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After months of rumours and speculations, Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Administration Ltd. (FOA) has finally decided to award the US Grand Prix to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS). IMS has been the odds-on favourite to host the USGP for many months. Here is a look at the proposal that brings back Grand Prix Racing to the United States.
 THE WINNING TEAM:
Tony George: President and Chief Executive Officer of IMS since 1990. He added the NASCAR Brickyard 400 event in 1994. Much to the chagrin of some Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) followers, he formed the Indy Racing League (IRL) in 1996. He also added an International Race of champions (IROC) event in July of this year. He is the grandson of Tony Hulman, who bought the Speedway in 1945.
Mari Hulman George: Chairperson of the IMS board of directors since 1998. She is the daughter of Tony Hulman.
Fred Nations: Vice-President of Public Relations at IMS.
Kevin Forbes: Director of Engineering and Construction at IMS. Designer of the IMS Grand Prix circuit.
THE CIRCUIT:
The circuit is a 2.53 mile (4.0 km), 13-corner circuit built inside the Speedway. This will make it the third shortest circuit of the current Grands Prix circuits; similar in size to the Hungaroring and longer than Monaco. Grand Prix races are typically about 300 km in length, so the 2000 USGP will probably be run over 75-80 laps. In a previous article, I expressed concern that the circuit might be uninteresting, like Magny-Cours in France. I should not have worried. This is not an "Indy Cours". It looks more like a mirror-image of Monza, although it is 1.8 km shorter than the Italian circuit. No-one would suggest that Kevin Forbes copied Monza, but there are some striking similarities. The fact that he had to design it to fit inside the stadium and avoid both the Brickyard Crossings Golf Course and the Hall of Fame Museum makes the design all the more remarkable.
About 40% of the banked oval circuit is included in the Grand Prix circuit. The race will be run in a clockwise direction, the opposite direction to the oval circuit. Using the Monza analogy, turn one of the oval circuit (turn 13 of the Grand Prix circuit) becomes a "Curva Grande" that leads to the five-eigths mile (1 km) main straightway. The starting grid will form on the main straightaway. The straightaway ends in a series of bends (turns 1, 2, 3 & 4) that form a backwards "Curva Parabolica" with an extra kink in it. After another loop (turns 5, 6 & 7), a 500 yd (0.46 km) back straight follows what is now Hulman Boulevard, a main road on the infield.
The back straight ends at turn 8 where the "Variante Ascari" would be. This is followed by turn 9, a 55 mph (88.5 km/h) hairpin similar to "La Source" in Spa-Francorchamps. After another loop (turn 10), the infield section ends with turns 11 and 12, a pair of right-handers that are separated by a short straight, reminiscent of the "Curva di Lesmos", before entering the oval course after turn two. The quarter mile (0.4 km) short oval straight leads back to the "Curva Grande" and the main straightaway to
complete a lap.
What will the circuit be like to drive on? The Indy circuit differs from Monza in that half of the circuit is flat-out, requiring low down-force, while the other half is twisty and requires high down-force. The F1 drivers and engineers are faced with the
"Hockenheim dilemma" where two sections of the circuit require mutually-exclusive set-ups. Like Monza, we can expect a high rate of attrition. Brakes, tyres and engines will suffer a lot of stress. Based in computer modelling, a lap time of 1 minute 13 seconds with an average speed of 125 mph (201 km/h) is predicted. This is comparable with 1998 lap times for Catalunya, Imola, Montreal and the Nurburgring but is much slower than Monza and Hockenheim.
CAR SAFETY:
Many enthusiasts have expressed concern about the safety of the oval section of the circuit which is surrounded by a concrete wall. Neck injuries like those experienced by Mika Hakkinen at Adelaide are a particular worry as well as leg injuries like those that almost crippled Nelson Piquet. The monocoques of IRL and CART cars have strengthened around the drivers legs to minimize these injuries. Perhaps the improved 1999 F1 car safety regulations are a prelude to the 2000 USGP. In particular, the redesigned seats that will allow the driver to be removed from the car while still strapped in the seat and the attachment of cables to the wheels to stop them flying off the vehicle and possibility into the crowd. The tragic events at Michigan Speedway during the U.S. 500 race in July, when three spectators were killed by a wheel and other debris that ended up in the grandstands, may have been just as big a factor in this decision as the major accident at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix. We can expect additional safety features to be required in the 2000 F1 cars that would make them more like their IRL and CART counterparts.
CIRCUIT SAFETY:
IMS made a statement that "There will be temporary and permanent impact walls paralleling the road course portion of the circuit." What will these impact walls be? IMS has installed an experimental plastic barrier system around the inside of turn four of the oval. This novel system provides an impact-absorbing cushion and gets around the problem of a car going under the cushion and hitting the concrete behind it, as might happen with covered tyre walls.
THE RACE DATE:
The exact date of the next USGP has not been set. The plan of having two back-to-back North American Grand Prix may not be possible. The Indy 500 in 2000 is set for May 30th, during the Memorial Day weekend, and this is set in stone. The Canadian Grand Prix is tentatively set for June 13th. According to Canadians who have contacted me, there is typically only a small window of warm weather in Montreal. Mid-June is the only time that the Canadian GP can be run because, at other times, it can be too cold. The French Grand Prix is also tentatively set for June 27th. It seems unlikely that the FIA would hold Grand Prix on two sides of the Atlantic over three consecutive weekends. It would be fitting to have the USGP on Independence Day (July 4th) however this date might conflict with Wimbledon's tennis finals, which would harm the television ratings. It might make more sense to push the French Grand Prix forward a week and run the USGP on June 20th. IMS will also have to work around the Brickyard 400 in August, perhaps another IROC race and the Senior-PGA golf tournament event that is held on the infield Brickyard Crossings Golf Course. We shall have to wait to find out how this will be resolved.
THE WRITE-IN VOTES:
Many F1 enthusiasts from U.S.A. and other parts of the world contacted us after the ATLAS F1 special on the USGP. Of the enthusiasts who responded, most had an opinion of the best circuit to hold the USGP. Watkins Glen was the favourite, by one vote, followed by Laguna Seca in Monterey,
California. In a tie for third place were Indianapolis and Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Fifth equal were Road Atlanta and Sears Point, California. Many asked why their favourite circuits were not on the short list. The answer is quite simple: the exclusion clause in FIA contracts.
If a circuit agrees to host an FIA event, it must not host events by competing formulae. This is to avoid head-to-head comparisons between the competing events. Hence, if an outstanding circuit like Laguna Seca had wished to host the USGP, it
would have had to drop its CART event and probably modify the circuit. Since the CART events are highly lucrative, this was not an economically sound move. This clause probably ended Road Atlanta's bid for the USGP when they accepted a contract from the Le Mans organization, which is a competitor of the FIA-GT series. Brandy Station was a proposal to revitalise a scenic, but economically depressed, area of Virginia. The developer pulled out in the face of opposition from local civil war battlefield conservationists. Atlanta had two independent proposals. The Peachtree Grand Prix circuit in Atlanta was a street circuit, set out around the Atlanta Braves Stadium, that was co-designed by Mark Ward. One of the San Francisco proposals was a street circuit in or around the Presidio, an area of San Francisco that is being redeveloped.
It is very fitting that IMS is building a Monza-style circuit within the banked Indianapolis circuit to attract Formula One in 2000, since Monza attempted to attract Indy-style racing by building a banked section in 1955. It looks certain that the 2000 USGP will be a bigger success that the "Race of Two Worlds" races held on the Monza banking in 1957 and 1958. To use Tony Holman's immortal words: "Gentlemen, start your engines!".
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