SPEEDWAY, Ind. — On Wednesday, Indy 500 testing faced several different challenges between quickly changing weather conditions and a few minor mishaps.
However, those mishaps caught the attention of IndyCar race directors and Indianapolis Motor Speedway track workers. Early on, Alexander Rossi spun out in the warm-up lane of the South Chute as testing got going early in the afternoon after an hour and a half Weather Delay.
Thinking nothing of it at the time, testing kept moving. But, when Helio Castroneves slammed into the Turn 2 wall after a similar spin in the same area and then one more from Will Power after the track subsequently went back to green flag running, race director Kyle Novak had seen enough and called an end to the session so they could inspect what was going on in the warm-up lanes.
IMS President Doug Boles said on the Peacock broadcast of testing on Thursday that during the winter they treated the racing surface with a penetrant that is supposed to preserve the track and keep potholes from forming with the freeze-thaw tendency of this time of year.
“This track was resurfaced in 2004. It’s still got 3.2 million bricks underneath it,” Boles explained. “You’ve got the freeze and thaw and what happens is when those bricks move it manifests itself on the surface as the water gets down in there.”
Boles said the penetrant fills those holes underneath the surface of the race track to keep water from filling them.
Boles could not say for certain if the penetrant is what was causing the grip levels on the warm-up lanes to be so poor on Wednesday. But throughout the night, track workers scrubbed tires along the surface and used other measures to achieve the desired grip level.
“Since October when we (sprayed the penetrant) there have been things on the race track, but there has been nothing on the warm-up lanes,” Boles said. “So we think part of it is that nothing has been on it (for months).”
Power, Rossi, and Castroneves were all slowly getting up to speed in the warm-up lanes when each of their incidents happened.
