There’s this place in Italy, and it’s called the Nardò Ring. It’s a racetrack that’s a perfect circle. 7.8 miles long and banked in such a way that cars don’t need to turn the steering wheel until they really really get going, it’s used for speed tests. This is probably why it isn’t actually called a racetrack. It’s called a speed test track. How disappointing.
From what we can find online, there’s never been a race at the Nardò Ring. Why not? Unclear. Maybe it’s about the danger of a crash at that high of speeds, but Kenny Bräck crashed at 214 times the force of gravity in 2003, and he came out of that with only a broken sternum, a broken femur, a shattered vertebra, and—ok, yeah, bad example. Surely, though, it can’t be that much more dangerous than Talladega?
It feels like the situation here is that there’s a fast, unusual racetrack in a remote part of Italy (heel of the boot) that’s only being used for going fast. It’s not being used for going fast against other cars. Someone ought to fix that.
How Does Funny Car Work?
With the Olympics pausing all the automotive competition we cover in this space (kind of weird that they do that, but don’t question it too much), NHRA news has snuck into our field of awareness. Not that we haven’t been aware of John Force’s crash and recovery. We know that’s going on and we obviously wish him the best. We’re not monsters! But never before have we tried to learn anything about the NHRA or other drag racing, and with the AP recently clarifying that John Force is still eligible for the Funny Car title, even with Jack Beckman in his car, now seemed like a good time to figure out how that world works. What we’ve learned, at a very high level:
- As we would have guessed, the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) is the most prominent drag racing organization in the world.
- The NHRA runs a bunch of drag racing series, but it seems the two most prominent are Top Fuel (what Tony Schumaacher drives) and Funny Car (what John Force drove and may yet drive again).
- The difference between Top Fuel and Funny Car is the type of car used. Top Fuel uses dragsters, where the engine is in the back. Their dragsters are the really long, really skinny cars with the huge spoilers. Funny cars are more similar to what we think of as normal vehicles, except at least NHRA funny cars and possibly all funny cars look like AI tried to draw a car. The engine is in the front.
- Top Fuel and Funny Car run the same schedule, a 20-event series of tournaments around the U.S. Go see one, and I believe you get to see both.
- It doesn’t seem like either Top Fuel or Funny Car is more respected than the other, but I might be wrong on that. I’m getting the impression this is a matter of preference. Top Fuel dragsters are faster, but funny cars might be harder to drive?
And that’s that. We learned about drag racing tonight.
Juan Pablo Montoya: Back
For one race. He’ll drive 23XI’s #50 car at Watkins Glen in a few weeks. That car, which has also been the #67 car, is used for 23XI’s one-offs. It’s the one Travis Pastrana drove at Daytona last year.
It has been a long time since I thought about Juan Pablo Montoya, but fun to have him back around. A great thing about racing is that you can drop a guy who’s been retired for ten years into a car and he can compete. You can’t do that in the NFL. Basically, this is like if the Cardinals announced that they were going to start Brett Favre when they go to Lambeau Field in Week 6. Except it’s not shocking.
I am aware of no other NASCAR news this break. I think all the drivers are either riding around on boats or getting married.
Oliver Oakes Is a Cool Name
Three F1 principal moves:
- Alpine’s hiring a guy named Oliver Oakes to be its new principal. The only red flag is that he might go by Oli, based on one transcription of a quote I read. Ollie is great. Oli is odd.
- Audi announced Jonathan Wheatley as its principal for 2026. Wheatley’s currently the sporting director at Red Bull, where he’ll stay until…the end of this season, I think? No secret-sharing. They’re making him take some time off.
- McLaren extended Andrea Stella. I feel like Stella has a good gig because Zak Brown does all the public talking.
IndyCar as a Team Sport
The break’s a good time to talk IndyCar charters. What are those? Basically, IndyCar’s considering tightening its organization through the use of charters. This is how NASCAR does it: There are a limited number of charters, and those charters guarantee entry to every race while requiring that entry be used. Teams own them and can sell them to one another. It gives teams a little more stability and security instead of making every race an open-fielded event. F1 does it a little differently, but it’s the same idea: Spots are limited, creating more of a partnership between the sport’s competitors and its governing body.
Should IndyCar do this? I don’t really know. I don’t understand the economics of the thing well enough. It sounds like it’s going to happen eventually, though, and that IndyCar and its car owners are currently just negotiating details.
What I like about the current proposal is that it would cap each team at three charters. It’s bad luck for Ganassi, the one team with more than three cars ready to go next year, but it opens the door to compelling competition for a team championship, which IndyCar could use. A meaningful team championship leads to more of a team identity, and team identities can differ more than driver identities in motorsports, where a lot of the drivers are different flavors but the same shape.
Which teams would have three chartered cars? I think this is the list:
- Andretti Global
- Arrow McLaren
- Chip Ganassi Racing
- Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
- Team Penske
If you take the top three scores from Ganassi right now and compare them against the other teams, Ganassi leads Penske by 16 points in the hypothetical standings. That’s a lot closer than the individual standings, where Álex Palou has pulled to the brink of being out of reach.
Our ideas to save IndyCar over the years have included running all the races in Indiana, running a bunch of the races in national parks, creating an infuriating rival series named CaliCar, and stopping taking such long breaks all the time. We stand by all of those (the second might be a bad idea), but honestly, playing up a three-car team championship might help more. Simple fix.
