The four-mile Road America track in Wisconsin has always been regarded as IndyCar’s equivalent of a Spa-Francorchamps or Suzuka. Fast, sweeping corners, limited run-off, an epic drivers’ challenge. It was much-missed when absent from the calendar for the first eight seasons after Champ Car/IndyCar reunification, and extremely welcome when it was brought back onto the schedule from 2016.
For the 2023 IndyCar Series round there this weekend, the challenge of Road America is likely to get if not harder then certainly faster.
In a $4million+ project last winter, the entire track and pitlane were resurfaced for the first time since 1995, creating a significantly different feel to a notably bumpy track.
“I’m going to predict 2023 will be the year some records fall,” said Road America’s president and general manager Mike Kertscher last year.
If he was thinking of the outright race lap record (Alex Zanardi’s 1m41.874s from the 1998 CART race, a 143mph average) or fastest-ever pole (Dario Franchitti’s 1m39.988s from 2000, a 146mph average) then that’s a major speed increase over recent IndyCar pace there. Last year’s best times were 5s slower.
Though some kerbs have been replaced too, circuit management aimed to keep the actual details such as track width, kerb position and camber as close to identical to the old surface as possible, promising a “tenth of an inch” margin.
Some teams have tried it in private testing, and found some glitches – such as Penske driver Scott McLaughlin’s alarming video of his car leaping into the air over a bump on the Turn 1 exit kerb last week. The track was expected to take quick action to solve that one.
Turn 1 / Road America.
Speed bumps on racetracks are bad.. flew car 85ft and put a hole in the underwing, but we good. #thirsty3s pic.twitter.com/rpNhYybYWq
— Scott McLaughlin (@smclaughlin93) June 8, 2023
So what does the new surface mean for this weekend’s race? Here’s what a man who’s raced an IndyCar there – The Race IndyCar Podcast co-host JR Hildebrand – reckons.
FASTER = TOUGHER
“It’s typically higher grip when you have these situations but we won’t know for sure until we see a car on track.
“But if that’s the case, then in some ways it makes Road America even more interesting because there are already a lot of places on track that are very high risk if you just carry a little too much speed through a corner onto some very treacherous exit kerbing.
“There’s not really useable run-off almost anywhere. You’ve got it in a few places, a little bit at the exit of Turn 1 and a little bit at the exit of Canada Corner. But even in those areas it’s not extra track that you can rely on using, it’s just a little bit of extra road in case you have something go horribly wrong. But even by then, you’re carrying enough speed deep enough through the corner that you might not be able to really use whatever extra road is there.
“Just because it’s so fast, the cornering energies are rather high. I’m looking forward to finding out what that dynamic is like.”
LESS BUMPY = MAYBE EASIER
“There are some places – like Canada Corner through Turn 13 and into the last corner – that have been quite bumpy and that’s made for some of the difficulty factor in a couple of sections of track.
“Maybe some of that gets cleaned up a bit and you don’t see quite as much of it.”
DIFFERENT SET-UPS NEEDED?
“The big bogey is just what’s the track grip like and how does that change, particularly depending on weather conditions. A newly-paved track is often just darker. Does that create a higher degree of temperature sensitivity over the course of the weekend?
“The other part of it is with new pavement it could end up changing what’s required from a set-up perspective – just to get maximum grip out of the tyre – so you get a little bit of a shake-up in who’s good there.
“Josef Newgarden, Colton Herta, Alexander Rossi, Scott Dixon, Felix Rosenqvist, Pato O’Ward, Alex Palou, they’re all the usual names but they’ve also all had wins or good runs at Road America.
“Do we see dominance emerge from someone it’s expected from or maybe do you see a team show up here that hasn’t been in that form at Road America in the past but maybe because of the nature of their package they somehow have a leg up?
“There will be a lot of things I’ll be looking for that will start emerging as trends from first practice.”
