2014 Race of Champions Preview: High-speed fun in the sun

By Dec 12, 2014, 3:36 PM EST
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After a one-year absence, the Race of Champions returns with its 26th running this weekend in sunny Barbados.

Due to political turmoil in Thailand, the 2013 event that was slated to take place there was cancelled. But now, Lotus F1 pilot Romain Grosjean will finally have his chance to defend the “Champion of Champions” title he earned in the 2012 edition.

Standing in his way is a stellar group of competitors that includes nine-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen, former F1 standout David Coulthard, V8 Supercar champ Jamie Whincup, and motorcycle icon Mick Doohan.

Several familiar Americans are also in the hunt, including Indianapolis 500 champion and Verizon IndyCar Series star Ryan Hunter-Reay, former NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Kurt Busch, and off-road star and former NASCAR/IndyCar racer Robby Gordon.

With the competitions set to begin tomorrow, here’s a preview of what to look forward to. And last but not least, a TV note for you: NBCSN will carry a highlights show from this year’s ROC on Dec. 18 (this coming Thursday) at 7 p.m. ET.

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THE TRACK

Barbados’ Bushy Park Circuit was the site for the 2014 season opener in Red Bull Global Rallycross, and this weekend, it will be home to the Race of Champions. The 1.4-mile ROC course features two, 21-foot-wide parallel tracks and a crossover bridge.

You can get a driver’s view of the circuit in this on-board video featuring Tom Kristensen in a KTM X-Bow, one of the cars that will be used in the competition (more on those below):

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THE CARS

A big draw for the ROC is the fact that the drivers compete in a variety of different machines. This year, there are seven different types of cars including the aforementioned X-Bow, an Audi R8 LMS, a Stadium Super Truck, a NASCAR Whelen Euro Series stock car, a Volkswagen Polo RX, an Ariel Atom Cup, and the ROC Car.

Some facts and figures regarding the cars:

  • Among the ROC 2014 cars, the VW Polo RX is the fastest to go from 0-100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour) at 1.9 seconds – faster than a Formula 1 car.
  • The average 0-100kph time of the ROC 2014 cars is 3.1 seconds.
  • The Audi R8 LMS is the fastest overall of the ROC 2014 cars with a top speed of 290kph (180 mph).

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THE COMPETITIONS

ROC NATIONS CUP

The weekend begins on Saturday with the ROC Nations Cup, where drivers team up with their countrymen in pairs and compete in a round-robin group stage. The top two teams from each group will move on to the knockout stage (semifinals and finals).

Each driver on a team initially has one race against a driver from the opposing team. Should the score be tied at 1-1, the winning drivers will hold a tiebreaker race to determine which team comes out on top.

The Nations Cup groups are as follows:

Group A

  • Team France (Esteban Ocon & Romain Grosjean)
  • Team Nordic (Tom Kristensen & Petter Solberg)
  • Team Americas (Robby Gordon & José Maria Lopez)
  • Team Young Stars (Jolyon Palmer & Pascal Wehrlein)

Group B

  • Team Australia (Mick Doohan & Jamie Whincup)
  • Team Scotland (Susie Wolff & David Coulthard)
  • Team Barbados (Dane Skeete & Rhett Watson)
  • Team USA (Ryan Hunter-Reay & Kurt Busch)

ROC CARIBBEAN

Also on Saturday is a Caribbean-based competition that will propel two drivers into the Race of Champions on Sunday. Teams from Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, and Guyana will compete.

The Barbados driver with the fastest time in the ROC Caribbean group stage in the same car will qualify for Sunday’s main event, as will the fastest driver in the group stage in the same car from among the three other Caribbean teams.

Those squads include the aforementioned Dane Skeete and Rhett Watson from Barbados as well as:

  • Team Jamaica (Doug Gore & Jeffrey Panton)
  • Team Guyana (Kristian Jeffrey & Mark Vieira)
  • Team Trinidad & Tobago (Franklyn Boodram & David Coelho)

RACE OF CHAMPIONS

Sunday’s big competition will begin with a round-robin group stage again, from which the top two drivers from each group will advance to the knockout rounds. Take a look at the group draw, and you’ll see that many intriguing battles lie ahead on the Bushy Park circuit:

Group A

  • Romain Grosjean, Lotus F1 driver and reigning ROC Champion of Champions
  • Jamie Whincup, six-time and reigning V8 Supercar Champion
  • David Coulthard, 13-time F1 Grand Prix winner
  • Mick Doohan, five-time MotoGP World Champion, 500cc

Group B

  • Petter Solberg, reigning FIA World Rallycross Champion
  • Kurt Busch, 2004 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion
  • Susie Wolff, Williams F1 official test driver
  • Fastest Team Barbados driver from ROC Caribbean

Group C

  • José-Maria Lopez, reigning FIA World Touring Car Champion
  • Robby Gordon, three-time Baja 1000 winner and former NASCAR/IndyCar racer
  • Fastest ROC Caribbean driver from the other teams
  • Esteban Ocon, reigning FIA European F3 Champion

Group D

  • Tom Kristensen, nine-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner
  • Ryan Hunter-Reay, reigning Indianapolis 500 champion and 2012 IndyCar Series Champion
  • Jolyon Palmer, reigning FIA GP2 Series Champion
  • Pascal Wehrlein, Mercedes F1 reserve driver

‘It’s gnarly, bro’: IndyCar drivers face new challenge on streets of downtown Detroit

By Jun 2, 2023, 7:32 PM EDT
IndyCar Detroit downtown
James Black/Penske Entertainment
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DETROIT – It was the 1968 motion picture, “Winning” when actress Joanne Woodward asked Paul Newman if he were going to Milwaukee in the days after he won the Indianapolis 500 as driver Frank Capua.

“Everybody goes to Milwaukee after Indianapolis,” Newman responded near the end of the film.

Milwaukee was a mainstay as the race on the weekend after the Indianapolis 500 for decades, but since 2012, the first race after the Indy 500 has been Detroit at Belle Isle Park.

This year, there is a twist.

Instead of IndyCar racing at the Belle Isle State Park, it’s the streets of downtown Detroit on a race course that is quite reminiscent of the old Formula One and CART race course that was used from 1982 to 1991.

Formula One competed in the United States Grand Prix from 1982 to 1988. Beginning in 1989, CART took over the famed street race through 1991. In 1992, the race was moved to Belle Isle, where it was held through last year (with a 2009-2011 hiatus after the Great Recession).

The Penske Corp. is the promoter of this race, and they did a lot of good at Belle Isle, including saving the Scott Fountain, modernizing the Belle Isle Casino, and basically cleaning up the park for Detroit citizens to enjoy.

The race, however, had outgrown the venue. Roger Penske had big ideas to create an even bigger event and moving it back to downtown Detroit benefitted race sponsor Chevrolet. The footprint of the race course goes around General Motors world headquarters in the GM Renaissance Center – the centerpiece building of Detroit’s modernized skyline.

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Motor City is about to roar with the sound of Chevrolet and Honda engines this weekend as the NTT IndyCar Series is the featured race on the nine-turn, 1.7-mile temporary street course.

It’s perhaps the most unique street course on the IndyCar schedule because of the bumps on the streets and the only split pit lane in the series.

The pit lanes has stalls on opposing sides and four lanes across an unusual rectangular pit area (but still only one entry and exit).

Combine that, with the bumps and the NTT IndyCar Series drivers look forward to a wild ride in Motor City.

“It’s gnarly, bro,” Arrow McLaren driver Pato O’Ward said before posting the fastest time in Friday’s first practice. “It will be very interesting because the closest thing that I can see it being like is Toronto-like surfaces with more of a Long Beach-esque layout.

“There’s less room for error than Long Beach. There’s no curbs. You’ve got walls. I think very unique to this place.

PRACTICE RESULTS: Speeds from the first session

“Then it’s a bit of Nashville built into it. The braking zones look really very bumpy. Certain pavements don’t look bumpy but with how the asphalt and concrete is laid out, there’s undulation with it. So, you can imagine the cars are going to be smashing on every single undulation because we’re going to go through those sections fairly fast, and obviously the cars are pretty low. I don’t know.

“It looks fun, man. It’s definitely going to be a challenge. It’s going to be learning through every single session, not just for drivers and teams but for race control. For everyone.

“Everybody has to go into it knowing not every call is going to be smooth. It’s a tall task to ask from such a demanding racetrack. I think it’ll ask a lot from the race cars as well.”

The track is bumpy, but O’Ward indicated he would be surprised if it is bumper than Nashville. By comparison to Toronto, driving at slow speed is quite smooth, but fast speed is very bumpy.

“This is a mix of Nashville high-speed characteristics and Toronto slow speed in significant areas,” O’Ward said. “I think it’ll be a mix of a lot of street courses we go to, and the layout looks like more space than Nashville, which is really tight from Turn 4 to 8. It looks to be a bit more spacious as a whole track, but it’ll get tight in multiple areas.”

The concept of having four-wide pit stops is something that excites the 24-year-old driver from Monterey, Mexico.

“I think it’s innovation, bro,” O’Ward said. “If it works out, we’ll look like heroes.

“If it doesn’t, we tried.”

Because of the four lanes on pit road, there is a blend line the drivers will have to adhere to. Otherwise, it would be chaos leaving the pits compared to a normal two-lane pit road.

“If it wasn’t there, there’d be guys fighting for real estate where there’s one car that fits, and there’d be cars crashing in pit lane,” O’Ward said. “I get why they did that. It’s the same for everybody. I don’t think there’s a lot of room to play with. That’s the problem.

“But it looks freaking gnarly for sure. Oh my God, that’s going to be crazy.”

Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing believes the best passing areas will be on the long straights because of the bumps in the turns. That is where much of the action will be in terms of gaining or losing a position in the race.

“It will also be really easy to defend in my opinion,” Palou said. “Being a 180-degree corner, you just have to go on the inside and that’s it. There’s going to be passes for sure but its’ going to be risky.

“Turn 1, if someone dives in, you end up in the wall. They’re not going to be able to pass you on the exit, so maybe with the straight being so long you can actually pass before you end up on the braking zone.”

Palou’s teammate, Marcus Ericsson, was at the Honda simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana, before coming to Detroit and said he was shocked by the amount of bumps on the simulator.

Race promoter Bud Denker, the President of Penske Corporation, and Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix President Michael Montri, sent the track crews onto the streets with grinders to smooth out the bumps on the race course several weeks ago.

“They’ve done a decent amount of work, and even doing the track walk, it looked a lot better than what we expected,” Ericsson said. “I don’t think it’ll be too bad. I hope not. That’ll be something to take into account.

“I think the track layout doesn’t look like the most fun. Maybe not the most challenging. But I love these types of tracks with rules everywhere. It’s a big challenge, and you have to build up to it. That’s the types of tracks that I love to drive. It’s a very much Marcus Ericsson type of track. I like it.”

Scott Dixon, who was second fastest in the opening session, has competed on many new street circuits throughout his legendary racing career. The six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion for Chip Ganassi Racing likes the track layout, even with the unusual pit lane.

“I don’t think that’s going to be something that catches on where every track becomes a double barrel,” Dixon said. “It’s new and interesting.

“As far as pit exit, I think Toronto exit is worse with how the wall sticks out. I think in both lanes, you’ve got enough lead time to make it and most guys will make a good decision.”

It wasn’t until shortly after 3 p.m. ET on Friday that the IndyCar drivers began the extended 90-minute practice session to try out the race course for the first time in real life.

As expected, there were several sketchy moments, but no major crashes during the first session despite 19 local yellow flags for incidents and six red flags.

Rookie Agustin Canapino had to cut his practice short after some damage to his No. 78 Dallara-Chevrolet, but he was among many who emerged mostly unscathed from scrapes with the wall.

“It was honestly less carnage than I expected,” said Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood, who was third fastest in the practice after coming off his first career IndyCar victory in the most recent street race at Long Beach in April. “I think a lot of people went off in the runoffs, but no one actually hit the wall (too hard), which actually surprised me. Hats off to them for keeping it clean, including myself.

“It was quite a bit less grip than I think everyone expected. Maybe a little bit more bumpy down into Turn 3 than everyone expected. But overall they did a good job between the two manufacturers. I’m sure everyone had pretty much the same we were able to base everything off of. We felt pretty close to maximum right away.”

Most of the preparation for this event was done either on the General Motors Simulator in Huntersville, North Carolina, or the Honda Performance Development simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana.

“Now, we have simulators that can scan the track, so we have done plenty of laps already,” Power told NBC Sports. “They have ground and resurfaced a lot of the track, so it should be smoother.

“But nothing beats real-world experience. It’s going to be a learning experience in the first session.”

As a Team Penske driver, Power and his teammates were consulted about the progress and layout of the Detroit street course. They were shown what was possible with the streets that were available.

“We gave some input back after we were on the similar what might be ground and things like that,” Power said.

Racing on the streets of Belle Isle was a fairly pleasant experience for the fans and corporate sponsor that compete in the race.

But the vibe at the new location gives this a “big event” feel.

“The atmosphere is a lot better,” Power said. “The location, the accessibility for the fans, the crowd that will be here, it’s much easier. I think it will be a much better event.

“It feels like a Long Beach, only in a much bigger city. That is what street course racing is all about.”

Because the track promoter is also the team owner, Power and teammates Scott McLaughlin and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden will have a very busy weekend on the track, and with sponsor and personal appearances.

“That’s what pays the bills and allows us to do this,” Power said.

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500