In Driver’s Eye with James Hinchcliffe, the six-time INDYCAR winner will bring you inside the mind of a racer while breaking down the nuts and bolts of the sport for fans.
This time of year, it’s easy to think about one thing and one thing only: the Indianapolis 500. But when you’re racing in INDYCAR, you do that at your own peril. And the reason for that is simple. There is still another race to run before the 500!
Yes, I am talking about the Sonsio Grand Prix, colloquially known as the Indy Grand Prix. The hardest part about the Indy Grand Prix is that it runs just a few days before, and in the same venue, as The Greatest Spectacle in Racing — but on a different track.
Casual or newer fans might not know that on the infield of the mammoth Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course that, along with INDYCAR, has hosted a ton of different series like NASCAR, Formula 1, IMSA, MotoGP and more.
For INDYCAR drivers, it’s so easy to want to simply “get the Indy GP over with” so attention can switch to the 500. But you can’t sleep on the GP.
(Photo by Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Teams will load into the speedway and set up in the same garages they’ll use for the Indy 500. So it already feels like 500 time! You want to get out on the 2.5-mile oval and start dialing in your car and working on winning the big one.
But you can’t, because this other race stands in the way.
When you zoom out and think of the championship, the Indy GP pays just as many points as any other round on the calendar. For that reason, teams and drivers need to find a way to stay locked in on making the GP as successful a weekend as possible.
Some drivers really struggle to keep their mind off the Indy 500, focus on the task at hand and perform at their best in the Indy GP. Others really click with the track and know that it’s a great opportunity for them to score a big result.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in particular is known as an Indy GP specialist team, with veteran driver Graham Rahal specifically always in the mix here. Keep an eye on Rahal in the No. 15 Honda: In 17 starts since 2014, he’s only finished outside the top 10 twice.
Another important thing about the Indy GP is it can really set the tone for your Month of May.
We talk a lot about how momentum is a real thing in racing, just like stick-and-ball sports. My best result in the GP, a third-place finish in 2016, led right into the start of my strongest Indy 500. We took the uplift from the podium finish into practice week and qualifying, ultimately winning the Indy 500 pole the next weekend.
Other drivers have ridden the wave of winning the Indy GP into taking the big prize on Memorial Day Weekend. Alex Palou won both the GP and the 500 last year, following in the footsteps of Will Power, who won both in 2018, and Simon Pagenaud, who won both and added the Indy 500 pole to complete the hat-trick sweep of the Month of May in 2019.
Performances like that — a strong May, from the Indy GP to the Indy 500 — can save careers and extend them for years.
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE FAST: IMS ROAD COURSE
The 14-turn track itself isn’t the most complex layout, but it certainly has its challenges.
It’s missing the rolling hills and blind corners you find at Barber Motorsports Park or Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. But technical corners — like the combined turning and braking, decreasing radius of Turn 4, and the “esses,” a series of switchbacks from Turn 7 to Turn 10 — can easily catch you out and kill your lap time. More often than not, the drivers that have the best splits through the esses find themselves on the front row after qualifying.
(Photo by Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
And let’s not forget how cool and weird it feels going backward down the frontstraight into Turn 1 after one of the longest full-throttle stretches of the whole season!
Well, not really backward, but it certainly feels like it sometimes.
The Indy 500 is all left turns counterclockwise around the 2.5-mile oval. The Indy GP on the IMS road course runs clockwise, meaning drivers are speeding down the iconic frontstraight in the opposite direction as the 500.
Road course qualifying can be extra tricky too. There isn’t much track between the exit of pit lane and hitting the alternate start-finish line, which is where the lap times begin and end during practice and qualifying.
That means you don’t have much time to get temperature into the softer, alternate Firestone tires (the softs) before your first timed lap starts. And that matters because your first timed lap is usually the money lap at this track.
(Photo by Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Finding the right way to warm everything up — while still finding a good gap for a clean lap and also staying out of the way of everyone who is on a flier — can be a real challenge.
If you do manage to get that temp and find that gap, the margins on the Indy road course are so tight that you still have to nail every single brake point, turn in and throttle application perfectly to come out on top.
SOUND LIKE AN INDYCAR (HISTORY) EXPERT
This May is a big one for the Rahal family. Not only is Graham Rahal looking to get back onto the top step of the podium — remember, the Indy GP is a happy hunting ground for him and maybe his best chance of the calendar — but it’s also been 40 years since his dad, racing legend Bobby Rahal, won the 1986 Indy 500.
Bobby’s Indy 500 victory certainly goes down as both one of the greatest races at the 117-year-old Indianapolis Motor Speedway and one of the most gripping stories of a winner.
In honor of the milestone year, FOX Sports, Big Machine Racing Productions and Chassy Media produced a documentary about Bobby’s career and 500 win.
“Bobby Rahal: True American Racer” will premiere Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET on FS1 and will feature insights and reflections from prominent industry figures like Mario Andretti, Zak Brown, David Letterman, Bryan Herta… and even my good buddy Townsend Bell and I make an appearance!
It was very cool to get to be asked to be in a film honoring a man that I have known personally for a very long time and admired as a driver and person ever longer.
1 FOR THE ROAD
With that all said, the busiest month of the INDYCAR calendar starts now!
Drivers will have busier schedules throughout the month than at any other point of the year. Not only are they on track most days for long hours, they will have endless sponsor commitments, media events, fan engagements and much more.
It is what makes May so special but also so challenging. Balancing all the extracurricular stuff with staying focused on the job — winning the Indy GP and Indy 500 — can be incredibly tough. But hey, if it were easy…
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