Welcome to Pocono for our summer holiday 500 mile race. It's round 14 of the IndyCar Series this year, and the 12th circuit (due to Indy and Detroit holding two races each). It's also the last superspeedway of the year.
Seeing as we're in the school holidays, I've prepared a lesson plan so the kids don't get too out of practice.
The two day timetable is as follows.
(Times are in Eastern time. Add 5 for UK and 6 for Central Europe, etc.)
Saturday 18th August
1030-1130 Practice 1
1330-1445 Qualifying
1645-1745 Practice 2
Sunday 19th August
1405 Race (200 laps)
Period 1: Geography
Pocono Raceway is located in the Pocono Mountains. It is near a place called Long Pond, which according to wikipedia is home to "racially diverse, and mostly married couples". It is located near the future southern boarder of Sylvania, near the Penn Republic. These lie on the eastern portion of the Kingdom of Mad King Donald.
Homework: Write a 450 word essay on the influence of Rob Ramos on the local area.
Period 2: Maths
We'll start of with a bit of Geometry. Pocono is a triangular shape oval track. It is well known that the triangle is a basis for some of the world's greatest racing circuits. Spa-Francorchamps, Reim and Knockhill have all been based on a roughly triangular shape layout of roads. Pocono also takes the Magny-Cours approach of having it's turns based on turns from other, great circuits that existed at the time it was built. Fortunately two are still with us. Turn 1 was based on Trenton, Turn 2 aka the Tunnel Turn was based on Indy and Turn 3 on the Milwaukee Mile.
Here is a track map:
The Pocono 500 will of course be using the oval configuration. It is a 4.023 km (2.5 mile) long circuit, and it's also wide enough that 7 wide racing is possible.
On to some statistics. The current championship standings are as follows:
- Scott Dixon 494
- Alex Rossi 448
- Josef Newgarden 434
- Will Power 407
- Ryan Hunter-Reay 399
- Robert Wickens 380
- Simon Pagenaud 344
- Graham Rahal 335
- James Hinchcliffe 328
- Sebastien Bourdais 293
- Marco Andretti 285
- Takuma Sato 258
- Ed Jones 255
- Spencer Pigot 239
- Tony Kanaan 227
- Charlie Kimball 212
- Zach Veach 211
- Matt Leist 182
- Max Chilton 162
- Gabby Chaves 158
- Ed Carpenter 148
- Jordan King 126
- Zachary Claman 122
- to 37. Anyone who hasn't scored 100 points.
This season has been characterised by the battle between veterans such as Scott Dixon, Will Power and Ryan Hunter-Reay and the new Young AmericansTM Alex Rossi and reigning champion Josef Newgarden. Plus we've seen ever more promising performances from Robert Wickens and surely a first win can't be far away.
Homework: List all the IndyCar Series circuits in order of internal area.
Break Time
Typical. On her phone as soon as possible.
Period 3: History
Pocono has had two lives in the IndyCar Series. It's first life was often as part of a 500 mile Triple Crown (put your hand down Fernando!). The race was run from 1971 to 1989. The circuit had fallen into disrepair, and was considered dangerous with metal barriers and cracked tarmac. IndyCar's official youtube channel has uploaded the 1988 for us to study.
The circuit came back to the series in 2013, and since then has seen highs and terrible lows. In 2014, Juan Pablo Montoya took his first win on his return to the series, bulding towards a championship challenge in 2015. But the 2015 race was marred by the tragic death of Justin Wilson late in the race. His was one of many to influence most open wheel series to increase the driver's head protection.
Homework: Find the last common ancestor of all of the current IndyCar drivers.
Lunch
When you said you were having a light lunch, I pictured something else.
Period 4: Science
Now for some physics. This year saw the debut of the new sexier universal body kit for Indycars. The reduced downforce generated from upper body aerodynamics coupled with a greater reliance on underbody shaping has resulted in a car that can produce great racing on road and street coursed. However, the speedway version of the body kit struggled to produce great racing at Indianapolis, which is a worry because Pocono is theoretically like Indy. Long straights are joined by fairly flat turns, so you need cars that can follow closely in the latter to slipstream each other on the former. So much so that Will Power and Scott Dixon were recently testing at Indy to determine how to develop the car for next year. Not that it was particularly bad this year, but it wasn't as good as previous years, so the pressure is on to do something.
What can we expect from Pocono? It's hard to say, but hopefully we'll see some good competitive racing. Pocono has generally been a good race since its return to IndyCar, so hopefully it continues.
Homework: Calculate the Reynolds Number of an Indycar on an average lap of Pocono.
Home Time
That's it for today kids! Make sure you also make your fantasy league picks and enjoy the race!
ETA: Spotter Guide link https://digbza2f4g9q...0180815T203711Z
