IndyCar paddock battling burnout of intense post-Indy 500 schedule

Credit: Chris Owens

A mere five days on from the chequered flag at the Indianapolis 500, IndyCar’s fourth successive weekend of on-track activity commenced on the streets of Detroit on Friday.

And in the Motor City, a May-hungover paddock is feeling the toll of that grind.

It had already been over three weeks of non-stop work, through preparations for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and the near-fortnight spent at the track preparing relentlessly for the year’s biggest race. Yet the moment that concluded, there was no respite in the comedown. 

As soon as the morning after, attention switched to gearing up for this weekend’s trip to Detroit - the polar opposite as a street course. Then once the three-day event wraps in Michigan, it is another on-week for the circus as a gruelling five-week stretch climaxes with the annual visit to the 1.25-mile World Wide Technology Raceway (WWTR) oval.

“I wish we had the week off. Not necessarily for me,” AJ Foyt Racing’s Santino Ferrucci said this week. “It’s tough to go into the shop and see the crew that have been turning cars around, turn around cars to go to Detroit, when you’re having 4am starts non-stop. 

“I get that you want to ride the momentum as a series but you also don’t want to burn out your people that bring the cars to the track. Being a smaller team, I think it’s a little bit more difficult for us to instantly turn these things around.”

Credit: Chris Jones

Even on the point of momentum, there is an argument that such a slender turnaround may give insufficient time to celebrate the Indy 500 winner and allow those events to breathe. And even if having another race immediately is preferable, many begrudge the idea of going to such a different track, rather than another oval as the first post-500 race.

In any case, while taxing for the drivers themselves, the most widespread notion is that crews, particularly for those lower-resourced outfits, are risking being harmfully overworked.

“I enjoy being at the track and truthfully I enjoy working hard,” one team member told DIVEBOMB. “That being said, I think the week after Indy would be a good opportunity for teams to hit the reset rather than slog on up to Detroit. 

“Momentum is real and we saw the positive impacts that back-to-back weekends to start the season had. But the teams are operating on so few people, that falls on the crews to wear multiple hats and work weeks on end without time off, which in the long run isn’t sustainable and will burn out the workforce.”

Following the WWTR weekend, there is a single off-weekend before IndyCar visits Road America, though with testing planned in the intervening period. There are further two-week, single-weekend breaks either side of Mid-Ohio and three weeks between Nashville and Portland to conclude a quieter period from the end of June to the beginning of August.

The season then ends with six races in a brutal five-consecutive-weekend stretch of events through to the September 6th finale at Laguna Seca.