As Rinus VeeKay comes back to the site of his first IndyCar Series win, the Dutch racer will be hot off of a pole and podium at the most recent race at Barber Motorsports Park.
With high amounts of confidence, the 21-year-old comes back to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course with a lot of similarities for his No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet. The 14-turn, 2.439 mile road course has no major changes on it for 2022 except for the pavement sealer put down before the Indiana winter that may not be completely worn off before practice begins for Saturday’s (May 14th) GMR Grand Prix.
The cars haven’t changed in road/street course configuration and Firestone is bringing the same type of tires from last year’s races at the IMS road course to this race, which helps VeeKay’s race engineer Matt Barnes with creating the perfect setup for VeeKay.
Every road course has their defining characteristics and IMS’s road course is no exception. The course is extremely flat, much like Portland International Raceway. The surface also has a lot of grip inside of it, helping drivers go faster as more and more rubber is put down from either the Road to Indy or from the Indy cars.
The track has two lengthy straightaways leading into good passing opportunities. One might think that engineers would set up the cars with less downforce so they go faster on the straights, that’s not always the case.
“When you look at it and people immediately think, oh, well, you’re definitely going to trim there,” Barnes said. “But that’s not necessarily the case. A lot of time comes from the corners, which are all fairly slow speed for the most part. It tends to be a track that despite having a ton of grip, still favors downforce. I think that would surprise most people just looking at it, but that makes it unique.”
When looking at the circuit, there are several corners that engineers look at with more importance than the rest of the lap. Turn 4 is a right-hander that…
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