Alexander Rossi, Foyt, Circuit of the Americas, IndyCar, 2018

Pictures: IndyCar begin first test at Circuit of the Americas

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IndyCar drivers Alexander Rossi and Tony Kanaan took part in the series’ first test at the Circuit of the Americas today.

The track, which held the United States Grand Prix eight days ago, will host IndyCar racing for the first time on March 24th next year.

“It always blow me away how cool this race track is to drive,” said Rossi, who finished 12th for Marussia in the 2015 United States Grand Prix at the track.

“The facility’s always kind of awe-inspiring every time we come here. I’m very excited to get back here next year for real and put on a good race.”

No times have been released from the test featuring the Andretti Autosport and AJ Foyt Racing drivers.

Pictures: First IndyCar test at the Circuit of the Americas

Video: First IndyCar test at the Circuit of the Americas

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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26 comments on “Pictures: IndyCar begin first test at Circuit of the Americas”

  1. No thumb-noses, trick battery packs, oil burners, halos, ultrasuper hypermega medium soft tyres… Of course they are going to be slower.
    They sure do look and sound like great racecars though.

    1. They sure do look and sound like great racecars though.

      Agreed, they sound brilliant, particularly so on the downshifts.

    2. They sound great, look great! The racing will be better too.

    3. But looks fast enough

  2. Mark in Florida
    30th October 2018, 1:20

    Indy is a driver dominated sport, not a car dominated one. Maybe that’s why Indy is more interesting to me than F1 right now. It seems that the cars are the stars not the drivers. If you took some of the better drivers from the other teams and put them in the top three cars they would be winners and get all the press like Lewis, Seb etc. In Indy a good driver along with great strategy has been able to win and upset the bigger teams numerous times, when was the last time that happened in F1? So yeah I’m tired of F1s manufactured wins when you know at the start just about who is going to take it home. In Indy it’s not over till it’s over anything can happen. Can’t wait for the season to start again.

    1. Apart from the terrifying accidents that can still happen in IndyCar… I totally agree.
      F1 fans (like myself… ;) constantly bemoan the current ‘two-tier’ situation in F1 (two laps between them…!!) but F1 does nothing to change it…!

      1. What would you have them do that they aren’t already going to do as soon as they contractually can?

    2. Let me play devil’s advocate here – we already have IndyCar, why do we want to make F1 into another similar variant of IndyCar. We’ve got IndyCar for that, and for international flavour, F2/F3 are great equalizers to focus on the driver (and the majority of F1 drivers have arrived via this route).

      Yes, F1 is crazy expensive, but that also means that it has produced the cars with the highest downforce, ones that are fastest through corners, and a series that is still looked upon as one of the best.

      Devil’s advocate mode off – that said, it would be cool if the ‘V’ in Keith’s tweet were narrowed down, so that it doesn’t take something as extreme as the 3 retirements at Baku to get a F1.5 car on the podium.

      1. Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
        30th October 2018, 12:43

        It’s just worth noting it’s not the money that has made F1 the fastest, it’s the rules!

        It would be perfectly possible to have a spec series that was faster than F1. Actually that would be interesting. Where would the best drivers go? After the money or to be the fastest?

        And because such a series might be faster than F1, would it become the de-facto premier series?

    3. I guess i’ll throw my hat in the ring for the other side. I enjoy the technical development in F1. Watching the development over the season and each team building and developing their own car is part of the game. With a spec car, that’s all missing in Indy. Don’t get me wrong, i enjoy both, but there’s an extra layer of depth to F1 that Indy is missing.

    4. Mark in Florida, IndyCar is really still dominated by the same trio of Andretti, Penske and Ganassi though, isn’t it? In 2018, those three teams have taken 14 out of the 17 possible victories (those teams usually still take more than 70% of the victories in a season), whilst it’s been more than 15 years now since a driver from a team other than one of the big three won the title.

      I guess that it is fashionable to play the old card of “the grass is always greener on the other side” and to idealise IndyCar to disparage F1 – team choice is still massively important in IndyCar, and I will tell you now that that the 2019 title will go to a driver from one of those same three teams, such is their control over the series (and probably one of the latter two teams).

      1. It’s still closer in the races are far less predictable in indycar no matter what you just said.

        1. True but the bottom line is nobody wants F1 to be nearly as spec as IndyCar is, and so F1 is tackling the issues by addressing clean air dependence amongst other things. F1 has tons of room for improvement and there is no reason they can’t do so with all the teams on board with the new regime’s direction, as they appear to be for the most part, unlike when BE handed the power to the top 4 most resources teams, putting the fox in charge of the hen house. The teams seem quite on board that changes are absolutely needed, and right now they are just discussing the best way to do that. Even just limiting their aero downforce and putting them on sensible tires would go a long long way to improving the product on the track.

      2. Hi anon – I certainly have no intention “to idealise IndyCar [nor] to disparage F1” but your figures of around 30% of wins being taken by teams outside the top three is fine by me… That would allow six F1 races this year to be shared between Renault/Force India/Sauber/Haas/STR… It would allow a little variety and even have these teams finishing more often in the top six maybe…
        But can this be achieved without a spec. series…? Or a heavily policed cost-cap. I doubt it… and I don’t think any of us really want the former, nor the inevitable protests that would occur with the latter…
        Oh well… I’ll keep hoping… ;-)

  3. They certainly have better paint jobs than F1 cars …….. Was going to go to the Portland race this year but the grandstands were sold out. The CART-IRL split (thanks a lot Tony George) sure didn’t help open wheel racing in the US. CART in it’s heyday was awesome; I had a job offer from Swift in San Clemente for the underbody production program; glad I didn’t take it.

  4. Is this the first ever track to be in common between Indy Car and F1?

    1. No actually the Indianapolis speedway has hosted the US GP from 2000-2007 using a different track layout for F1 and the usual oval for indycar

    2. sumedh, in the past, the rival Champ Car series did hold a race around the Circuit Gilles Villveneuve (back in 2002) – generally, though, IndyCar have generally not wanted to have F1 compete at their circuits (some circuits seem to have been forced to sign “do not compete” clauses in their contracts with IndyCar that bar them from signing a deal with F1).

      1. Actually, it is the other way around. During the CART years, BE had stipulations in the promoters’ contracts that they could not hold a rival open wheel race on their track or lose the F1 contract. As the CART series had cars that were closer in speed and great drivers, including Nigel Mansell, comparisons of lap times and the overall show were frowned upon. CART was also not governed by the FIA, so that was used against them too. Host a non-sanctioned event, be barred from presenting any FIA open wheel race.

      2. Last time Champcar raced at Montreal in 2006 they were about 5-6 seconds slower than the F1 cars in qualifying although this was during the period where F1 was qualifying on race fuel.

        I also remember the 2006 Champcar race due to heavy rain on Sunday forcing them to red flag the race & move it to Monday where they then put on the worst TV broadcast of a race i’ve seen in years with no on-screen graphics or live timing which made the race next to impossible to follow. They also oddly took all the OnBoards off the cars on Monday so a lot was missed.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afaCaOlIQpo

    3. Did they race on the same detroit circuit as f1? Indycar has its own unique circuits to F1, I’m glad indycar is looking to go back to the Gold Coast from 2020.

      1. The layout they used for Detroit was initially in the same locations but a slightly different lto what F1 used, They then moved to a new location (Belle-Isle) in 1992.

        Indycar going back to Surfers Paradise would be cool although it would be a shame they coudn’t use the old layout due to the tram lines been built on the run from the old second chicane. The circuit the Aussie Supercars use now turns through a left hand hairpin where the 2nd chicane used to be & rejoins the old layout where the chicane on the backstraght used to be.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_UQ-Up3Bn0

  5. Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
    30th October 2018, 13:30

    Indycars ran at Brands Hatch and Silverstone in 1978. I was at both races. It was awsome.

    Indycars in England

  6. Visor Cam from COTA. The low downforce IndyCars are a handful and will produce exciting racing!
    https://twitter.com/IndyCar/status/1057297337737994241

    1. Watching Rossi pound around Cota was wow, that looks fun…man that looks violent. Helmet cam really shows just what the forces are doing, amazing. Did you notice he started and ended his lap well into the first sector to make it tougher to time it.

      Indycar is getting back to where it used to be for sure. Watching Rossi this year was fun, kind of Indycar’s Max; neither mind putting out their elbows. Indycar my be dominated by 3 teams, but that is not just 6 cars, so that by itself adds to who can win, plus on any given day, most anybody can win in Indy.

      F1 is too dominated by rules that favor Mercedes, 5 years on, they have won well over half of the races. I still think they are toying with engine modes and wings to make it look closer than it really is, when will it stop.
      That said, i will still watch, racer at heart, what can I say

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