -- but at exactly that moment my editor told me that Zak was walking around with his checkbook trying to buy a ride.
As far as "superiority" -- a midl-pack driver in F1 will be a mid-pack driver in IndyCar. Perhaps vice-versa, but FIA locks out our best drivers with the Superlicense setup, so we'll never now. Logan Sargent would run back-pack in IndyCar. Rossi saw some success in IndyCar, but can we really say that he had an F1 chance or career to show what he could do? On the other hand, top F1 drivers would come to IndyCar and do well -- Mario, Emmo, Nigel come to mind.
@@geek49203 I do not agree with this, because F1 is not a spec series. Marcus Ericsson was mid to back of the pack in F1, I don't think I need to tell you who that is.
@@FrcNeru I don't think you know my background -- media hard card, etc. I've seen lots of F1 guys come over and give it a go. I'll give you a list of names and how they did if you'd like. But we can't compare drivers 'cause NASCAR and IndyCar doesn't count to a superlicence, does it? Logan, if he comes to IndyCar, will be in the back, bet on it.
I bought this diecast. Because even though it didn't qualify it is still historic. It was actually on sale which was kind of funny really.
I mean, from the way the story is told I would almost say it's a case of the Indi-car being more about the bureaucratic exercise than about the race.... *(which is not actually true)
in this case, Alonso's failure to qualify had nothing to do with him being a good or bad driver... the team, yes, could have prepared better, but not on the driver/mechanical side!
Same here, Aiden-all Canadians are bi-numeral; metric and imperial. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
It’s funny how we use F for cooking and C for outside temperature, but F for indoor.
LOL - dpnt feel bad, as a "home mechanic" [ie, "Honey, can you fix this? We cant afford another one."] and I have to have two sets of tools [Metric and imperial] handy if I hope to get any projects done!
Americans. Brits, Canadians & Mexicans all must have both sets... you are not alone.
A few of the more famous European Pre - war Championship and F1 Championship drivers that failed to qualify at Indy: Rudolf Caracciola, Chris Amon, Lucien Bianchi, Richie Ginther, Giuseppi Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio, Rene Dreyfus, Achille Varzi, Pedro Rodriguez, Tazio Nuvolari, Alberto Ascari. Just for fun.
lol I like how you just described that crazy crash, but didn’t care enough to edit in a clip 😂
The ball nutmegging Buckner is a wild and hilarious sentence. Cheers
This sheds a ton of light on what was going on in the background. McLaren showing up that unprepared is a joke.. I used to think it had alot more to do with Alonso, but I guess not.
In my lifetime I’ve watched cars that were cobbled together from a parts bin, rule Indy “Buick V6”, never to win! Porsche bring an amazing program and fail miserably! Expectations high for this new stud who thought he was better than Mears, and Tracy was absolutely not good enough to carry Ricks lunch! This race has the need of highly skilled drivers with support from very specifically trained crews and enormous amounts of luck! I’ve seen guys I admired die in practice while holding pole position. Guys I despised win. Lost friends in the traffic mayhem of the post race evacuation from Speedway Indiana. I loved Indy, rule makers have ruined racing with rules, and bringing F1 drivers and designers just puts more Mario lifetimes onto a single win. This race belongs to AJ, Rick, Big Al. And no name will appear more on the trophy than Unser. This is the place for crushed dreams of F1 drivers it’s never easy, always hard and only a win for the very best and luckiest on that given day in May! All hail the king for a day, pack it up do it again, it is a love of racing here in Indy.
Not even F1 has run as long as The Indy 500 has
Thanks, I never knew the extent of the issues. BTW a Mars lander augered into the ground due to failure to convert inches to CM in the landing code.
It was hilarious these elites thought alonso was gonna come in and lap the entire field several times over😂 wah-wah
Hyperbole detected.
They actually lost the series the game after the Buckner incident.
They did. But all the shit they did in the other games did as much to lose them the series as much as that one but everyone remembers did.
I found that totally ridiculous that they were in upheaval about the tint of the orange instead of getting the damn car on the grid
Funny thing to add to the Metric vs Imperial, as a veteran the US Army basically works exclusively in metric for distances. Mostly due to the Army needing to be able to function with allied militaries and not look like twats. In addition, I worked at Ford for repairs for a while and shocker there was a lot of Metric on those American cars.
I remember when th 15:15 e Ford 302 cubic inch engine started to be the 5.0 litre and Chevrolet 350 became the 5.7. Mercury 7.0 litre was used for their 428 in the early ‘70’s too.
On the note of F1 drivers in Indy, there were also Villeneuve and Montoya who both won the Indy 500 before even becoming F1 drivers - I also just wanted an excuse to mention the legend that is JPM. 🤩👏
Turns out going 240 mph is hard lol
So many mistakes from McLaren. I mean how hard is it to convert from freedom units to millimeters?
Even in 2019, there was probably an app for that.
How many tenths is an eighth of an inch?
Some fractions turn into really weird decimals 😅
The SAE wrenches in my tool chest were all confined to a drawer labelled "stupid fractions" for what is closing in on two decades, but now that I have an old Jag (XJ-S V12) those quarters, eighths, and sixteenths are suddenly relevant 😂
What a great day this was…especially watching live.
You can accuse the F1 guys of a lot of things - but since I'm Canadian and maybe I'm not seeing it but they have always been quite complimentary of Indycar or it's predecessor, CART. They also generally praise Super Formula.
Some modern Indycar fans, particularly the "Oval Mafia", are incredibly dismissive of not only F1 but they continually deride Super Formula as a series of "bad road racing pay drivers". I recent years I've seen more of this than elitism from F1 fans.
Sportscar fans also need to put a lid on the current elitism - not only has Sportscar racing been revived and collapsing since the end of the Group C era in 1992/1993 (how many reg changes are we at now? I lost count.), but their current prototypes are actually slower than Boy Racer Silhouette Super GT GT500 cars.
I would say that from my time paying attention to Motorsport at least here in the US. F1 elitist reputation comes from the sport itself rather than the fans. Most either speak really positively of other series or simply don’t care. What I have have seen though is a lot of “punching up” like they have an inferiority complex.
@@rexthewolf3149 IMSA guys basically hate every other series (F1 is boring and all about money, WEC "won't let Americans win", Indycar is a a series of F1 rejects driving antiques, Super Formula is a bad ride buyer series, Super GT are bunch of Ricers racing F&F Supras, etc.)
@@palm92 sounds about right, the WEC remarks is funny cause corvette racing has always done well. Last week Porsche Penske an Corvette won their classes in Qatar.
@@palm92 also what I meant to say that that there was a lot of punching up from not from non f1 fans, your Imsa example is exactly what I think of.
Super GT are fast right now because of the tire war and because Hypercar was purposely designed to limit budgets in order to attract more manufacturers. I do wish there were more readily-available options to watch GT500/300, though.
Bump Day is kind of like a reverse Pre-Qualifying session, in that it happens at the end rather than the start.
And long gone are the days where you could rock up for your first stab at the 500 and stick a Buick engine in the back to qualify and get the wonga.
Until The Buick Engine Explodes during Race Day.
Truly a moment indeed!
Alright, F1 Elitists, do you have any excuses about this?
I love Indy car, and am in no way an “elitist”. but I could probably make the argument of McLaren being incompetent.
@@Selzor they’ve literally fumbled the entire month. It’s crazy stuff
@@Selzor honestly partnering up with Carlin was not the best idea for them
@@IanTheMotorsportsMan_YT Charlie Kimball comfortably made the race. I would argue they were fine.
@@palm92 Charlie Kimball was the only Carlin car that made it while Pato O’ Ward and Sage Karam failed. Basically 3 out of 4 Carlin cars failed to make it
Anyone who has watched the Indy 500 knows the last 20, 10 and 5 laps the field ramps up the aggressiveness to the point where they are absolutely willing to risk crashing to win. He never got to see those laps in 2017. I still wonder how Alonso would have coped with that... While I like to think he'd have ramped up with it, we'll seemingly never know. :(
Minor nitpick: we use the "US Customary System" in the US, not Imperial measurements. It's actually closer to the OLD Imperial system, before England changed it. That's why there are "long tons" (Imperial) and "short tons" (US), which are both different from metric "tonnes." We also use the Metric system pretty commonly as well in the US. Customary is more common for everyday measurements (weather forecast, cooking, etc.), while Metric is more common for science and industry. There are a few exceptions, like IndyCar setups, apparently. I don't know of anywhere that uses audio jacks that don't originally come from inch measurements though.
I had a co-worker bet me a dollar he wouldn't last 5 laps. I lost the bet long before the race even started. Props to Zak for walking away, instead of throwing money at it and essentially running someone else's team.
Great video mate keep it up, always gives me smile when i come home from highschool and see aiden new video, and i always check it out, of not that day, than in the near future
We use both in the USA too
You weren't kidding about that wreck, Jesus he was 20ft in the air.
I love both F1 and Indycar.
That Dixon crash you described is in essence what happened to Greg Moore. Still the most disturbing crash I’ve seen. And I watched Senna crash at Imola
Not quite. Dixon was launched into Low Earth Orbit for several meters while Greg Moore stayed on the ground until his wheels caught the concrete path in the backstretch grass dumping him just high enough mash his head into the wall.
Tbh, if you watch Barrichello’s crash from that same weekend, his honestly looks so much worse than Senna’s. But Senna died instantly, Barrichello survived almost unscathed barring minor injuries. That whole race has such a cursed vibe to me.
Also, Massa’s at Hungary in 2009 is honestly one of the most disturbing because you just see him go limp in the cockpit and his foot stuck on the accelerator. If that crash had happened 10-15 years earlier he would not have survived. I think he had Ayrton’s angel looking out for him that day.
Oval racing isn't just road racing without the right hand turns. As you pointed out, there's the precision. You got to put the car in the right place at the right time, or else you're losing a position, or time each lap. The aero demands are quite different (in fact, if you ran a current spec F1 car and a current spec IndyCar on a superspeedway, the IndyCar probably beats it, because it can reduce the drag further. Put them on a road course and it's the other way around, of course.) Brakes aren't used on superspeedways on most green laps. It's a different discipline as much as drag racing is, and the general similarity of the shapes of formula cars (F1, IndyCar, their feeder series, Formula E, and the like) doesn't change that.
It's also likely that the current F1 engines would blow up because they aren't designed to run at redline for 90% of the race (which is very different to 90% at full throttle).
F1 fans ovals are too easy, also f1 fans parabolica is the most difficult single corner to get perfect
Or turns 8-12 at Turkey...
Ahem, it’s the “Alboreto Curve” now. 🤭
And it’s not that it’s the “hardest” - Eu Rouge at Spa is harder because of the gentle change of direction at high speed, uphill with a blind exit. So like Alboreto, it’s not wholly the difficulty in getting the corner right, it’s the disproportionately high price you pay for getting it wrong. Hence why circuits like Imola and Monaco are seen as very demanding, there’s no margin for error (same logic applies to the Indy 500 and ovals in general, you don’t get a second chance if you get it wrong.) And hence why nobody really likes Paul Ricard - it’s seen as a test track.
The tl;dr of this is - British team turns up to turn left, Carry On film ensues.
If I'm not mistaken when Dixon flipped upside down, Alonso had a birdseye view of him from underneath.