Little room to pass on IndyCar’s new Detroit track without “creating carnage”

IndyCar drivers discovered the new street circuit where this weekend’s Detroit Grand Prix will take place is likely to be difficult to overtake on.

The 27-car field sampled the course in downtown Detroit for the first time today. The 2.647 kilometre (1.645 mile) track features 10 corners, most of which are right-angles.

Kyle Kirkwood, who scored his first IndyCar win on the Long Beach street circuit in April, said the first practice session was less chaotic then the drivers feared, given there is less than 100 metres between each car on average when the track is full.

“It was honestly less carnage than I expected,” said Kirkwood. “I think there’s a lot of people that went off in the run-offs but no one actually hit the wall, I don’t think, which actually surprised me. So hats off to them for keeping it clean. Including myself!

“It was pretty good. It was quite a bit less grip than I think everyone expected, maybe a little bit more bumpy down into turn three than everyone expected. But overall, they did a good job.”

The longest acceleration zone on the track runs to turns three and four, a pair of 90-degree left-handers. However Kirkwood says the bumpy approach to the corner will impair passing attempts.

“It tunnels in and then it’s strange because it’s such a long brake zone,” he said. “It’s the only place on the calendar that we brake near a 500 [yard] board, so far.

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“So it’s such a long brake zone that you kind of lose feel of how close you’re getting to the corner, almost. It’s a bit strange, but that’s just due to the surface of the track because it’s so bumpy heading down into there. You’re playing with the brake pedal the entire way through there just so you don’t lock up, or the car jumps on you sometimes in the middle of the brake zone, it’s a bit awkward.

“So I think people are going to be a little bit more hesitant because of that to want to make passes happen.”

Kirkwood suspects turns three and four could be the scene of drama during the start and any restarts. “It’s such a tight radius corner as it is that any radius that you’re cutting is not going to be good. So everyone’s going to be, I imagine, trying to get through their single file.

“But that that’s really never the case, right? It still creates a passing opportunity, but not as much as what it looks like when you first go walk the track. It seems like this is wide open and it will be pretty easy but once you’re doing 180, 190 [miles per hour] down into there, it doesn’t feel as wide.”

Despite the difficulty of passing at that point on the lap, Kirkwood sees few better passing places elsewhere around the circuit.

“I really don’t see a lot of opportunity without it creating carnage,” he said. “You can pass into one, you can pass into eight, you might build a pass into five, but you’re not going to be able to go double-file through there. I think the outside guy is going to go into the wall in a few of the places that people will try and pass, to be honest.”

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IndyCar has returned to the downtown Detroit area 32 years after the CART series left it to race on the nearby Belle Isle. The track shares some sections previously used by that series and Formula 1 when it raced in Detroit between 1982 and 1988.

However Pato O’Ward, who was quickest in today’s first practice session on the new circuit, was a committed fan of the previous circuit, and said the layout which has replaced it lacks variety.

“Belle Isle is busier,” he said, “there is a lot more fast corners in Belle Isle. Here there’s really one and that is turn two and it really isn’t that fast. Belle Isle, turn one and two, the last corner, those are fricking fast corners to be in a street course with a lot of bumps.

“I’m a very big fan of Belle Isle, I was very sad to see it leave the calendar. But this is a different track, it’s a new track, it’s going to be a great event.

“I feel like Belle Isle has a lot of very different corners that get the circuit together and here we’ve just got nine corners. We’ve got one chicane and then a lot of very similar for speed corners, I’d say, and one hairpin.”

Pictures: Practice at IndyCar’s new Detroit street cicuit

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