The RACER Mailbag, November 5

Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will be saved for the following week.

Q: Conspiracy theory. Would Colton Herta be in F2 right now if Will Power was not available? It feels like Dan Towriss used the opportunity to move Herta out of the IndyCar seat into an F2 seat with no guarantees for F1 or past his contract.  I don’t know what Bryan Herta’s relationship is with TWG moving forward, but did Towriss take this occasion to cleanse the organization of everything Andretti?

Mark, Milford, OH

MARSHALL PRUETT: I wouldn’t want to rob you of a conspiracy theory, so let me propose another one:

TWG Motorsports started paying Colton like he was a F1 driver a few years ago when they were confident they’d be buying an existing team and moving right into the world championship. It’s been rumored to be between $6.5-7 million per year, which was double what any other IndyCar driver was/is getting paid. Herta wasn’t an IndyCar champion or Indy 500 winner when it happened so there’s no mistaking why the huge salary hike took place, since it didn’t come on the heels of a major IndyCar achievement. It was all about F1, and years later, after lots of anguish and the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars, TWG has a team on its way to F1 and a driver being paid F1-level money being readied for the role they expected him to play a few years ago, albeit with a detour to F2 to acquire the necessary licensing points.

I punched myself in the head a few times to try and make sense of the last question and it didn’t help. Colton Herta is being handsomely paid to drive for TWG, and Bryan Herta is widely credited for his contributions to Kyle Kirkwood’s success, so no, there’s been no cleansing. The opposite, actually.

Q: Last week you mentioned how ridiculous it would be if a few NFL quarterbacks had their jobs because they paid to be there. This is something I’ve thought for a long time. This affects all the top forms of motorsport, but I’ll focus on IndyCar.

If you look back through the history of the other American sports leagues you’ll see they are littered with stories of players not getting paid (you mentioned drivers who have to deal with this) and teams that show up for a year or two and then have no money and fold (Carlin, possibly PREMA). The difference is those other stories are from many decades ago, when there was little to no regulation in the leagues. Those leagues grew up and matured to what they are today. IndyCar has not. It’s the primary reason I support the charter system. It’s not perfect, but if it’s applied similar to how the other leagues use franchises, I support the attempt to avoid unprofessionalism with teams that add nothing to the series, trundling at the back for a couple years before bowing out.

With all that said, in my opinion one of the key goals for IndyCar as a series is to try to eliminate the need for pay drivers entirely. Obviously it requires increasing the popularity and ratings, but I think if that were to happen, the Leader’s Circle payout should be enough to cover the yearly expenses of a team, or as close to it as possible. This ensures that every team is able to give itself a chance to win, and IndyCar could tout itself as the only series that is truly professional from top to bottom. I don’t think this a fix to its current problems, but rather an end goal for the series.

And finally, my question. Beyond getting better ratings, what do you think is a worthwhile goal for the series to strive for? Hypothetically if IndyCar saw significant growth, say it was averaging 4-5 million views per race, how do you think the new revenue should be reinvested into the series?

Max

MP: Roger Penske is a businessman first, and bought the Speedway and series as a business move, not a charitable endeavor. But that’s been closer to its reality as the annual financial losses on the IndyCar side – which were there long before he bought everything – not only continued, but were baked in and accepted. I’ve always been told that this was something he was intent on changing, and how IndyCar needed to be treated like a proper business of its own, not just a passion play to fund from the annual profits generated by the Speedway.

So to get to your answer, the question here is whether Penske would want to take the upsized profits from a theoretical place where IndyCar’s audience is as big as you suggest and put that into the business to make it profitable, first, and then use the remaining profit to increase the Leaders Circle for the 22 entries while ignoring the other three to five entries who didn’t reach the top 22 in Entrants points?

Does Penske look at greater profit as belonging to his company, or to his company and the entrants in the series? I don’t have an answer, because we haven’t seen this happen in a big way. Fox Corporation bought into Penske Entertainment and as I recently wrote, the Leaders Circle is expected to increase by approximately $500,000 per contract to nearly $1.7 million apiece. But is that a sharing of income from Fox buying 33 percent of the series and Speedway? Probably. For how long, though?

Also, let’s say IndyCar does have a massive spike in audience size on Fox. As co-owner of the series, would Fox also pay the series it co-owns a larger amount to broadcast its races? Or was the buy-in price a one-time deal in lieu of having to negotiate against itself in the future? All the stick-and-ball sports we love use TV contracts to enrich themselves and their teams. Billions come in and a decent chunk of those billions filter down to the Packers and Blue Jays and Knicks, and so on, because all the teams are franchises that have direct business ties to their respective leagues.

But that’s not the case in IndyCar. Every team, except for Team Penske, is 100-percent independent from the league. Coyne and Shank and Carpenter and the rest all pay their drivers and employees directly and seek their own funding to compete. Minus PREMA, they all have charters as of a year ago, but those charters bring no dollars to the 10 teams on an annual basis in the form of profit sharing, TV income, ticket sales, etc.

There’s the 22 with Leaders Circles, which is great, but the main takeaway is that when the NBA signed its recent deals with NBC and Amazon Prime and ESPN for billions, its teams were on the contractual receiving end of a portion of that money. When Penske Entertainment signs new deals with whomever, there’s nothing I’m aware of that obligates Penske to spread the wealth with IndyCar’s teams because IndyCar does not have a business structure like the NBA, NFL, MLB, and so on. 

Makes me wonder if franchises, which were used for many years in the CART IndyCar Series and led to constant moaning, could be considered to solidify the links between the people who hold the races and the independent business owners who show up with the teams, players, staff, and equipment to contest the races.

Q: What’s the latest on Hailie Deegan’s plans for 2026? She had big plans in 2025 for taking on NXT and moving on to IndyCar. Looks like that plan fizzled – she finished tied with somebody named Tommy Smith for 14th in NXT points – and everyone below them in points did not run all the races. I watched most of the races and I believe she finished dead last in every one, and the only cars she passed either wrecked out or had a mechanical problem. She was apparently way out of her class in this type of car, and I can’t picture her returning in 2026.

Ken Smith, Fremont, OH

MP: The latest is everything you described. One and done. Graham Rahal made it plain in a call last week: You can teach a road racer to be an excellent oval races, but it’s damn near impossible to take an oval racer and team them to be an excellent road racer. She tried to take her off-road and oval knowledge and add road racing to it, and there’s no doubt she could improve year by year if she wanted to make it her future, but it was never going to happen all at once in a single season of NXT. I don’t know where she’ll go next, but it isn’t NXT.

Q: While I am not connected with Austin Riley in any way whatsoever I deeply admire his courage and drive. He is the first professional race car driver with autism and has won numerous championships at a high level. He has recently been racing in Radical Cup.

I have seen in interviews that racing is Austin’s life and that he’s really struggling next year to get funding to continue his journey in 2026. As a fan and knowing the importance of his mission especially for the autism community, I thought I would write in to let people know about him. Here is a link to his website and a YouTube link to an interview about his career and journey.

David Colquitt

MP: Thanks for sharing, David.

Q: Several months ago, Zak Brown in a sit-down interview offered his insights and suggestions for making the IndyCar series more attractive and authentic to old-timers, current, and future IndyCar fans. One suggestion Zak offered that intrigued me was augmenting the new generation 2028 engine formula to make it sound rowdier, bolder, and more spectacular.

I believe most of that engine concept – now with the onboard hybridization system – has been built and tested, and you have seen it and heard it on track. If it remains a 2.4L V6 twin-turbo engine, does it sound louder and more audacious to you than the current engine.

If the new engine formula regulations haven’t been completely approved and codified at this point, is it still possible–- from your technical perspective – for the engineers to the tweak power unit and unleash some additional sonic muscularity, or has that train left the station?

Dale, Cedarburg, WI      

MP: I’d say everybody with ears, who’s seen or heard spectacular-sounding race cars, has said IndyCar (and F1) need to choose a more evocative engine formula, so everything Zak said is both accurate and a long-held refrain that’s been spoken by many for more than a decade.

IndyCar’s 2.4L TTV6 sounds the same as today’s 2.2L TTV6. It isn’t louder, and isn’t more audacious.

The 2028 formula is effectively completed, and the only ways I know of to make a turbo V6 racing engine sound great is through stuffing a hellacious amount of boost through the motor – to help it rev like a rolling explosion – or to dial the revs up beyond the 12,0000 we’ve had since 2012.

IndyCar could do both things by mandating giant boost figures and peak revs of 15,000, and it would have no engine suppliers because the high-boost formula would cost a fortune to support, and so would the hike in revs. Granted, we’d love it. Our ears would be happy. But nobody would want to pay for one or both to come to reality.

Only other solution for sound is to go away from the small turbo V6 formula, and that would send Honda packing. I bet Chevy would love the challenge of stuffing a smallish naturally-aspirated V8 into the next-generation car, but that would require a complete redesign of the chassis and push its debut back by a year or two. If you love the sound of today’s IndyCar, it’s staying. If you don’t, it’s not going away unless the series makes a bold decision.

Q: Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of Gilles Villeneuve winning the Formula Atlantic race in Trois Rivieres, Québec which led to a McLaren F1 seat and his road to Maranello. Enzo  Ferrari even compared him to Tazio Nuvolari! Do you have any memories of the races there as a young mechanic?

Yanie Porlier

MP: Villeneuve died before I could see him in person, but he’s been in my top five of all-time drivers since I learned of him and watched his races on VHS in the mid-1980s. Didn’t have many trips to good old Three Rivers, but I loved the region and the race.

I’ve written about a few Trois Rivieres memories in the Mailbag before, including going through the McDonald’s drive-through to get lunch for our Genoa Racing crew, ordering in English, and hearing and almighty panic erupt in French as the kind folks were thrown an unexpected curveball by yours truly. They eventually found someone who spoke English to help me, but Lord, the reaction was like someone from outer space rocked up and tried to order in an unfathomable tongue.

The memory I recently had, which made me smile, was of having dinner one night at a local Italian restaurant with our Italian team owner Angelo Ferro. He insisted on having a bottle of grappa brought to the table after the main course, and it just about lit my head on fire. Angelo and Tom Knapp and Michael Cannon had a solid laugh at my expense. Cherished times.

Villeneuve on his way to victory – and subsequently a shot at F1 – in the 1976 Trois-Rivieres Grand Prix. Getty Images

Q: So I just went to order Indy 500 tickets on the first day they were available to the public after renewals/applications and I could not believe the limited amount of tickets and decent seats available compared to years before when I look.

I am a Turn 3 guy and normally when I buy tickets there are tickets in rows M, N, P, R, S, and T available well into November. This year, on day one of sales there wasn’t anything higher than rows H or K. Which tells me a lot of people renewed and applied for tickets after last year’s race, which is awesome.

Has there been any reports/numbers of the percentage of people who renewed their tickets compared to previous years? Based on what I saw looking for tickets, I can’t imagine the 2026 Indy 500 not being another sell out.  If anything, PSA to all the Mailbag readers to get their tickets asap!

Ryan, Lake Villa, IL

MP: We’re in a rich new-ish period where motor racing is popular beyond its traditional diehard fans, and that’s being seen with huge turnouts at marquee events. Can’t say how long it will last, but it’s great so see.

Q: Has IndyCar retired the number 99?

Some background. I’m British but now call the USA home. I don’t remember watching Nigel Mansell win his F1 title, but I’m told I did and I definitely remember watching highlights in 1993 of the IndyCar series in what to me were exotic locales like Cleveland and Milwaukee.

Fast-forward to 1996 and Jacques Villeneuve moves to F1 and has an impressive rookie season. I decided to try and follow the sport in the U.S. (difficult without cable, the internet and being 11) and discovered another Canadian driving an identical-liveried car (not knowing that the sponsorship had moved teams at the time). That’s how I discovered Greg Moore.

Greg remains my favorite IndyCar driver of all time, being ridiculously fast and having nothing to dislike unlike several drivers in the field. As I type this it’s 26 years to the day we lost him and it’s still as painful now as it was at the time.

Back in June I spent a week in Vancouver. For the second time I saw the impressive exhibit/tribute to him in the BC Sports Hall of Fame (including the chassis he used for his first win in Milwaukee) but I also paid my respects in person at Robinson Memorial Park in Coquitlam, where there is a memorial stone to his life.

By chance I met the director of the cemetery. We shared shared several stories, but it turned out that he was born within a couple of weeks of Greg and knew him as a child before the Moore family moved to Maple Ridge. He was also tasked by the family to produce a suitable memorial that was placed in 2007 (where I learned that Greg is interred within the stone). In my opinion it’s a fantastic tribute. People are still visiting, though fewer people are doing so as time passes. I got the impression that anyone who pays a visit would be very appreciated. I think I nearly floored the director when I told him that my skydiving gloves are red for a reason, and it’s not because I’m Welsh…

I’m asking the question as the memorial bench on the site reminded me that CART and its feeder series retired the number 99 from circulation, but to my knowledge, the current incarnation of the IndyCar series never did. Greg’s passing seriously cut my interest in the sport (though the 2001 Texas non-race and the split clearly going one way really finished off my interest) and it took until 2012 for me to start watching again. It’s not lost on me that in years since 2012, I’ve never seen a car with 99 on it. Now that Roger Penske owns the series, you would think he would have extended the number retirement to a driver he signed to race for him.

Ian Devlin, now of St Louis, MO

MP: Sam Schmidt used No. 99 as a driver in the Indy Racing League – what we know today as the IndyCar Series – and that carried over into Sam’s early IndyCar team ownership. Our SSM Dallara-Oldsmobile-Firestone on the team’s debut in 2001 used the No. 99 and I can’t recall a time where it struck me as odd or disrespectful since the IRL and the rival CART IndyCar Series where Greg raced were completely different and wholly unrelated. If Greg had raced in the IRL, there might have been a sensitivity to the number since it’s what he was so heavily associated with, but he didn’t, so I’d assume that’s why Sam’s old number stayed with him.

I recall Townsend Bell using No. 99 a few times with Dreyer & Reinbold and then with Schmidt for his Indy 500 outings through 2012, which was post-merger. It makes me think it hasn’t been retired, and if there are any entries that have used it since him, I’m sure someone will mention it in a comment. Myles Rowe uses 99 in Indy NXT in a car that’s 100-percent funded by Penske, so I’d say no on the retiring.

Bell made use of the No.99, including at the 2008 Indy 500. Gavin Lawrence/Getty Images

Q: With Marco announcing his retirement from racing, that is essentially the end of the Andretti families involvement with the team and in the sport. I know Marissa still works for the team, but how quickly are we going to see the team renamed to TWG Motorsports? I noticed the Formula E team already has the TWG branding on it now. Only a matter of time, it feels like.

Paul, Chicagoland area 

MP: I don’t believe Jarett or Adam Andretti have retired, so we have them, but in IndyCar, yes, Graham Rahal is the last active multi-generational driver from famous IndyCar families.

I’ve been amazed at how much character and soul has been lost since the departure of Michael Andretti and the ensuing reduced presence of Mario on the IndyCar side. Still great people on the inside running things, but there’s no Chip or Bobby or Dale or Ed or similar to talk to who truly represent the Andretti team and name that made it so popular for so long.  

Q: Something in last week’s Mailbag caught my interest. You mentioned spying in IndyCar? You must have some stories! What kind of cheating is done? I’ve never thought about it!

Wally, Eden Prairie, MN

MP: Well, spying isn’t cheating, so I don’t think of them as the same thing.

Here’s an example from May: I run into a person from a team who proceeds to tell me about major items ‘their people’ witnessed a rival team change on its cars – I won’t say what, but it was specific bodywork pieces on all three cars, at the same time, that were alleged to have been brought into Gasoline Alley from the team’s transporters – in what they believed was an immediate response to Team Penske’s attenuator illegality. The person was referring to ‘their people’ in a way that made it clear they had eyes on those garages at all times.

The person presented the info like the sudden removal of specific bodywork and replacement with different panels on all three cars was for the sake of compliance, either to avoid being caught if IndyCar took a harder look at the cars, or upon instruction from IndyCar to go back and get rid of altered bodywork. Attenuator-gate was maybe an hour old and the general vibe was one of fear and avoiding the embarrassment of being bounced out of IndyCar tech like the series’ owner had just endured.

It was the latest example of how many (but not all) teams at the biggest race of the year (and others, to a lesser degree) spy on each other on pit lane, in the garages, etc. At Indy, there tends to be clusters of ‘fans’ that hang around the more popular or successful teams. When I’m walking down whichever row and see those clusters, I often take a look to see which ones might be the fake fans who are really on assignment to take photos with their phones and drop notes into group chats.

You even have ‘their people’ doing basic things like reporting on when rival teams are going through tech before moving out to pit lane to practice or do qualifying simulation runs, or simply packing up and moving out of their garages to hit pit lane.

I’m waiting for the first team to place hidden cameras around their Gasoline Alley garages and deploy facial recognition software to try and identify the fake fans – see which ones linger the longest and come back repeatedly – to either get them bounced from the property or to send folks to stand in front of them and interrupt their efforts. That being said, this might already be happening.

Q: Wondering about your thoughts on where Ryan Hunter-Reay will end up for the Indianapolis 500 now that Herta does not seem to be in consideration for the fourth seat at Andretti?

Doug

MP: Andretti would have been wise to secure RHR’s Indy 500 services years ago, and would seemingly have a great seat to offer for 2026, but Captain America is expected to be wearing papaya orange next May in the fourth entry. 

Q: Palou court case. No news in the last two weeks. What is currently going on?

Peter, PHX

MP: I believe the case was in recess for a couple of weeks, which would explain why things went quiet.

Q: When can we, for the love of all that is good and decent in the world, start calling it Indy Lights again? Or really just anything other than Indy NXT? Honestly, The Mike’s Hard Lemonade IndyCar Smackdown Series would be a silly yet considerable improvement.

Chris, Portland, Maine.

MP: I hear you. I grew up working in Indy Lights, and that’s what my brain defaults to, in the same way some folks still refer to today’s IndyCar Series as the IRL. But it makes me sad when I hear the IRL references because it tells me the person is stuck in the past by ignorance or intent, and those aren’t good looks.

I do refer to it as Indy N-X-T, pronounced like the WWE-owned developmental series from where the NXT name was copied. IndyCar stopped trying to correct me after the first year of calling it N-X-T.  

Q: When Christian Lundgaard joined RLL years ago it was reported that Alpine helped pave the way for this deal, and even gave RLL money to make it happen. Is this the same thing that’s happening with Mick? Mick is also part of the Alpine program and also seems interested in driving for RLL. Is there a chance that Alpine would give RLL the same deal when they took in Lundgaard?

Ukyo Tachibana

MP: I’d forgotten about the Alpine funding – said to be $3 million – and its easing of the path for Lundgaard into the RLL seat. That was pre-Hypercar for Alpine, though, and came from the Renault/Alpine F1 Driver Academy side which had the Dane on its open-wheel development roster.

Mick isn’t affiliated with the F1 driver development side with Alpine, which had Lundgaard under contract and no place to put him when the RLL deal was arranged, so I can’t find the angle for the brand to pay for an ex-F1 driver to race in IndyCar. I’d expect RLL to be doing all of the money-hunting to both pay for Mick, and to pay Mick if they move forward.

If Schumacher’s IndyCar deal comes together, it won’t include funding from Alpine. Joe Skibinski/Penske Entertainment

Q: I don’t see the Apple deal for F1 coverage as a disaster, for the reasons Chris Medland put forward in a response last week, but one thing he mentioned made my skin crawl: Coverage “fully tailored” to Americans.  I’ve seen Sky coverage as head and shoulders above previous years, as much as I adored Hobbs, Matchett, and Varsha. To have such experienced and knowledgeable commentators as Brundle, Davidson, and company is truly great. To take one step down from that and dumb it down for Americans would be a travesty, in my opinion. If I want to see that kind of thing there is Monster Trucks and NASCAR.

Here’s my question:  As much as the FIA is concerned about the most insignificant rules (no bicycles for track walks?), why on earth don’t they get serious about management figures in F1 teams also managing drivers?  Isn’t that a huge conflict of interest?

Dave, Larwill, IN

CHRIS MEDLAND: I think that’s a very fair point on the Sky coverage, and there are some excellent broadcasters on there. My original intention was to say there are some excellent broadcasters that could be doing that with a much more U.S. focus on storylines and speaking to the audience, who aren’t hamstrung by being the UK broadcaster.

For example, what if Sky no longer did the broadcast for the UK but only for the U.S.? It would be the same quality of people and experience, but a different focus. (That’s not on the cards at all, I must add, but just making the point that the U.S. deserves it’s own output from the best possible options IMO, not something that I would ever term as dumbed-down).

For driver managers, I’m not aware of any clampdown from the FIA on that front, but I’m also not sure how much of a conflict of interest that is in all cases, to be honest. Perhaps for the teams in question, it can be, if they feel their TP is making decisions for their own betterment rather than that of the team, but a driver is so key to a team’s results and you’re so invested in them in many other ways that I think a direct link with a team boss is not actually that far removed.

I think there’s a bit of misunderstanding there, too. In the George Russell case, he’s managed by Mercedes – and that’s how he got to F1 – in the same way that Red Bull drivers are. If you want to leave, it’s got to come with the ownership structure’s agreement, but the team has heavily invested in a young driver with the aim of getting them to F1 and having them in one of their cars. And the driver agrees to that in order to have a chance of reaching F1, but there is still an end point to those deals eventually.

If we look at Lando Norris, he was helped by Zak Brown from a very early age to develop his career and move him towards F1, and then Zak became CEO of McLaren Racing and more doors opened, but that still all needed board sign-off based on talent. We’re talking about multiple race-winners and potential future world champions, where their talent was identified and then they were supported.

Both Russell and Norris also have separate managers that look after their financial affairs and negotiations, so they still have their interests beyond the team represented. But in reality if you’re successful in driver management then you’re likely to be extremely well-connected, and that could well come from other roles within motorsport.

So with all that said, I’m not sure the FIA can ban those in team managerial roles also being involved in driver management. That’s already part of a team member’s remit in one way or another, so there’s a lot of crossover, and it could be seen as a restriction of earnings if the team that employs the manager is happy with the agreements.

Team management/driver management overlaps can look like conflicts of interest, but there are usually more layers to the arrangement than it might look. Steven Tee/Getty Images

Q: A couple of weeks ago you answered my comment about bringing in Almirola to get the owner’s championship. You did not think it was gamesmanship despite the fact that the same scenario doesn’t play in the Cup Series.

Well, mission accomplished. Gibbs gets what he wanted by playing it this way, but I wonder what people would say if a Chevy team had brought in Kyle Busch or Larson or some other name to do the same thing?

Can you imagine the whining! So let’s hope that this championship is remembered only for the way it was won and by a has-been who had seemingly retired.

CH

KELLY CRANDALL: I don’t understand the consternation over this topic because it’s not the first time a Cup Series team owner has won the Xfinity Series owners’ title with a car driven by multiple drivers. It’s not even the first time that the champion driver/car was not the winner of the owners’ title. So, let’s go back through the last few years, shall we?

2024: JRM Motorsports driver and owner champion with No. 7 car 
2023: Stewart-Haas Racing driver and owner champion with No. 00 car
2022: Joe Gibbs Racing driver and owner champion with No. 54 car
2021: Daniel Hemric was the driver champion in the No. 19 car for Joe Gibbs Racing; Team Penske was the owner champion with the No. 22 car
2020: Team Penske driver and owner champion with No. 22 car
2019: Richard Childress Racing driver and owner champion with No. 2 car
2018: Tyler Reddick was the driver champion in the No. 9 car for JR Motorsports; Stewart-Haas Racing was the owner champion with the No. 00 car
2017: William Byron was the driver champion in the No. 9 car for JR Motorsports; Team Penske was the owner champion with the No. 22 car
2016: Joe Gibbs Racing driver and owner champion with the No. 19 car

And if we kept going back, you’d see it more and more over the years. In fact, it felt like it happened every year through the 2010s with Cup Series owners. But sorry, I’m not interested in pulling all of those years.

Q: Viewers can debate whether the NASCAR finalé was farce or a fiasco, but that mess-up for the ages raises multiple important issues. Deciding an auto racing championship in a single event like it’s a football game is odiou – a situation even NASCAR realizes needs fixing. The silent commentary of so many empty seats for a championship bout emphasizes the point.

Sunday’s repeated tire failures were unrelated to the playoff structure, but cannot be separated from it. Goodyear brought a softer tire that was supposed to have a steep fall-off but instead they done blowed up in about one-tenth the race distance – pure incompetence despite the commentators yet again acting as Goodyear’s law firm. Were the Dillion brothers and J.J. Yeley (!) deliberately running low pressure in their march to the front? In this case I choose to believe “my lying eyes.” The winners, the series and Goodyear should be rushing to buy paper bags.

PS: I admire Ms. Crandall’s analysis and writing, especially the personality pieces.

Richard, Vancouver

KC: NASCAR is changing the playoff format, which means the conversation will soon shift to whatever format they adopt going forward. A committee was put together coming into the year, which was an acknowledgment that enough folks are unhappy that it needed to be looked into and changed.

The tires did not fail. They wore out. There is a difference there, and the drivers and teams wanted that. In fact, none of them complained about it afterward, and even spoke in favor of Goodyear, saying it wasn’t their fault. The teams were pushing tire pressure way below the recommended limit, and when you do that, you have tire issues. A softer tire is not a bad thing, and the industry wants that.

And thank you for the compliment. Those pieces are my absolute favorite to write. There are so many great personalities in racing, and highlighting more than just what happens on the racetrack and who someone really is is something I enjoy.

THE FINAL WORD
From Robin Miller’s Mailbag, 6 November, 2013

Q: I was a Raul Boesel fan. Can you remind me when this was: There was an Indy 500 during the CART era when, if I remember correctly, Boesel (I think he was driving for Dick Simon) basically had the race in hand until some penny-ante penalty was called on him and he got robbed. What year was that? I’d like to look up that race. What did you think of Boesel as a driver? Where do you think he ranked vs. his contemporaries? And what is Raul doing nowadays

Dean Abramson, Raymond, ME

ROBIN MILLER: It was 1993 and Boesel had qualified third for Simon and was leading when he got a questionable penalty for pitting and working on his car (USAC claimed the pits were closed but I recall he was already on pit road). It cost him a shot at victory and he finished fourth. I liked ‘Stay Cool Raul’ and he was a good, solid racer. Last time I heard, he was chasing women in Brazil. That was his favorite sport.