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Q: I have followed racing of all types my entire life. I do miss the unknown possibilities of an engine blowing up during a race and affecting the outcome with these almost bulletproof engines (unless it is someone I support).
I look forward to another fun weekend with the IndyCar circus and other fans at Mid-Ohio, and I wonder what kinds of problems (if any) do the new hybrid systems cause with the powertrains? What could go wrong with them and cause the engine to fail?
Mike Nikishin, Burgettstown, Pennsylvania
MARSHALL PRUETT: We’ll have to run the first hybrid race to get a better idea of what issues might arise. There have been thousands and thousands of miles of testing, but we’ve never done a full race with 27 cars, with car-to-car contact and all the other normal things that happen and go wrong between the green flag and the checkered flag, which can shake and shake the ERS.
There could be a failure of the ESS or MGU. An ESS problem wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the world, but a seized or broken MGU, since it’s connected to the engine’s crankshaft via the input shaft, could cause a number of problems. Overheating of the ERS unit—ESS or MGU (or both)—could cause failures.
The MGU is the main sore point in the early days of hybridization. There’s nothing wrong with it, but IndyCar doesn’t want to push it too much, so the power numbers are kept pretty low. When IMSA went hybrid, all sorts of problems with the ERS were expected, but it never escalated into a serious problem. There were occasional misfires, but nothing widespread.
Famous last words for me here, but IndyCar’s last-gen ERS system has been ridden a lot and reliability has been pretty good, so based on that reality, I expect Mid-Ohio to continue the trend. In other words, it would be surprising if all the reliability we saw with the last-gen ERS system disappeared and left us with half or more of the field parked and smoking on the side of the road on Sunday.
Q: I know charters are a given at this point in IndyCar, but I don’t understand why the series has pushed so hard to add them. I totally understand why the teams want them, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me from the series’ perspective. It’s not like they’re struggling to attract car owners and interested teams right now. Why go to all that trouble, turn away potential interested parties and reward existing teams with charters? They don’t have charters now, and those same teams show up every week and there’s a full grid. If this were 2007, I could understand how charters would be valuable to the series at a time when it was hard to get a full grid every week, but are they really worried about a bunch of teams leaving now without a charter system in place?
I would much rather see the series take the opposite stance and lean towards competition – embrace the bumps! You could have road and street qualifying with the first round split into three groups – the top two in each group automatically advancing to the Fast 6. The bottom two or three in each group go into an Indy-style last-chance qualifying for the final grid spots, replacing the now-debatable Fast 12 segment. It would certainly make qualifying even more exciting and force teams to up their game if they want to keep competing – which can only be good for the product, given that this is a professional series.
Matt, Nazareth, Pennsylvania
MP: I had the same difficulty finding compelling reasons to create charters, but we know that team owners would like their entries to be protected, so guaranteeing starting positions in every race – except, thankfully, the Indy 500, which they dropped after receiving a strong fan backlash – is something they will receive.
And putting a monetary value on the open market for their entries is something else they won’t turn down, so that’s what they’ll get as well. This all fits in with the spec-driven direction the series has been following for many years. Eliminate as many areas as possible where failures could exist, like multiple tire suppliers and multiple chassis suppliers, so that no one is likely to choose the wrong supplier, and that way you’re pretty much guaranteed to be able to compete at the highest level.
It also protects your ability to compete in all but one race, while leaving newcomers to be the only ones at risk of failure and bankruptcy. That’s not the spirit of racing I fell in love with.
Aside from the guaranteed starting positions, the charter suits me, but maybe I’m just misreading it.
Charters have clear benefits for teams, but perhaps at the expense of competition. Phillip Abbott/Motorsport Images
Q: As an engineer, I have no problem switching between US and metric units for comparison purposes. However, many fans on social media are completely baffled by IndyCar’s insistence on using the long-standing US units for horsepower and torque for the internal combustion engine, but metric units for the ERS. To be honest, I think this is a deliberate obfuscation to mask how impotent this ERS is in practice compared to everything that was promised.
Power is the result of torque multiplied by revolutions per minute, plus any necessary conversion factors. 30 Newton-meters of torque at 12,000 rpm is equivalent to just under 51 hp, which is well below the initially set targets.
The series will allow 105kJ of energy to be deployed per lap in Iowa. That equates to 50hp for 2.8 seconds, assuming the driver is able to harvest and deploy that much energy with everything else for an 18-second lap – and a 100% efficient MGU, which we know is not possible.
A standard rechargeable lithium battery fitted to a domestic grass trimmer has a capacity of 30 watt-hours. One Wh is equivalent to 3.6 kJ, so this pack contains 108 kJ of energy. Obviously, I don’t expect Hinch to make this comparison on screen, even if it is realistic.
A gallon of E85 contains about 94,000 kJ of thermal energy, and a turbocharged engine at full throttle can achieve 40% efficiency in converting thermal energy to kinetic energy at the driveshaft. 105 kJ is only about the same energy that the internal combustion engine produces in the back end burning 0.14 ounces of E85.
I’ve been a fan of the series since the turbine days, and I really struggle to understand the hype around this “development”. It’s a mass of complications with little benefit over a bit more turbo boost, manufacturers’ marketing efforts be damned.
Steve Jarzombek
MP: I hear you, but IndyCar put a lot of constraints on itself by keeping the same chassis because there was no room to build a robust high-voltage lithium-ion battery solution. There was only a small gap to fill in the bell housing, and what Chevy and Honda came up with is, as I’ve said many times, a marvel of design. But because of the extreme limitation of space to install an ESS and MGU, they were unable to build a monstrous ERS that delivers massive horsepower and torque.
The series claims it could one day hit 150 hp with this engine, which would be great. But it starts at a modest 60 hp and 33.2 lb-ft of torque to maintain the reliability achieved with MGUs.
This is primarily a marketing exercise, not a deep technological exploration by IndyCar, Chevy or Honda. It’s about giving its current car brands, and hopefully others in the future, the relevance they need to stay in the series or join it. So far, from 2013 to 2023 (and half of 2024), no manufacturer has wanted to join IndyCar as long as it wasn’t hybrid.
The new ERS package may not produce the jaw-dropping performance we were hoping for – at least initially – but I’m focused on what the move to hybrid might do to attract more automakers to the series.
Regarding units of measurement, I expressed my concern and the need for the series to Americanize everything related to ERS units. Newton meters and kilojoules don’t mix well here, so let’s hope that advice was followed.