A Canadian champion talks shop on the state of IndyCar racing
If there’s one guy who Canadians want to hear from most about IndyCar racing, it’s got to be our very own Thrill from West Hill, Paul Tracy, who can always be counted on for a strong opinion.
Toronto Star Wheels caught up with Tracy recently to get his thoughts on the current state of the sport and the 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series season to date.
The story of the year so far is the new aero kit add-ons to the cars, which create design and performance differences between manufacturers and teams. How have they impacted the racing this season?
I think the competition level is good. They’ve lost a little bit of the parity that they’ve enjoyed for the last few years by having a spec chassis. People have gotten so used to everything being spec. It’s a change.
During the bulk of my career up until about the mid ’90s, we basically rolled out a brand new car every year, whether it be at Penske or NewmanHaas in the Lola or whatever. They either had it figured out or they didn’t, but you had to figure it out.
Penske and Ganassi are the two strongest teams, which they’ve always been, but there seems to be a bigger gap than there was in the past because of the ability to sort out these new cars and aero packages. The teams with the bigger budgets and more personnel and higher technology are just able to do it much quicker.
Chevrolet is the dominant package and Honda is struggling, and that’s kind of separated the field now into two classes. The Chevy guys, their car doesn’t look like it has a whole pile of stuff on it. They’ve just simplified and enhanced what was there and refined it, and they have a fast car and a fast motor. The Honda is completely redesigned, it looks like. There are wings on top of wings on top of wings, and I think they’ve probably gone a little overboard.
Andretti Autosport has been the top Honda team for the last few years. Are you surprised that they appear to be struggling, even in comparison to other Honda teams?
I am a little bit. But they did have some turnover over the winter. They lost a couple of key people, one being Kyle Moyer, who went to Penske to run Simon Pagenaud’s car. But certainly it’s been a surprise that they haven’t been at least the strongest Honda runner. Graham Rahal has been the guy for Honda so far this year, which people probably wouldn’t expect, either. He’s having a very good season so far with a single-car team, which is a surprise.
A lot of fuss was made about the safety of these cars and the new aero kits during the month of May at Indianapolis. As a racer from a different era, what’s your take on it?
I’ve talked to a bunch of people about this, and I’ve talked to a lot of older drivers. Information now becomes viral so fast. Back in the day, they had crashes all the time at Indianapolis. It’s dangerous, but I don’t think it’s any more dangerous now. I think it was more dangerous in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s with the speeds they were running.
When you crashed, it took a day before it was in the papers. There wasn’t any Internet.
A reporter had to do his due diligence and not jump the gun and report something that was not factually correct. They had to wait until the cars were looked at and figure out what went wrong before a statement was made, and sometimes it would take a day to two days before anybody ever knew about a crash happening.
Everything is overdramatized because of social media. Everybody was jumping up and down for change on social media before they knew what happened and what broke. I think they just react too quickly to it rather than think about it. They react to the emotions of what’s going on.
Is there anything that can be done to return IndyCar racing to the level of popularity it enjoyed in the ’80s and ’90s?
I don’t know. That’s a tough question. If there was just an answer you could pull out of a hat then I’m sure everybody would have figured it out by now. It’s not just one thing. There’s a million different scenarios.
I think that having more sponsors involved in the sport, more sponsors activating in the sport would be better, and the series itself promoting better.
What’s keeping you busy these days?
I’ve got a motorcycle aftermarket parts business (called Black Label Baggers, based in Phoenix, Ariz.). In the summer I’m busy doing the IndyCar telecasts for NBC (carried on Sportsnet in Canada).