Tony Stewart claimed the first Superstar Racing Experience championship while guest driver Chase Elliott won the season finale at the Nashville Fairgrounds. IndyCar will be getting its first new video game in almost 20 years. Known last names are landing seats in the NASCAR Cup Series for 2022. Convergence is happening. Formula One debuted sprint qualifying, but the 2021 British Grand Prix was one for the ages. IMSA suffered a weather-shortened race at Lime Rock Park. The Summer Olympics is upon us and the motorsports schedule thins out for the next few weeks. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
Does Practice Matter?
Pretty straightforward question. Does practice matter?
A typical race weekend builds, starting with practice with qualifying following and a race ends the festivities. We ran all these laps in the lead up to a race and at times the result appears known days before the green flag is even waved.
Does practice matter? If it does, how much does it matter? Does a Friday or Saturday spoil the entire thing and cause us to waste our time on Sunday afternoons?
I went back and looked over every IndyCar race weekend from 2015 to now, every Formula One race weekend in the turbo-hybrid era and every NASCAR Cup race weekend since 2017 to see what we can learn from practice.
A few notes: All results are based on full practice results. This is taking each driver's fastest individual lap into account. It is not looking at ten-lap averages or whether the track was dry or wet. It does not take into consideration whether or not it was a tow-lap or a no-tow lap. It is strictly the official practice results each series published.
IndyCar
An IndyCar race weekend varies. Most road courses have three sessions before qualifying and then a warm-up. Some have only two sessions before qualifying. Others don't have a warm-up. The doubleheaders might have only one practice session and then there are the ovals.
IndyCar is generally viewed as a wide-open competition. Anyone can win anywhere, and every team has a shot. Team Penske might win ten of 17 races, but Dale Coyne Racing, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Ed Carpenter Racing can all pick up a victory. Meyer Shank Racing won the Indianapolis 500 this year. Need I say more?
But does that wide openness show up in practice? When the likes of DCR or ECR win, is it something we saw coming from the start of the weekend or does it pop up in the race? Do we see teams perform above expectations set from practice times?
There have been 107 race weekends in IndyCar between the start of the 2015 season, when manufacture aero kits were first introduced, and the Mid-Ohio round held earlier this month. How did those shake out?
In 36 of 107 IndyCar race weekends, the race winner was fastest in one of the practice sessions beforehand. On only four of those 36 occasions was one driver fastest in every practice session and that is a bit misleading because two of those were races that had only one practice session to begin with.
Scott Dixon was fastest in all four practice sessions ahead of the Watkins Glen race in 2016. Will Power was fastest for all three practice sessions ahead of the 2017 Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Dixon topped the only practice session of the 2019 Belle Isle weekend and then he won the second race of that doubleheader weekend. Last year, Dixon led practice for the Texas season opener and won later that afternoon as a one-day show opened the pandemic-delayed season.
Forty-six of 107 races saw the race winner average a practice result of fifth or better. Ninety of 107 races had the winner averaged tenth or better in practice.
Ten of the 17 winners that averaged a practice result of tenth or worse were on ovals. On the reverse end, of the 18 winners that averaged practice result of 2.5 or better, only five of those were on ovals, two of which were weekends that had one practice session, Dixon last year at Texas and Patricio O'Ward this year at Texas. The other three oval races were all races Josef Newgarden won (Iowa 2016, Gateway 2017 and Iowa 2019).
Going back to the bottom end of the practice results, four of the 17 winners that averaged a practice result of tenth or worse were races that had only one practice session and those were all doubleheader weekends. Three of those were last year. Dixon was 15th in the only Road America practice session and then won the first race. Newgarden was 12th in the Gateway practice and then won the second race. Power was 14th in the lone Harvest Grand Prix practice and then led every lap from pole position in race two that weekend.
The fourth weekend was Pocono 2019 when rain cancelled the morning session and qualifying. There was one practice on Saturday afternoon. Will Power was 20th in that practice session and then won a rain-shortened race.
Besides Power, the only other race winners to average a practice result worse than 15th were both in 2015. One was Carlos Muñoz, who averaged 16.5 between two Belle Isle practice sessions, and then won the rain-shortened first race. The other was Graham Rahal at Fontana when he was 21st and 18th in the two practices.
The average practice result for the last 107 IndyCar race winners was 6.8971 with a median of fifth. However, if we looked at just the 37 oval races from that sample, the average practice result jumps to 9.2547 for winners with a median of eighth.
Formula One
With the competitive nature of Formula One, you may believe practice DOESN'T matter even if those leading Friday are the ones on top at the end of Sunday.
In 148 grand prix during the turbo-hybrid era, the race winner has topped at least one practice 88 times. On 13 occasions a driver topped every practice session and won the race. One of those include Lewis Hamilton's victory at Imola in 2020, which had only one practice session.
Ninety-six race winners in the last 148 grand prix averaged a practice result of third or better; 128 averaged fifth or better. There were only 14 races where a race winner failed to crack the top three in at least one session.
Every grand prix winner in the turbo-hybrid has averaged a practice result better than tenth. The worst average was 9.5 for Lewis Hamilton at the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix, where he was 15th, fourth and did not participate in the third session. That race weekend was constantly in wet or damp conditions.
Only one grand prix winner in the turbo-hybrid era failed to crack the top five in any of the practice sessions ahead of that race. That was Daniel Ricciardo at the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix when he was sixth, eighth and sixth in the three practice sessions. That was the same race Hamilton infamously lost his engine while leading and ultimately swung the championship into the favor of Nico Rosberg.
In only 13 races had the race winner been outside the top ten in a session prior, but some of those were drivers who had mechanical issues and only ran a few laps or abbreviated sessions. Those 13 races do not include races where a driver did not participate in a practice.
NASCAR
There have been 118 Cup races with scheduled practice since the start of the 2017 season. On only three occasions did a race winner lead every practice session beforehand. Kevin Harvick at Kansas in 2018, Kyle Busch at the 2019 Homestead season finale and Alex Bowman at Fontana in 2020. The first two of those were races that had only one practice session.
Thirty of the last 118 Cup races with scheduled practice sessions saw the winner top at least one of the practice sessions leading up to the race. Thirty-two of those 118 races saw the winner average a practice result worse than tenth. There have been 12 races where the winner didn't crack the top ten in any of the practice sessions before the race.
Four winners averaged a practice result worse than 20th. Joey Logano did it twice at Richmond 2017 and Las Vegas 2019. That Richmond race is the one where Logano's victory was encumbered, and he lost automatic playoff qualification. Logano would not make the playoffs that year. Brad Keselowski averaged 26.5 between the two practice sessions at the 2019 Atlanta race and Justin Haley was 38th in the only practice session he ran prior to the July 2019 Daytona race, the one Haley won after not pitting under caution with a red flag then ending the race before it restarted.
What about road courses? If there is a notable difference between road course and oval practice results in IndyCar, what about in NASCAR?
There have been ten NASCAR road course races with practice since the start of 2017. Five of those winners average practice result was 5.5 or lower. Only three of them did the winner average a practice result worse than tenth. One of those was Ryan Blaney, who won the inaugural Charlotte roval race after Martin Truex, Jr. and Jimmie Johnson came together in the final set of corners. The other was Chase Elliott at Road America this year.
I was curious if the results different between the aero and horsepower package from 2017 and 2018 and the low horsepower/high downforce package in 2019.
In 2017 and 2018, the average practice result for a race winner was 8.4476. Since 2019, the average practice result only went up to 8.763, not a significant jump.
Does practice matter?
Yes, practice always matters, but how much does it matter?
The fastest cars are bound to come out on top, but there are certain places where it is more significant than others.
Pace in Formula One practice definitely corresponds with results in the grand prix. In IndyCar, practice does not tell us as much, but practice results do suggest race success, although it is more likely someone will top a road or street course session and win than top an oval practice and take victory. NASCAR is more wide-open, but NASCAR is where one-lap pace does not carry as much weight as a ten-lap or 20-lap average. With a predominantly oval series and frequent green flag runs of 60 laps or more, a driver that might only have the fifth fastest individual lap might be the fastest over a longer period of time and after that run the car in fifth will be leading.
There are no guarantees from practice. There isn't a hard and fast outcome where a certain combination of practice results assure victory, but there is a window most winners fall into. We can narrow down who will likely come out on top once all the practices are complete, but there are occasional surprises, and those are what keep us tuning in when it is race time.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Tony Stewart and Chase Elliott, but did you know...
Lewis Hamilton won the British Grand Prix, his 99th grand prix victory and fourth of the season.
Robert Shwartzman, Richard Vershoor and Guanyu Zhou split the Formula Two race from Silverstone.
Aric Almirola won the NASCAR Cup race at Loudon. Christopher Bell won the Grand National Series race.
The #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López won the 6 Hours of Monza. The #22 United Autosports Oreca-Gibson of Filipe Albuquerque, Phil Hanson and Fabio Scherer won in the LMP2 class. The #92 Porsche of Kévin Estre and Neel Jani won in GTE-Pro. The #83 AF Corse of François Perrodo, Niklas Nielsen and Alessio Rovera won in GTE-Am.
The #3 Corvette of Jordan Taylor and Antonio García won the IMSA race from Lime Rock Park. The #23 Heart of Racing Team Aston Martin of Roman de Angelis and Ross Gunn won in the GTD class.
The #1 Team Kunimitsu Honda of Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino won the Super GT race from Motegi. The #2 muta Racing INGING Lotus of Hiroki Katoh and Ryohei Sakaguchi won in GT300.
Cameron Waters won the bookend Supercars races from Townsville while Shane van Gisbergen won the middle race.
Kalle Rovanperä won Rally Estonia, his first career World Rally Championship victory and Rovanperä became the youngest winner in WRC history at 20 years, nine months and 17 days.
Coming Up This Weekend
Formula E will have a doubleheader around a new circuit in London.
Lausitz hosts the second round of the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters season.
World Superbike visits Assen.
