What's the difference between Formula One racing and IndyCar racing?

There's no such thing, is there? There's no single difference between F1 and IC. Rather, there are a host of differences. Or are there that many?

Take the question a step further, and forget all you know about the two series, and just look at them as though it was for the first time. Imagine that you were being introduced to big-time open-wheel racing for the first time ... or, perhaps, to big-time motor racing for the first time.

The first thing that grabs your eye has to be the look of the cars. In both series, the cars look very similar. Big open-wheel beasts, with wings at the front, huge spoilers at the back, and most of the rest of the car covered over with an aerodynamic shield. To the uninitiated, no difference at all really. Under that aerodynamic skin, they're pretty much the same again. You have to get all the way back to the engine before you find some serious differences. But that's under the skin.

Then there are the circuits they race on. F1 uses a few street circuits, but mostly road circuits. IC uses a mix of ovals, street circuits, airports and road circuits. But, to our new fan, it's still a bunch of race cars going round and round.

Tactics, pit stops? Not really, when our new fan looks at it. Pit stops in IC tend to be fairly mandated by the restrictions on the size of the fuel tank, so that all the field tends to pit around the same time - the infamous "window". But, nowadays, that's roughly the same situation in F1, except that there is some flexibility in deciding the number of stops because some cars will use a "two-stop" strategy, while others will use a "three-stop" strategy.

Full-course yellows. Aha! Now there's a solid difference. Full-course yellows tend to be commonplace in IC rather than a rarity - out comes the pace car to bunch the field up. It happens in F1, but it is a rarity rather than commonplace. But still, having a pace car on the circuit is the same, in simplistic terms, whether it's F1 or IC. So that's not a real, big difference.

Every now and then, my daughter has to suffer the indignity of having to watch motor racing on the TV. Even worse, is when she has to watch it with me, as I can get just a wee bit emotional about the whole thing.

A few weeks ago, she came and joined me just as I was watching a video which had an IC race immediately followed by an F1 race, and she stayed for a while - she must have been really, seriously bored!

During the IC race, a car went off the circuit and bounced off the tyre walls. All the yellow flags came out, driver was fine, car seemed in reasonable condition, so the IC safety team dragged it off. A little later, I noticed that the car was back in the race and said something about the pit crew doing a good job to make sure that everything was working properly and getting the driver back out so quickly.

The race ran its length, and we moved on to the F1 race (Okay. I moved on to the F1 race, my daughter let loose with yet another yawn). Fairly early on in that race, one of the cars ploughed into a gravel trap and came to a halt. The steering wheel came out, the driver unplugged all his connections, climbed out and walked away, as a crane took the car out of harm's way. As the car went into the trap, and as it was being towed away, it didn't seem as though there was too much wrong with it.

At that point, the series of questions started. My daughter wanted to know if the car was seriously damaged - she couldn't see anything wrong with it. If the car was fit to drive, was the driver injured? Obviously not, from the way he got out of the car.

My daughter is 12 years old, bright, intelligent, and has got her father's good looks and witty sense of humour among other attributes. If she has any faults, the only one is that it seems that she may grow to be taller than her father - unless I get to her with a chain-saw first. Anyway, back to the story.

The next question was so simple that it stunned me, "Will he back in the race soon?"

THAT'S the difference between F1 and IC.

In F1, once the car is out of the race it is out, finished, gone, kaput, dead. In IC, if you can crawl, drag, tow the car back to the pits and get it going again, you're racing again.

Look through the result sheets for any race from the two series. Usually, in F1, most cars fail to finish the race. For a variety of reasons that most of us would probably know pretty well, the cars fall by the way-side, until only a few actually complete the full race distance, and only a few more are listed as "finishers" (ie. completed 90% of the race distance).

In IC, while plenty of cars visit the pits, total failures are a rarity. In IC, many cars may be well back from the winner, but if they were still circulating, they are listed as "Running", because that's what they were doing.

Wouldn't it be interesting, to say the least, if F1 cars that went off the track were allowed back into the race? Call a full-course yellow, close the field up artificially, get the car out of the way, let the race continue, fix the "broken" car (if possible), and get it back on the circuit. That would close up the racing, and keep the field from being reduced to 3 or 4 runners at the end of the race.

But that's just me.