Here is a rundown of what got me thinking...
It has been hard to put to words the passing of Kyle Busch. The motorsports side of this loss feels entirely irrelevant to a family who lost a father, son and brother. Everything else this weekend is meaningless. Who cares about the weather and the shortened NASCAR races? Who cares about the World Drivers' Championship? Who cares about the closest Indianapolis 500 and Felix Rosenqvist's victory? There is no point in being smart and clever with these words. It is hard to feel any joy even if we allowed to continue and that is what the Busch family would like us to do. We move forward with heavy hearts.
All Racing is Fuel Mileage Racing
As lead changes continued to rack up during the Indianapolis 500, I was enthralled with what I was watching and I knew exactly what was happening.
Whether it was Álex Palou and Alexander Rossi trading the lead as soon as the race began or when Palou and Scott Dixon worked in tandem as Chip Ganassi Racing teammates hoping to control the race and set each other up for the most success, it was incredible to watch, and I knew it was all down to fuel mileage.
With the drag the leader faces running as the head of a line it is a disadvantage to be first at Indianapolis. It is better to be second for a good portion of a stint. After all, the name of the game is being first at the end of the final lap. If you can run second for 199 laps, so be it if you can be first at the end of lap 200. It has been this way essentially since the DW12 chassis was introduced, a car that also made it rather easy to race close and make big runs for passes.
I knew the number of lead changes was inflated. I know the record we saw yesterday, 70 total, is a little inauthentic. It was not because drivers were constantly fighting to be first and there was some great power that came from leading. The lead changed because nobody wanted to lead. If the drivers could trade it every other lap they would.
And it doesn't bother me. I don't think it is great, but I don't know how you fix it especially if you want it to be organic. All everyone complains about are gimmicks but isn't anything that is done to enact change a gimmick in and of itself?
All racing is fuel mileage racing. Unless a race does not require a pit stop, fuel is going to play a role. It is the nature of motorsports in the 2020s, and it has been this way for over a decade. As long as you have cars running on fuel and needing to stop to re-fill tanks, fuel mileage is going to exist, and the goal will be to lose as little time as possible because of re-fueling.
And people get angry about fuel mileage racing. There is always a push to avoid it or eliminate it, but that is never going to be 100% possible. Even with NASCAR adding planned cautions for stages, it still exists. If a fuel window is 40 laps, there is going to be a team stopping with 42 laps to go or 41 laps to go to try and stretch it and possibly win a race.
A past you are longing for is no longer obtainable, and you might not even want it. If you want to go back to 1975 or 1982 or 1994 and have races where you never heard about saving fuel and cars running all-out, we are not in a place in 2026 to have that. The field is incredibly close, almost unavoidably close because they are all using the same chassis and there is nothing between the engines that Honda and Chevrolet produce. You cannot run away and win a race. The leader isn't just going to run a second faster than everybody on every lap. Even if the leader did, it would mean stopping much earlier and we have seen the power of the pit cycle and wanting to stop as late as possible to not be trapped at the back or trapped a lap down.
It used to be the case the fastest car was head and shoulders better than most of the field. Let's go back 40 years. Rick Mears had set the Indianapolis track record at 216.828 mph. That is four laps in two minutes and 46.030 seconds. Dick Simon was elevated into the field from the first alternate position after Dennis Firestone had to withdraw due to an accident in Carb Day practice. Simon's four-lap average was 204.978 mph, nearly ten seconds slower than Mears' four-lap run. For comparison, Palou's official pole-winning time this year was 3.8835 seconds faster than the slowest qualifying run from Sting Ray Robb.
Also, nothing fails now. Forty years ago, half the field knew it wasn't going to make 500 miles. There is a good chance all 33 cars will make it 500 miles in 2026. Eighteen cars ran all 500 miles this year and 24 cars took the checkered flag. Only four cars went the distance in 1986, and only 15 cars took the checkered flag.
All we have is fuel mileage, whether we like it or not, but it has always been there.
Jerry Grant lost the 1972 Indianapolis 500 because of fuel mileage. Roberto Guerrero lost the 1987 Indianapolis 500 because of needing one more pit stop and it was not handled cleanly. It is now the norm and what dictates the race from the start.
I don't know how you make it better. Formula One has no fuel stops and even then people are upset with the racing. There could be bigger fuel cells and make it so fuel stops are less important, but unless you had it so a car could go 300 miles on fuel and everyone just has to make one stop over a rather large fuel window, fuel mileage is going to be a factor.
Minimum speed could change. For most of this race, it felt like the leaders were running laps around 216 mph. Patricio O'Ward was dropping down to 207 mph averages as he was hoping to save fuel to make it to the finish. IndyCar could set a minimum lap time for the leaders that is much higher than we are seeing. It could be set at 220 mph or 40.909 seconds. It wouldn't entirely eliminate fuel saving but it would make everyone run quicker. If everyone is running quicker, they are all saving less fuel.
It is also difficult to enforce. How are you going to force everyone to run at least 40.909 seconds each lap? The leader is one thing but the car in 22nd? If 22nd second is running 40.909 seconds, the leaders will need to be running 40.6 seconds or faster. What happens if a driver has to back out because of traffic ahead or need to lift to keep the car out of the wall? One slow lap shouldn't be a penalty. Maybe it is limiting how many laps can be below that mark. Only three out of ten laps can be run slower than the 220 mph average. What is the penalty if you go above that mark? A mandatory pit stop? A drive through penalty? Do we want more rules to enforce on the drivers? How upset are you about fuel mileage racing?
If you don't want teams worried about spending less time on pit lane, you could always slow the pit stops and enforce minimum pit stop times. If everyone in theory had to be on pit lane for a minimum of 60 seconds then saving fuel is not pertinent. Run as hard as you would like. You are still going to be sitting still for the same amount of time.
You may say those are gimmicks but gimmicks are the only way you are going to eliminate fuel mileage or at least eliminate it from being the strategy of choice from the very start of the race.
Fuel mileage is going to be there, and it is going to play a role in a race. Anger is not going to change it. The 1980s are not walking through that door, and you probably don't even want them to return. It is healthy to watch a race and understand why the number of lead changes are what they are but embrace how the race is going to unfold. The Indianapolis 500 will have a slow burn feel to it. That was the Indianapolis 500's rhythm for a number of years. It wasn't about what happened in the first ten or 15 laps of a stint. It was about the final five laps of a stint as a pit cycle opened, and then how it played out over each stint. A race built up to the final stint and then it was flat-out to the finish.
Even with all we saw at the start of this year's race and drivers constantly trading the lead, it became a fuel mileage race because there was a caution with 70 laps to go and a bunch of teams decided it was worth the risk to stop and try to make it on two more stops instead of staying out and running another ten laps and still having to make one more pit stop. And guess what? It was still enthralling to watch. We knew some drivers were going to be close on fuel, and we knew a few drivers were going to be set and trying to climb from behind.
Some try and make it black-and-white and all fuel mileage racing is bad. That is incredibly false. It is never that cut-and-dry. This year's Indianapolis 500 was on edge because Felix Rosenqvist was pretty sure he could make it on fuel, Patricio O'Ward thought he couldn't but was going to try and make it work, and then you had David Malukas and Álex Palou who ended up on the less desirable strategy, but were trying to salvage something and chase down the leaders or at least force them into making an extra stop.
It wasn't boring that is for sure. Isn't that all we can hope for whether it involves fuel mileage or not?
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Felix Rosenqvist, but did you know...
Andrea Kimi Antonelli won the Canadian Grand Prix, his fourth victory of the season. George Russell won the sprint race.
Noel León (sprint) and Martinius Stenshorne (feature) split the Formula Two races from Montreal.
Michael Costello won the Freedom 90 from Indianapolis Raceway Park. Evan Cooley won the Freedom 75.
Daniel Suárez won the Coca-Cola 600. Ross Chastain won the Grand National Series race. Layne Riggs won the Truck race, his second victory of the season.
Sacha Fenestraz and Nirei Fukuzumi split the Super Formula races from Suzuka.
Chaz Mostert, Andre Heimgartner and Broc Feeney split the Supercars races from Symmons Plains.
Matteo Cairoli and Kelvin van der Zande split the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters races from Zandvoort.
Coming Up This Weekend
IndyCar continues racing into Detroit, and IMSA will join them with GTP and GTD Pro.
MotoGP's battered lineup makes it way to Mugello for the Italian Grand Prix.
NASCAR closes out May in Nashville.
GT World Challenge Europe has an endurance round at Monza.
World Superbike will be in Aragón.
The World Rally Championship makes an earlier trip to Japan.
