Welcome to the racer’s mail bag. Questions for racer writers can be sent to emailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters containing questions are likely to be published. Any questions received every Monday after 3pm will be saved the following week.
Q: I don’t want NASCAR. I just want the ability. Fox failed us. Apparently there are too many to seek IndyCar.
Richard Durany
Marshall Pruett: The first problem with a blown circuit breaker is a 21-minute race, treated like the biggest mistake you can imagine by someone who can never make mistakes or live in a world of perfection, the object of misfortune. It happened. It was bad. But no one died. This was not a hospital that lost power during the surgery and became dark. I couldn’t see the 21 minutes of damn boring stretches of the lace. If anything, the timing in question was improved as nothing was aired. Pat O’Ward took the lead and continued his lead.
If it happens again this year, yes, there are some serious questions to raise about capabilities. And perhaps one or more people will be freed from their work. For now, let’s go back to real life and call out a heat dropout of what it was: Abnormal.
Q: Darn it fox! You’ve ruined a really good race event with your technical issues. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like thermal trucks, but I can use some safety barriers in certain areas of the truck and some grandstands. Other support races can be used, such as the Trans AM series and the International GT series. Alex Pallow was on another level and I was hoping for a historic moment when Pat O’Ward and Christian Langard had AA’s historic arrow McLaren 1-2. However, Palou reminded me of Alex Zanardi when he dominated the series from 1997 to 98. Will he end up in Formula 1, especially if Liam Lawson is struggling with the Red Bull race?
Alistair
MP:Alex certainly deserves a look from an F1 team, but it’s hard to argue that the perfect fit to replace a younger driver with a fair amount of F1 experience is that he is a younger driver with a much less F1 experience. And except for Daniel Ricciardo, who hugged him to the best driver in F1 who crushed all his teammates he had and left for Renault to kill his career.
Palou is an incredibly talented and more stable operator, but the team wants speed and effectiveness soon. Did you get a two-year guaranteed year? yes. In this situation? Leave hell.
Oh, he also has a contract for Chip Ganassi Race. It sells all sponsors of Alex’s 10 cars as its drivers. So there is that small obstacle.
Q: I don’t know if this is fox coverage or what it is. Did you notice that the track edge continues to change from light blue to red during the race at the thermal on Sunday? I’m interested in what I was seeing. Thank you for the insight!
Hisham Beit, Indy
MP: Curbs are painted in different colors in different areas.
Q: I know I receive lots of letters about Fox broadcasts. Technical issues can lead to lost broadcast feeds. However, Fox switched from Homestead to NASCAR broadcasts, but the ticker below said the NASCAR race was in Martinsville. Oops.
That leads me to the point that Fox is still doing what it needs to do with that graphics. When Pallow caught O’ward at 10, the broadcast tag/flag showed pat in first and third Pallow (right of his bumper). Fox tried again, but once again Palou was listed third. These positions listed in the flag graphic have disappeared. You can see that they have done nothing about covering the sponsor logo for the cockpit hoop in the car feed. The sponsor will get mad, and it puts the team owner in a really bad place.
Social media was busy on Saturday with broadcast graphics mistakes. Number 3 McLaughlin had Ray Robb’s cartoon face, among other issues. I’m not going to choose Fox, but these will air basics in 2025. It may be allowed at least once, but it is not a two-race. I have the skills and knowledge. Heck, they’ve been broadcasting NASCAR for years. It doesn’t look good.
On the positive side, the warm-up show is great and needs to continue.
John Balestrieri, wait, Wisconsin
MP: The clear period of bounty given during and after the first race with graphics, and the broader issue of delivering graphics to international audiences. However, it was clear that three weeks weren’t enough time to solve most of the problems and in fact some new things had emerged. (Stingrayma Laughlin was amazing.)
If the blown circuit breaker was a fluke that didn’t guarantee subsequent hysteria, there are some serious quality control issues that Fox will deal with in his graphics and presentation. On Friday and Saturday, I got the wrong feed from an international fan who was blown away by Fox in 10 steps to the thermal from St. Pete, missing graphics and mismatched audio.
Most of it was cleaned up by the race, but Shocker here is that this is not the time Fox takes the first crack when it airs a brand new sport. This is the same network that airs NASCAR and NHRA, and has been classics with F1, American Sports Cars and Le Mans within the last decade. Why exactly is it so lacking that many of the basics of domestic and international IndyCar feed certainly are head scratchers?
This has nothing to do with a lack of passion, excitement or talent. This is what Jay Fry likes to say as a former IndyCar president (and college football player) and can’t do anything simple like blocking or tackling.