There are a few days left in July, but these final few days are so busy that we need to cover a few things now.
Many championships are becoming interesting with the tide shifting in the favor of some drivers while going against others. It is becoming clear who will be fighting through the final race and who are already out of it. In some cases, championship have already been awarded or will be awarded shortly, one of each we will look at in a moment.
August will only give us a better idea of who will be lifting silverware, but until then let's recap some of the highlights of July.
SRX Season Two Review
Last year, we ended July reviewing the inaugural season of the Superstars Racing Experience and went over what worked and what didn't for the series. That format will work again for the 2022 season, which brought the series to four new tracks and had 11 new drivers participate this season.
However, there is still room for improvement and establishing its identity.
What Worked?
1. It didn't change too much
SRX has a pretty simple format. Two heats and a main race. The heats are 12 minutes each. The main event is meant to fill most of the final hour of the broadcast window while allowing for a short post-race recap and not go over. They throw competition cautions every so often to keep the field close together. They didn't expand the schedule to eight or ten races. It was six weeks, from early June through the middle of July.
2. They visited a few new places
Five Flags Speedway proved to be a great challenge for the drivers with tire wear. South Boston Speedway had tough racing. It was great to see Sharon Speedway get some exposure and have a local celebration for the Blaney family who call that track home. Short track racing is a tapestry of culture in this country. They all have their own intricacies. It was nice to see a few more get exposure this year.
3. There was some familiarity.
Marco Andretti was back for a second season, as was Bobby Labonte, Tony Stewart, Paul Tracy and Michael Waltrip. Greg Biffle expanded to a full-time driver. Hélio Castroneves was back, albeit in a part-time role, as was Ernie Francis, Jr. Tony Kanaan competed in five of six races. You knew who you were getting and some of these guys produced good racing.
4. There were quality new faces
Was anyone surprised Ryan Newman joined and was a championship contender? Was anyone surprised Matt Kenseth was a threat in each of the races he participated in? Now to forget mentioning it got Josef Newgarden and Ryan Blaney as guest drivers. Credit to Team Penske for letting these guys participate and Chase Elliott came back for another season finale.
5. The racing was good
Five Flags had Castroneves battling late model stalwart Bubba Pollard, Newman and Kanaan for victory. Stafford had a great battle between Andretti and Newman and that was followed with a great battle between Labonte, Andretti and Kenseth at the Nashville Fairgrounds. There were nights that felt slow and you weren't sure how it would be a good race and in the closing laps you were on edge seeing who would come out on top.
What Didn't Work?
1. What is the point of side-by-side commercials if they are under caution?
To maximize the amount of racing people see, SRX only runs commercials under caution or between races, but if they are side-by-side, two-box commercial breaks, what is the point of having them? When the side-by-side commercial was introduced on the Indy Racing League's ABC broadcasts over 15 years ago, it was done to show advertisements and keep the race on the screen allowing the viewers to still see passes, pit stops and everything that happened during a race. Using these breaks when the race is under caution is counterintuitive.
Especially with the 12-minute heat races. Here is how television works. In one hour, a broadcast is going to take five three-minute commercial breaks. It is segment one, break one, segment two, break two, segment three, break three, segment four, break four, segment five, break five and then segment six to close the hour. That leaves 45 minutes for the actual broadcast. Divide 45 minutes of air time into six segments and you have seven minutes and 30 seconds per segment.
The problem with SRX's 12-minute heat races is it would start them, run about four or five minutes and then throw a caution, meaning at least three minutes of those 12-minute heat races are under caution, but then it would normally take another minute after the break until it went green. This caused a few problems early on as it would get through five minutes of a race, go to commercial and then comeback and by the time it went back green, there were only two or three minutes left in the heat race.
SRX could run a 12-minute heat race with no commercial break in-between. That requires adjusting the segments. Let's say its first segment of the show is a 14-minute block. One minute intro, right into the heat, heat race ends, one minute to vamp and then first break. Great. But that is 17 minutes of the first 60 done and there are still 12 minutes of commercial you need to fill in the final 43 minutes. This is where you get the one-minute or 90-second "dummy segments" to get to time and not run over the broadcast window.
The first half-hour would need to be 14-minute segment, break, 90-second segment, break, 90-second segment, break. There you get through three of the five breaks in the first 29 minutes and still have the first heat take place without a commercial.
Then the final half-hour can be maybe 15 minutes for the second heat before the fourth break and at that rate you would have 13 minutes with three minutes going to the final commercial break, so ten of those minutes could be recapping the first hour.
Pacing is the biggest weakness of SRX. It either gets through the heat races too quickly before the main event, or it takes long to get through the heat races. I am not sure what the best strategy is especially if it wants to keep this format. It could run four seven-minute heats and the show could be heat race, commercial break, heat race, commercial break, heat race, commercial break, heat race, commercial break, final segment vamping about the heat races and then the final break of the hour.
The problem is, what do you do for each heat race? They already invert after the first race. You can't just keep inverting the field. That gets boring. It could break the field into groups and group A gets heats one and three and group B gets heats two and four. The first race for each group is set via a draw and the second race is an invert and each group sets a column of the grid. But I am not sure people want to watch six cars on track at a time.
2. What is the point of throwing a caution with ten laps to go in the main race?
I understand the purpose of creating a shootout at the end of the event, but I think this could be done better because the sense is drivers could ride around for the first 60 laps because they would be bunched up with ten laps to go and if they save tires they could go on a late charge.
I think a better idea would be to split the main event and have the 60-lap first portion but after those 60 laps take the top six finishers and they go to the ten-lap "championship race." It would make the main race more interesting and give these drivers something to fight for. It would force drivers to use their tires because there is no point in riding around in ninth. You need to be in the top six.
The second hour of the broadcast could be a five-minute reset, commercial break, five-minute feature segment, commercial break, a two-minute dummy hyping the main event, commercial break and like that you have cleared three commercial breaks in the first 21 minutes. You have cleared our 12 minutes of commercials with 39 minutes remaining and only six minutes of commercials. The main event segment could be 20 minutes before a commercial break and then the "championship race" segment that would be 13 minutes before the final commercial break takes the program off air.
3. The driver lineup could be better and the hometown heroes fell woefully short this year
SRX had eight full-time drivers, which was fewer than the inaugural season and I think that hurt the series. It also didn't help that the dead weight is pretty dead. We know what Paul Tracy is going to be. It is old. Michael Waltrip is the caboose. The series would have benefitted if Matt Kenseth was full-time.
The inaugural season did a great job giving some unsung heroes a spotlight and many took advantage of it. Doug Coby won the inaugural race in series history at Stafford. Kody Swanson was at the front of Eldora. Luke Fenhaus was the Slinger Speedway darling. Outside of Bubba Pollard, you would not be remised for not knowing the other local heroes because none of them did anything. It also didn't help that the final two events really didn't have them. Ken Schrader and Dave Blaney don't count as the hometown heroes. That is like a concert venue saying it has booked a man from Liverpool to perform and it happens to be Paul McCartney. You are not fooling anyone.
Year one of SRX boosted Ernie Francis, Jr.'s profile and gave some other names a spotlight. Year two was too much of a market correction if it felt it gave the local guys too much of a boost in year one. Outsde of Buba Pollard, none of the hometown heroes were noticed this season. But SRX's identity should be bringing the names from the top series together with some overlooked talent. The series should be five or six national stars with four to six local stars/overlooked talent and then two or three guest drivers a week.
It should be Andretti, Newman, Biffle, Stewart, Labonte and Kenseth taking on Coby, Pollard, Swanson, USAC champion Justin Grant, Rico Abreu, even the open-wheel and sports car likes of J.R. Hildebrand, Sage Karam, Colin Braun and James Davison would fit as full-time drivers.
It would still be good to get another short track star as a guest driver along with active NASCAR and IndyCar drivers for each race. I feel like this is how SRX could maximize the quality of the grid while keeping the audience interested in who is competing. It was clear from year one people are interested in learning new names, especially if they are competitive.
4. Dirt is unnecessary
I think we have seen enough stock car racing on dirt in the last few years to say it isn't good and we can move on. The SRX races are not any different from the NASCAR Cup races and NASCAR Truck races on dirt. They are slow. They are clumsy. They aren't particularly good.
If people like Tony Stewart wants to give dirt a national platform, get the King's Royal or the World 100 on CBS. Pay to have two or three USAC sprint car races or Silver Crown races on network television. Put the top level of dirt racing on television, not some knockoff.
There are plenty of great pavement short tracks in this country. Only Stafford and the Nashville Fairgrounds were repeats from season one. Five Flags and South Boston were great additions. It would have been nice if Slinger returned. Salem and Winchester are two tracks that are prime for SRX, as is Anderson Speedway. Oswego Speedway and Thunder Road up in Barre, Vermont would be two other fun venues. There are plenty of options out there and they are more likely to put on respectable races than dirt. There is nothing wrong with this being entirely a pavement series. It should put on six great events at six fun venues. Would some dirt tracks lose out? Yes, but if we want to do dirt justice then we should show dirt racing at its best, and SRX isn't that.
As for the future of SRX, I think I laid out what I would like to see from the driver lineup, schedule and the race day format. Tony Stewart said he would like to run a road course. I said it last year, a road course doesn't fit with the current format. Unless it is one the West Coast, an 8:00 p.m. ET start time does not fit the television window. A road course would also need a different format than what we see now for SRX. You also don't just rent a road course for a day to put on a race. If SRX did a road course, it would likely have to partner with IndyCar, which could work. It could likely put on a race at Mid-Ohio or Road America or even run on the streets of Detroit or streets of Toronto. I am not sure if SRX is up for that but it is its best option.
5. The Championship Confusion
Though mislabel as an exhibition, SRX does award a championship, but it doesn't do a great job keeping up on the points until we get to the end.
This season, Marco Andretti won the title by two points over Ryan Newman, the only problem is when every tabulated the points from the heat races and main events, Newman came out on top by a point. Lost in the discussion was Andretti was awarded three points because of a positioning error in the first round of the season at Five Flags Speedway.
Andretti was called into pit lane for repairs ahead of a heat race. When the race was ready to resume, Andretti had not been properly placed. Afterward, the SRX officials told the drivers ahead of the second race at South Boston it would award Andretti three points to make up for the error. From reports, the drivers agreed that was the fair thing to do.
Flash-forward to the season finale and those three points were the difference in the championship.
An easy way to show you are serious about the championship is to take it seriously. If there was a scoring issue, be transparent and tell everyone. If the series has taken steps to rectify a mistake, let us know. Shout it from the hilltops. Keep everyone updated on the championship during each broadcast. Also, make sure all cars are properly lined up for heat races.
These are little things, and worst of all, SRX is the only one in the way. There aren't inspection penalties, there aren't loose lug nuts, there aren't expensive video monitor systems on pit lane for pit stops, and there aren't teams spending millions and millions of dollars in the wind tunnel to improve the cars and get an advantage over the other competitors. The house controls everything. It should have a handle from top to bottom.
All these issues fall at SRX's feet and it is on them to make sure everyone is aware of the championship and who stands where and why. If they want to take it serious by all means they can start next year and avoid repeating the errors of 2022.
Let's see what is done and learned for season three.
Discipline Bonuses
I spent July focused on the Tour de France and there is a lot in cycling that relates to motorsports. From the teamwork to the strategies to mechanical issues and drafting, the two are much more similar than you think.
One item I like about the Tour de France is there are multiple competitions going on at once. You have the general classification for the rider with the lowest aggregate time over the course of the Tour (yellow jersey). You have the green jersey, which is the points classification and those points are awarded for running position at an intermediate sprint held at some point over the course of a stage and for the finishing position in the stage. And then you have the polka dot jersey for the mountain classification, which awards points to the riders as they reach summits over the course of a stage with the point totals increasing depending on steepness of the climb.
With multiple competitions for a variety of skills, cycling isn't any different than IndyCar. For a short period, IndyCar acknowledged the top driver in points for road/street courses and ovals. The official award didn't last long, but we still keep up on it. The one issue with IndyCar's discipline championships is they didn't pay anything extra. There was no prize for topping either. It was all for pride. Pride doesn't pay the bills in IndyCar.
But, because IndyCar is too poor for monetary prizes, what if topping a discipline championship earned a driver bonus points to the overall championship?
I think IndyCar could break it down by ovals, natural-terrain road courses and street courses and each discipline could carry a 50-point bonus to the top driver in each classification. To keep drivers fighting on each discipline, bonus points could be paid to the top five in each category. Second could get 25 points, third could get 15 points, fourth could get ten points and fifth could get five points.
How would this change a championship?
In 2021, the top five drivers in oval points were Patricio O'Ward (192 points), Josef Newgarden (158 points), Álex Palou (155 points), Simon Pagenaud (144 points) and Scott Dixon (135 points).
On road courses the order was Palou (272), Romain Grosjean (204), Colton Herta (197), Marcus Ericsson (190) and Dixon (189).
And on street circuits, Herta led the way with 206 points followed by Newgarden (191), Ericsson (177), Dixon (170) and Will Power (154).
Palou would have picked up 65 bonus points, as would have Herta. O'Ward would have gotten 50 points for topping the road course category while Newgarden scored 50 points for being second in ovals and street courses. Grosjean would get 25 points, as would Ericsson. Dixon would have been the only driver to score in all three categories, but he would have only picked up 20 points. Pagenaud would get ten points and Power would get five.
It wouldn't have changed the champion in 2021, as Palou would have scored more than his title rivals, but this is what the standings would have looked like:
Palou - 614
Newgarden - 561
O'Ward - 537
Herta - 520
Dixon - 501
Ericsson - 460
Pagenaud - 393
Rahal - 389
Power - 361
Rossi - 332
It would have only changed a few positions. Herta and Dixon would swap, as would Pagenaud and Rahal. It wouldn't have changed much and it would have been even more in Palou's favor. I am open to IndyCar trying new things increasing competition within the championship. The discipline bonus would make each race mean a little more and two races would become even more crucial as the final oval race and final street course race would mean one driver would at least clinch a 50-point bonus. That could swing a champion and put more pressure on other drivers.
I don't think IndyCar should be afraid to embrace what makes it different and apply to its championship. It would only force the drivers to increase their performances and bring more out of the entire field.
August Preview
The Formula E season is nearing its conclusion, and as much as we are calling this an August preview, it should be noted the penultimate Formula E round is this weekend in London, which is a doubleheader, before the Seoul hosts a doubleheader to finish the season on August 13-14.
With 116 points left on the table, 13 drivers are still alive for the championship.
Mercedes driver Stoffel Vandoorne leads the way with 155 points. Vandoorne's only victory was at Monaco but he has six podium results from 12 races and he has scored in 11 of 12 events. Eleven points back is Venturi's Edoardo Mortara, who has won twice and has five podium finishes, but Mortara has two retirements. Mitch Evans has the most victories, three, but Evans is 16 points back after having failed to score in three races driving for Jaguar.
Two-time Formula E champion Jean-Éric Vergne failed to score in either Brooklyn race after picking up points in the first ten races. Vergne is 27 points back and the Techeetah driver is the top winless driver in the championship. Envision Racing's Robin Frijns is also winless and Frijns is 51 points behind Vandoorne. António Félix da Costa picked up his first victory of the season in the most recent race. Da Costa is 55 points back, and just inside where he will need to be to remain mathematically eligible for the championship entering Seoul. All drivers will need to be within 58 points of the championship lead after London to have a shot at the title.
Lucas di Grassi has 84 points. Defending Formula E champion Nyck de Vries has won twice, but those are the Dutchman's only top five finishes this season and he has 83 points. The Porsche drivers Pascal Wehrlein and André Lotterer round out the top ten, tied on 63 points with Porsche's only podiums being its 1-2 finish in Mexico City with Wehrlein ahead of Lotterer.
Nick Cassidy won the first Brooklyn and he is tied with Jake Dennis and Sam Bird on 47 points, the final three drivers still alive for the championship.
In the Teams' Championship, Mercedes leads with 238 points, ten more than Venturi and Techeetah. Jaguar is 52 points back. Envision is 87 points back. Porsche is the final team alive, 112 points off its German rival. Andretti Autosport was one point shy of remaining mathematically eligible. With 188 points left on the table, Andretti is 189 points off Mercedes entering London.
Other events of note in August
MotoGP returns with the British Grand Prix before racing in Austria.
Two IndyCar races, Nashville and Gateway.
Two IMSA races, Road America and Virginia International Raceway for GT only.
Two MotoGP races, Silverstone and the Red Bull Ring.
Formula One is mostly on break but returns for the Belgian Grand Prix on August 28.
NASCAR concludes its regular season at Michigan, Richmond, Watkins Glen and Daytona.
