It’s no oval: The Indy roars into Toronto.
It seems like every course on the IndyCar circuit is unique — short ovals, long ones, superspeedways, and fixed road courses — and Toronto is no different
Mike Conway made the decision to stop racing ovals about a year ago. Part of him was tired of waking up the morning after a race in a hospital bed. Part of him was afraid of not waking up at all.
In 2010, the IndyCar driver broke his leg and fractured one of his thoracic vertebrae when his car was launched into the air at the Indianapolis 500. Two years later, he returned there, lost control of his car and ended up upside down against a safety fence. Conway managed to walk away from that crash, but the British-born driver, who had never really gotten over watching Dan Wheldon die on an oval track in 2011, finally said enough was enough and decided to stick to the slower streets.
“It’s the best decision I ever made,” he said this week in advance of the Honda Indy Toronto. “I just wasn’t feeling quite comfortable on them anymore. When you go really high speeds, you have to be comfortable with the car sliding around inches away from another car at 300 kilometres per hour. I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Ed Carpenter’s decision to stay off the streets is the other side of the coin. There were no crashes or close calls. He just wasn’t any good at making right turns. And so this sea- son Carpenter teamed up with Conway to race a split program for Ed Carpenter Racing, with Carpenter handling the ovals and Conway the street courses such as Toronto.
Heading into this weekend’s doubleheader in and around Exhibition grounds, the two drivers are ranked 22nd and 23rd respectively in the IndyCar championship. Combined, their points would put them in ninth, less than 40 points out of sixth. They have two race wins this year, one for each, while keeping them both out of the hospital.
“It was my weakness,” Carpenter said of street courses. “When we looked at the team, we felt like there was an opportunity to maximize our results with me just racing the ovals. It’s obviously worked out.” Any driver will tell you that he or she can drive anything on four wheels. Juan Pablo Montoya, for instance, has raced NASCAR, Formula One, CART and IRL during his career. Even Montreal-born Alex Tagliani is racing both openwheel Indy cars and stock cars in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series this year.
Still, most racing series tend to be specialized. But while NASCAR mostly races on ovals and Formula One sticks to road courses, IndyCar is a test of versatility.
There are short ovals (Milwaukee, Iowa), tri-ovals (Pocono), superspeedways (Indianapolis, Fontana, Calif., Fort Worth, Tex.), fixed road courses (Birmingham, Ala., Houston, Mid-Ohio and Sonoma, Calif.) and temporary circuit courses (Detroit, Long Beach, Calif., St. Petersburg, Fla., and Toronto). Each one has its own set of characteristics. But the most obvious difference is speed.
At Indianapolis, cars reach speeds in excess of 300 km/h. On the winding streets of Toronto, the average speed is about half that. As such, the car’s configuration — “A hundred of the smallest things will have an impact on your speed,” Tagliani said — changes dramatically. And the driver must also follow suit.
“It’s two totally disciplines for sure,” said Marco Andretti, who started out on road courses. “But I think what’s cool about the IndyCar series, and what sets it apart from any other series in the world, is the diversity of tracks. You need to adapt.”
“It’s great,” 2013 IndyCar season champion Scott Dixon said. “You go to Pocono and you’re racing 230 miles per hour and then you go to Ohio and it’s a different level and then go to a slippery street course like Toronto. They’re different extremes. It keeps you on your toes. You have to go with an open mind.”
A driver can really let his skills shine on a street course. If you have a slow car, you can make up time by aggressively taking turns. Ovals require more guts than finesse. Try and push the car too hard and the car will eventually push back.
“If you’ve got a bad car, it’s the longest race in your life,” Conway said. “You can influence the car more on a street course than on the ovals. You can’t really force the car to do too much on the ovals or else you’ll be in the walls.”
A lot has changed since Bobby Rahal won the first Molson Indy in 1986. For one, a beer company no longer sponsors the race. Exhibition Stadium and The Flyer roller coaster, which used to welcome drivers as they turned off Lakeshore Boulevard and entered the exhibition grounds, have been demolished and BMO Field is now part of the scene. But the biggest difference to the actual track occurred in 1998, when the Direct Energy Centre was built, which added a sharper final turn to the circuit.
“It’s actually a slower turn than it was,” Honda Indy Toronto president Charlie Johnstone said. “It used to separate the boys from the men.”
Still, aside from some annual road repairs and a changing landscape that is inheriting a hotel built directly behind pit row, Johnstone said, “The race track itself is about 95% the same as it was since 1986.”
This is still the same place where Michael Andretti won seven times, where Canadian Paul Tracy won twice and where more cars than you can count have crumpled while speeding into a 90-degree curve on Turn 1.
Johnstone has been here since the beginning. He drove an 18-wheeler around promoting the race in 1986; “I would have been happy to sell hot dogs if I had to,” he said. He remembers the good times (watching Alex Zanardi walking on prosthetics in his first public appearance since losing his legs in a race) along with the bad (in 1996, driver Jeff Krosnoff and track volunteer Gary Avrin were killed after Krosnoff ’s car flew into the catch fencing).
“I’ve seen a lot,” Johnstone said. “I didn’t know a thing about motorsports when I started, but somehow I talked my way in. I just wanted to be involved in the event. I knew it was going to be special.”
What makes the 2.824-kilometre lakefront circuit special is the track itself. Located in downtown Toronto, drivers get to race on the same roads where commuters are locked in rush-hour gridlock from Monday to Friday. Unlike a standalone road course where the track is fixed year-round, the Toronto track is constantly evolving. It has its own character.
You don’t need guts to drive here. But you sure need plenty of smarts.
“There’s a ton of concrete,” Tagliani said. “And when you hit those patches, you slide. Going from asphalt to concrete to asphalt, you notice the difference. At the beginning of the weekend to the end of the weekend, when more rubber is laid down, the track changes completely. “It’s like a different racetrack.” As such, some are going with a different driver this weekend. Still, the same rules apply: Go fast and try to keep your nose clean.
“Toronto is really a fun track,” Conway said. “It’s tight and twisty and very bumpy, but has got some high-speed corners and a lot of changes with the concrete patches. You can never really get a perfect car there.”