IndyCar starts aren’t known for being tame, especially on street circuits, but polesitter Colton Herta declaring we’re in for the “craziest” start of the year at the new Nashville street course is a cry to sit up and take notice.
It must be a bittersweet pole for Herta. He tops every session in Nashville and then pulls off one of the laps of the year to progress from the first group on the hard tyre only to be met with one of the most difficult first corners in the series.
Its difficulty starts out with its name, it’s Turn 9, not Turn 1! That’s because the race starts on the scenic Korean War Veterans Bridge whereas the lap ends after Turn 11 in front of the Tennessee Titans football team’s stadium.
To understand why Herta’s expecting such chaos at the start, watch the video below. It’s the first corner you’ll see after the bridge, a left-hander.
While he has driven on the streets of Nashville countless times, Nashville native @josefnewgarden has never driven on them like this.
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Not only does the corner come at the end of a long straight and a downhill entry, the corner entry itself is wide, so there will be plenty of room for the compact grid to attack each other at the start.
The braking zone is also bumpy, so the cars are going to be unsettled. This looks wayward but just about under control when a car is alone on track, but moments of oversteer will be punished more when in close combat with other cars.
You can take multiple lines through the corner, too. I’m sure braking late and diving down the inside of the corner and attempting to block wide on the exit will be popular, but any drivers taking a wide entry will be able to get the power down earlier and have a better run onto a lengthy straight.
On the exit of Turn 9, it does narrow, so it will upset drivers caught out of position after the melee of the corner itself.
“I think this is going to be the craziest start of the year,” reckons Herta.
“We’re going to be going quite quick from where the start zone is, going into an off-camber, second-gear corner. That’s like 60-70 mph. So definitely it’s going to be interesting.
“There’s not a whole bunch of ways to bail, turn into the corner. If guys are committing three-wide, it could get a little bit messy.
“You’re probably expecting to see something happen on the opening lap, in the opening corner.
“If any yellows do happen, it’s going to open up strategy. It’s going to create bigger stints because you’re going to be saving a lot more fuel.
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
Felix Rosenqvist compared the Nashville Turn 9 corner to Turn 1 at the old Cleveland track, and you’ll see below that it’s not difficult to understand where he is coming from.
Herta is no stranger to starting from the pole, and he has the best average start in the series so far this year at 4.3. He also has six poles in two and a half seasons, so he’s no stranger to starting up front.
But how does a driver prepare for a situation whereby, you’re on pole and expecting an onslaught from behind?
Asked by The Race if he’s thought about things like car placement and if it’s something he likes to plan out or something he prefers to leave to instincts, Herta replied: “No, I haven’t thought of it at all yet because I wasn’t sure where I was going to start up until this point.
“I think now that’s something that we’ll go through.
“We’ll definitely be going through the photos of where the start/finish line is, where the punch-off cones are and stuff, where you can start going [starting the race], pictures of what it’s like going into Turn 9, or 1, depending on how you think of it.
“But, yeah, it’s definitely going to be interesting.
“It’s going to be a crazy start for sure with how much the track opens up, it goes from like four-five lanes, to like 10.
“I could see it being like a Pocono start, then everybody has to brake and go down to second gear at the end of it.”
It’s hard to argue. The way the corner is set up and the difficulty level of the braking zone, combined with 27 cars, the most on an IndyCar grid outside the Indianapolis 500 since 2013, all in close quarters, is a recipe for trouble.
If Herta is wrong, and the race is single-file into Turn 9(1) at the start of the race on Sunday, don’t worry. The number of crashes in practice and qualifying means there’s going to be plenty of cautions and opportunities for drivers to go on a different strategy.
The tech U-turn Herta embraced to star in Nashville
Since IndyCar arrived in its new Nashville home, Herta has been unstoppable. Fastest in both practices, and then in qualifying he set the fastest time of the weekend so far in the first qualifying group with hard tyres, while no one could beat him on softs.
This was key as it gave him an extra set of soft tyres for the Fast Six, where he made the most of the advantage and took pole.
However, tyres weren’t the reason he was able to hit the ground running so quickly. The key to that came before Herta even stepped on a plane to Tennessee.
“We came here and we rolled off the truck, it was just really good, It has a lot to do with Honda and their simulator, how accurate it actually was,” says Herta.
“I think a lot of guys and teams were kind of wondering if it was going to be like the real thing, where the barriers and bumps were.
“I thought it was really accurate.
“That kind of helped us get the car kind of where you wanted to.
“You never fully want to rely on the simulator.
“But we kind of got it in an operating window where we liked it.
“We brought that car here and it worked right away.
“Just minor changes to keep up with the track evolution. The car was good.”
Don’t underestimate the value of the simulator, given that no one could test on this track and that it’s quite technical, bumpy and – for a street circuit – fraught with elevation change.
So having an accurate simulator is only going to help in those situations, especially now teams are using the Chevrolet and Honda sims to create on-track set-ups, because they are more accurate and representative than ever before.
It’s not just the set-up it helped with for Herta though, it’s in an area where he doesn’t usually look to for help in the sim: with driving.
“I did half a day on it, I think like Monday or Tuesday before I came down here,” adds Herta.
“I thought it was actually a really good model.
“The bumps and where everything was was really nice. Obviously they laser-scan it, so it should be exactly how it is.
“Even how the walls were placed and stuff, they weren’t really sure how that was going to be. It was pretty spot on. In the track length and everything, it was really good.
“I credit a lot to how good we’re doing this weekend because of that.
“Usually I don’t look into the simulator too much for driving, more just kind of getting used to how many down changes I have to do, around where to brake.
“But for this it was actually very accurate. It helped a lot.”
