Hybrids Should Be Shelved to Save Oval Season

Ed Carpenter is right. 

After Race 2 of the Hy-Vee IndyCar Weekend at Iowa Speedway on Sunday (July 14), the NTT IndyCar Series owner-driver told Frontstretch and other media members that the series hybrid effort with the additional expense falling on the team’s shoulders is just making “the racing worse.” 

After the dreadful show put on in the unique doubleheader format, it’s hard to argue against his logic. 

Over the course of 500 laps on the seven-eighths-of-a-mile banked oval, the majority of the IndyCar show was a single file, follow-the-car-ahead procession, with overtaking happening when the second grove was swept before restarts. Other than when those conditions were present, it was a “snoozefest” as Race 1 runner-up Pato O’Ward said. 

It’s a shame that this happened, as the race, while usually dominated by one car, would still provide full-field overtaking and multi-grove racing. When leaders caught traffic, the best cars prevailed in getting around the poorer-handling machines. That was not the case over the weekend as leaders either slowed down to prevent catching traffic, knowing drivers behind them couldn’t overtake, or were stuck in a gap that couldn’t be overcome. It felt like the races put on during the short return to Phoenix Raceway after 2016 and the early days of the universal aero kit’s debut in 2018.

Now, to be transparent, this is not a treatise on the hybrid program and its inclusion into the series. I’m very bullish on what the technology can do and am curious what it will become as it’s enhanced and improved. It does seem the series’ strategy to implement the new hybrid mid-season has had unforeseen consequences on the racing. With three rounds complete on two different types of venues, its clear so far the hybrid has not positively affected the on-track product. 

This truth is a sad state of affairs for a series that consistently claims to have the best competition on whatever circuit they race. Unfortunately the motif is no longer backing that up on the track. As Frontstretch has touched on before, the series oval package on flat tracks isn’t a polished, perfect product quite yet. Now IndyCar has possibly another egg on its schedule when Iowa was the one event that stakeholders could point at to defend the close racing proclamation. 

What happened? I’m not an engineer and can’t point at one…