The IndyCar Series has a few dedicated forums to help drive the sport forward, but one key area needed to bolster itself is the need for an engineers council.
There are groups stretching from drivers, manufacturers, team managers and others, but currently no place for the technical minds of pit lane to share thoughts on how to push innovations to the next level, such as the recent hybrid technology that was introduced midway through the 2024 season. Gavin Ward, Team Principal for Arrow McLaren, has proposed a proper forum consisting of engineers that could help in a number of key areas, such as development, direction and even cost.
“I think it’s a subtle development with what’s already going on,” Ward told Motorsport.com.
“You have regular team manager meetings with IndyCar, which are useful; it’s a good outreach from the series. I guess the feedback I’ve been given is, and some of the experience I’ve had as an engineer stepping into those meetings and wanting to bring up engineering focused topics about anything from what sensors we allow or really how to evolve the rules package, with a focus on where teams go and spend their money — engineering or idea wise — or how to use the collective know-how and knowledge of the entire pit lane to try and improve the show and the racing or the safety for the cars.”
Ward’s background as an engineer, which also includes 12 years with Red Bull Racing in Formula 1, puts him in a unique role to share thoughts at the team manager meetings. However, he felt those discussions were “the wrong place for it” and noted how most of the team managers have more of a mechanical background.
“There’s a lot of common interest in this sport, unlike other racing series I’ve worked in,” Ward said. “But there’s a lot of common interest in making it, putting on a great show and being pragmatic about how we put together the best product and don’t waste money if we don’t need to, et cetera.”
Chris Simmons, Director of Performance at Chip Ganassi Racing, shared how there was some involvement during the initial phase of hybrid testing when the original plan was to utilize the MAHLE system, which ended up being replaced and produced in a joint effort by Chevrolet, Honda and IndyCar.
“I think people at IndyCar have a lot of data from different teams, but not necessarily the tools and certainly not the need to use the tools — simulations and things — as hard as the teams do,” Simmons told Motorsport.com. “Teams often have better info than they have about what we’re doing now and what could be changed. I think it makes sense to bring the experts in on some of those discussions, for sure.”
And Ward was also quick to point out how series leadership can sometimes place more emphasis on engineering based on driver feedback versus actual engineers. Although he doesn’t discount the voice of the drivers, there should be more inclusion from the “brain power” that occupy the timing stands.
Another key element to the discussion is the impact of cost on the teams with any new product being introduced.
“The series needs to understand the true cost of some of the decisions they make,” Ward said.
“They look at, ‘We’ll put this new part as an available option on the race cars.’ They’ll tell you that that part costs $1,000. But the truth is, everyone is going to Windshear (wind tunnel) aero testing the hell out of it or people are running their tunnels in Pennsylvania or Mooresville (North Carolina), spending a hell of a lot more money trying to figure out every detail about that part of how it interacts with everything else, remapping their entire cars. The cost of that $1,000 part is not $1,000 per car. It’s a hell of a lot more.”
Simmons added: “Yeah, I think when we start talking about costs, sometimes people want to go look for something cheaper, but what we’re really going to be looking for is value.
“So, if you have a sensor that costs half as much but lasts a quarter as long, that’s really more expensive. I think that gets lost in the shuffle sometimes, that you go through something that’s cheaper and it’s actually not a better value.
“Hopefully, the big teams and the little teams would agree with things like that, things that are prone to get damaged in a crash. Even if it lasts longer, it doesn’t always work out that way, so you’ve got to balance it out on some of those things. If you have a sensor in the cockpit or down by the brake master cylinders, if it lasts a couple of and it costs twice as much as something that only lasts a couple of races, that’s a heck of a lot of value.”
As far as the makeup of what an engineers council would look like, Ward believes it is something that could mirror Formula 1. He would also like to add Firestone and IndyCar technical personnel to the group as part of a groupthink of discussions to reduce the number of races that become dependent on fuel saving, along with some events that lacked natural racing.
“I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel,” Ward said. “This happens in Formula 1. They’ve got a technical working group over there; they send technical directors from each team and they meet up, I don’t know ‘x’ times a year and discuss future rules packages. Basically, I’m saying to do the same thing. We do it with team managers and so does F1; they do a sporting working group, which is a team manager meeting. And they also have a technical equivalent.
“I’ll be the first to tell you that IndyCar doesn’t need to copy what Formula 1 is doing, but I think it shouldn’t blind to what they’re doing either.”
