In Driver’s Eye with James Hinchcliffe, the six-time INDYCAR winner will bring you inside the mind of a racer while breaking down the nuts and bolts of the sport for fans.
Racing is risky. There are no two ways about it. From the sport’s inception, there has been an inherent danger.Â
That said, drivers today are incredibly lucky to race in the era they do. Safety is something INDYCAR, the tracks and the partners â not to mention the drivers! â take very seriously.
Something is learned from every accident, and pushing safety forward is a never-ending endeavor. This is without doubt the safest era to be a professional racing driver. But at the end of the day, we are still driving faster than 200 miles an hour beside concrete walls, and it will never be 100 percent safe.
Unfortunately, that was confirmed at the Indianapolis 500 when both Alexander Rossi and Josef Newgarden suffered separate crashes that left them with minor injuries. And crutches.
Yet both drivers competed the following week in Detroit. While the specifics of each injury haven’t been shared, they seem to be similar in nature, yet completely different in the challenges they presented each driver.
Rossis issue was with his right ankle, which is the throttle foot.Â
At the Indy 500 â where he also competed with the injury after crashing in practice and undergoing minor surgery â the track is smooth. So the typical amount of throttle modulation over a lap is quite a bit less than the twisty street circuit in Detroit.Â
Trying to carefully accelerate on a dirty, bumpy street circuit with 750-ish horsepower at your disposal requires a delicate finesse with that right foot. Much harder when your foot isnt at 100 percent.Â
Add into it the bumpy nature of the track, and the floor of the car regularly and violently bottoms out over bumps, sending shock waves through every inch of your body, including your injured foot. A challenging proposition, to say the least.
Newgarden also had an issue with his foot, but it was his left foot. The braking foot. This is where the challenge is completely different.Â
For all the finesse required for your throttle foot, you need brute force in the braking foot.Â
INDYCAR drivers hit the brake pedal as hard as they physically can on the initial hit of a big brake zone, like Turn 3 at Detroit. Several hundred pounds of pressure on the pedal translates to several thousand pounds of pressure through the brake system.
And while that strength is key, arguably more important is how you control the brake release â coming off the brake pedal as the speed bleeds off so you get closer to the corner. This technique is what drivers spend their whole career refining.Â
Its one of the main areas that separates a professional from an amateur: The ability to feel the grip in the tires and constantly modulate the brake pressure to maximize brake efficiency without locking up a tire.
If you are battling an injury to the brake foot, it can completely change the muscle memory that comes from decades of racing with a healthy left leg. Trying to retrain your brain to undo what is essentially second nature can be massively difficult.
When you consider these challenges, it makes it all the more impressive that Rossi was in podium contention until an ill-time
