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Payne: Walking the Detroit GP track with IndyCar rising star Armstrong and Chairman Denker
Posted by Talbot Payne on June 2, 2023
Detroit — When preparing for a race weekend, IndyCar drivers spend a lot of time on track simulators learning the line, reference points, best passing locations. But there’s no substitute for walking the course — especially a downtown Detroit street course that no one has raced before.
“She’s definitely bumpy,” Ganassi Racing team driver and rising star Marcus Armstrong said, as I walked the track with him and Detroit Grand Prix Chairman Bud Denker at twilight Tuesday night. “The circuit will separate the men from the boys because of the very abrasive layout, the corner characteristics and the unforgiving concrete walls. You just have to drive the wheels off it.”
Denker himself is a skilled driver and has spent extensive time driving the track at speed in sports cars, in order to help make it more hospitable to open-wheel, winged, 700-horsepower IndyCar missiles when they hit the streets Friday for the first practice sessions of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear.
“It’s a new track that no one has raced before. Anybody can win this race this year,” Denker said, as he picked up clipped wire endings from track fencing that construction crews had installed just minutes before.
Anybody like American Josef Newgarden, last Sunday’s Indy 500 winner. Or IndyCar points leader Alex Palou of Spain. Or New Zealander Armstrong, a rookie phenom by way of Europe’s Formula 2 series. Armstrong placed eighth at the last street circuit race in Long Beach in his No. 11, Honda-powered steed — his best result so far — but the weather-scarred streets of Detroit are a long way from the sunbathed boulevards of southern California.
Turn 9 — a 90-degree right-hander that leads onto the short pit straight — is the intersection of St. Antoine and Franklin streets. It’s a crazy-quilt of concrete pavement surfaces — typical of heavily-traveled Detroit streets — and a long way from the billiard-smooth, asphalt, closed-circuit tracks like Barber Motorsports Park, Mid-Ohio, or Road America, where I race a Lola sports car in the North American Sports 2000 series.
Those tracks are also on the IndyCar schedule — part of a stew of street courses and 230-mph ovals that combine to make IndyCar the most challenging driver’s series in the world.
“I think Turn 9 might catch some drivers out, like Turn 13 at Belle Isle,” smiled Denker, recalling the diabolical corner that put many a driver into the wall as they exited onto the old track’s front straight.
A long, 0.7-mile-long straightway between Turns 2 and 3 will be a signature of the new downtown circuit. Three lanes wide, it runs east-to-west along Jefferson Avenue, past the Renaissance Center, and into a 180-degree, left-hand hairpin just past The Fist.
“That straight is very long. . . and is the best passing opportunity. So, there’s not going to be a lack of chaos there,” Armstrong said.
It presented challenges for Denker and his team. Armstrong, who has been racing the track on Honda’s simulator, expects speeds to exceed the 185 mph IndyCars hit at other fast venues like Long Beach and Road America. Lap times? Armstrong and Denker predict 1.04-minute laps on IndyCar’s harder-compound, Firestone Black tires. On the softer Firestone Reds, times may flirt with 1-minute flat.
“We’re going to have cars going 190 mph down Jefferson Avenue . . .legally,” Denker said, smiling.
Those speeds required that his team check — and secure — every one of the 185 manhole covers on the straightway.
“I hope they have those secured,” Armstrong said. “The bottom of our cars are essentially a vacuum with the rear (wing and) diffuser, which suck the car to the ground — and the concrete into the car.”
Bringing an IndyCar back to earth from 190 to 50 mph also meant repaving some 300 yards of Jefferson east of Griswold. “The braking zone had to be smoother,” Denker said.
His crew also has been paving and grinding other key sections of the nine-turn track, like the uphill Turn 6-7 esses (along the waterfront to the Renaissance Center’s west), where IndyCars build speed for another potential passing opportunity into the Turn 8 left-hander.
Turn 8 will also be tricky as drivers enter the pits there — the only dual-lane pit entrance in the sport. The dual lane was necessitated when Denker couldn’t locate a logical, 1,000-foot stretch for pit lane. So he split it into parallel, 500-foot lanes. With the RenCen as its backdrop, the pits will be another Detroit GP signature.
Armstrong said the pit lane is a wild card.
“Honestly, our simulation looked a bit different than what it is now,” the 22-year-old said, peering down the dual lanes. “It looks a bit tighter than I thought. It’s going to be interesting when there is a yellow — and there will be — when all 20-some cars come in at the same time. It’s going to be like rush hour (with) everyone funneling into that small area.”
Single-lane pits are already fraught with tension (see the chaos that altered Palou’s Indy 500 Sunday). Now imagine cars frantically merging into parallel lanes that then merge into a single lane heading back into Turn One.
“There are no traffic lights in motor racing,” Armstrong smiled nervously.
Re-entering the track, drivers must stay right of a white merge line until they get to Turn One. Meanwhile, on-track racers braking into Turn One must stay left of the merge line.
It’s going to be wild.
“It’s going to be fun,” Armstrong laughed.
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. He races in the North American Sports 2000 series. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or Twitter @HenryEPayne.