Track limits at COTA: Does IndyCar or F1 have it right?
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Anyone who saw IndyCar’s first race at the Circuit of the Americas yesterday cannot help but have noticed the series took a very different approach to track limits than F1 has at a track where the run-off areas are generous.
At turn 19, for example, track limits were not enforced at all, leading to drivers routinely running very wide across the apron. There was even a collision at this point on the track:
The first DNF in @IndyCar for the rookie Felix Rosenqvist.
Take a look at what happened in the closing laps at @COTA. #INDYCARClassic pic.twitter.com/DVJj3SFbpB
— IndyCar on NBC (@IndyCaronNBC) March 24, 2019
IndyCar’s approach may be simpler to enforce than F1’s but having the cars run that wide looks strange. It’s also questionable from a safety point of view, as it brings them much closer to the barriers than they would ordinarily run. Though of course IndyCars are designed to run on ovals in close proximity of walls; F1 cars are not.
Which approach do you prefer? Should F1 follow IndyCar’s lead when it heads to COTA for the United States Grand Prix this year?
Perhaps not on all tracks, but at COTA F1 has it right. I was consistently wondering during the race “if track limits aren’t enforced, why doesn’t someone just drive straight through the esses”. Do a MarioKart shortcut. Heck, just do doughnuts over the start line. T19 was utterly ridiculous. Trump wants to build a wall in Texas, he should start at COTA T19.
It’s the drivers nature to exploit all boundaries to find the fastest line. So if using the runoff is faster, you’ll use it. For me it’s very unnatural to enforce tracklimits with regulation rather than by physical elements. Just make sure that going off track is slower and/or riskier.
So Indycar got it right this time, just make sure that taking the runoff isn’t faster next time.
On safety grounds it seems that we have to keep track limits enforcement. But as for the show, that Indycar race felt to me like “In your face, F1”. I am very much with Matthijs on this one : it is the track’s fault.
Compare the action we saw this week-end to the Verstappen overtake on Raikkonen in 2017. Both were great, but the latter leaded to a penalty because Max was some centimeters over the white line.
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