After a very rough fall for all of us, we have the band back together and we’re ready to start waxing poetically about the upcoming 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series season. There’s been some major shake-ups among many of the teams. Some changes were expected, some were not. Happy New Year!
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Show Notes
- Intro and Chat
- Passing of Dan Gurney
- 2018 Schedule (All times ET and subject to change)
- March 11 – 1230pm Grand Prix of St Petersburg – ABC
April 7 – 9pm ISM Raceway (Phoenix) – NBC SN
April 15 – 4pm Long Beach Grand Prix – NBC SN
April 22 – 3pm Barber Motorsports Prix – NBC SN
May 12 – 330pm Indianapolis Grand Prix – ABC
May 19 / 20th – 4pm Qualifications for the Indianapolis 500 – ABC
May 27th – 11am Indianapolis 500 – ABC
June 2nd – 330pm Detroit Belle Isle Race 1 – ABC
June 3rd – 330pm Detroit Belle Isle Race 2 – ABC
June 9th – 8pm Texas Motor Speedway – NBC SN
June 24th – 1230pm Road America – NBC SN
July 8th – 2pm Iowa Speedway – NBC SN
July 15th – 3pm Streets of Toronto – NBC SN
July 29th – 3pm Mid Ohio – NBC SN
August 19th – 130pm Pocono – NBC SN
August 25th – 8pm Gateway Motorsports Park – NBC SN
September 2nd – 2pm Portland International Raceway – NBC SN
September 16th – 630pm Sonoma Raceway – NBC SN
- March 11 – 1230pm Grand Prix of St Petersburg – ABC
- Oval qualifying changes
- Confirmed full season Drivers
- Penske Chevrolet – 1 Josef Newgarden / 12 Will Power / 22 Simon Pagenaud.
- Andretti Autosport Honda – 27 Alexander Rossi / 28 Ryan Hunter-Reay / 26 Zach Veach
- Andretti Herta Autosport with Curb Agajanian Honda – 98 Marco Andretti
- Chip Ganassi Racing Honda – 9 Scott Dixon / 10 Ed Jones
- Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Honda – 5 James Hinchcliffe / 7 Robert Wickens
- Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda – 15 Graham Rahal / 30 Takuma Sato
- AJ Foyt Enterprises Honda – 14 Tony Kanaan / 4 Matheus Leist
- Carlin Chevrolet – 59 Max Chilton / 23 Charlie Kimball
- Dale Coyne Racing Honda – 18 Sebastien Bourdais
- Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet – 20 Jordan King (RC) & Ed Carpenter (Ovals) / 21 Spencer Pigot
- Harding Racing Chevrolet – 88 Gabby Chaves
- Confirmed partial programmes
- Team Penske – Helio Castroneves (Indy GP + Indy 500)
- Michael Shank Racing Honda/SPM – 60 Jack Harvey (St Pete / LBGP / Indy 500 / Mid-Ohio / Portland / Sonoma)
- Juncos Racing TBC – 32 Kyle Kaiser (Indy GP / Indy 500 / 2 other rounds TBC) 32 Rene Binder (St Pete / Barber / Toronto / Mid Ohio)
- What’s the deal with Daly?
- New Race Director
Thank you all for listening, and we welcome your feedback. What are we doing that you like and want us to continue? What are we doing that you detest and want us to stop doing immediately? We want to improve our IndyCar conversation here at The Parc Fermé, and your comments will help a lot. You can subscribe to our podcast on SoundCloud or iTunes, and you can follow our Facebook page for updates and snapshots as we’re out at the track throughout the coming season. Thank you for listening!
how come you can list the Indy times, places and viewing schedule (channels) and F1 can’t get their act together?
I think part of it lies with ESPN and their new arrangement with Formula 1. This is the last year of their contract with IndyCar and most of the logistics have long been settled.
As I recall, there are three seats yet to be filled: 1 full time and 2 Indy-500 only. Any idea who might take those spots?
This is the first time I’ve listened to the indi podcasts. Don’t change a thing-nice to hear a straight conversation. I needed the background data because I’m pretty much done with F1 in 2018 and I’m hoping to see better racing in Indycars with the new, less downforce specs. But I see some long-standing problems remain in the post CART/post-IRL Indycars series, including its television coverage. Unfortunately, after Yahoo’s fine security failures, I dumped Flickr.
Thanks for listening Charlie! The new bodywork for the DW12 doesn’t produce less downforce, specifically. The downforce is generated differently. With this new bodywork, more downforce is made with the undertray. As a result, the front& rear wing are required to make less downforce to make the same overall target for a car. We are all acutely aware of the damage that “the split” has done to North American Open Wheel Racing. Somehow, in spite of itself, IndyCar soldiers on thanks to ridiculously good racing. Currently, the overall picture is looking better with more team owners coming in, a solid… Read more »
After Newgarden wrecked at Texas in 2016, ECR didn’t want to risk one of their backup cars anymore so they only ran the 2 entries at Indy in 2017 and more than likely won’t in 2018 unless they bought another Dallara.