A Boost For The 500

Speedway, IN – As the gift of increased turbocharger boost pressure becomes a reality today, teams continue to prepare for tomorrow’s Indianapolis 500 time trials with just one day of track time left to find out what affect that will have on tomorrow’s runs. Remember, too, that the boost will revert back to its original settings for the 500.

Here’s what some on pit road are saying:

• Ben Bretzman, lead engineer for Simon Pagenaud’s Schmidt Hamilton HP Motorsports Honda
“The biggest thing, honestly, will be gearing. We’re going to go quite a bit faster, so we’re going to need to make sure we have the gears right. Unfortunately, we’re not going to have a lot of running on it. From a chassis standpoint, it’s a bit of an unknown. It will get a little bit more load in the corner because you’ll be going faster, so you might need to adjust the platform. But, in general, we’ll just need to make sure we are geared right.”

• Townsend Bell, driver, Braun Ability -Schmidt Pelfrey Motorsports Honda
“We expect it to be faster and we’ll be disappointed if it’s not .The chance to go qualify as fast as you think you can go at Indianapolis is what it’s all about. I don’t think we’ll be flirting with any track records just yet, but I think it (increased boost) is a step in the right direction. Speed is what our sport is all about.”

Along with added boost for qualifying, the new body style on the Dallara DW 12 has changed the way drivers approach traffic, especially on the long straightaways here at Indianapolis.

• Will Power, driver, Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet- (About running in traffic)
“It’s the opposite to what was said in the preseason. I think you can run closer with this car than with the old car. It punches a massive hole in the air, so the tow effect is huge. You could be leading doing a 217 (speed) and the guy behind you could be 5 mph quicker. It’s been more of a challenge to understand the setups. As far as driving, it’s been a bit easier. It’s more grip and less power, so it’s stuck more to the road. You have less chance of making a mistake. Josef New garden made a mistake (Wednesday, when he spun and made contact) and that’s the first I’ve seen. The car is pretty forgiving- it’s stuck. You do get a big draft and lose some grip. I think it will be a good race and once it’s said and done, it will be like last year.”

• Ryan Hunter- Reay, driver, Team DHL/Sun Drop Citrus Soda Chevrolet
“In order to get that moment where the car really sucks up, you have to somewhat be on the throttle on the corner following them. You have to have a good run to the corner. You can’t be pedaling it through there or you’ll drop back. There’s a big penalty for a lift in traffic. You’ll drop back farther. There’s ups and downs. I think it’s going to be a real exciting race. I think we’re in for something that we haven’t seen in a while. There’s going to be a lot of passing here at Indy.”

• Simon Pagenaud, driver, Schmidt Hamilton HP Motorsports Honda
“The track is not slippery when you get the car nicely dialed in. It’s not slippery; you just have to feel the air on the car and feel what the car is telling you through your butt. You really feel if you get understeer or oversteer, and you really have to learn to manage that from the car with the steering wheel and your foot. It’s really a fine line. You want to be neutral by yourself and safe in traffic. But traffic usually brings you understeer. So it’s difficult to find the right balance. There is a lot more thinking and processing than on a road course.”

• But Oriol Servia, Panther/Dreyer& Reinbold Racing Chevrolet, paints, perhaps, an ominous picture of running in race traffic. Ominous because after Dan Wheldon’s tragedy last season, many called for the new Dallara to spread out traffic and not run as close as before.

“It’s going to be an interesting race because I think we are going to be in a pack, but it will be a good one.”
We can only hope he’s right.

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

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