In this week's Friday favourite, Indy legend Rick Mears talks about the Milwaukee Mile and how it rivalled even the iconic Brickyard. Feature:
Kenny Brack having recently picked Indianapolis Motor Speedway as his favourite track for this series
The Mile is not completely flat – the turns bank at nine degrees, same as Indy – but still, that isn’t much assistance when fighting the laws of centrifugal force. Lateral G and speed taken through the turn is pretty much down to downforce, mechanical grip and whatever can be summoned from the tyres. In 2011, Dario Franchitti took Milwaukee’s two-lap qualifying record – a 21.3826s average, which equates to 170.841mph. It was one of the best pole positions of Franchitti’s career.
“We’ve got into this habit of thinking that ovals have to be banked, and progressively banked so there are more lines, more grooves. But to me, by being so flat, relatively speaking, I felt Milwaukee offered more options in terms of what you could do with the placement of the car. And that’s a huge deal when you look at how your car is handling from the start of a stint with fresh tyres and a full fuel load to how it is at the end of a stint with low fuel and with worn out tyres.
“Heck, there were times coming through Turn 4 where I was almost cutting across the grass and into the pit entrance to keep the line from the middle of the corner as straight as I could make it! Taking that straight line means I’m not breaking the rear loose under power – so I’m not losing time going sideways and I’m not hurting the rear tyres even more – and it also means I’ve been able to get back to full throttle from way back, as soon as I’ve rotated the car.
“We’ve talked about diamonding the corners, using the bumps adjusting the shocks but you know, there was just a tonne of stuff you could do, and Milwaukee’s shape, and angle and surface gave you enough usable racing surface to do it, all the way through to the end of a race.” “When we went from bias-ply tyres to radials [in 1987], we also lost feel. So in both cases I had to fine-tune my own parameters – relearn new limits, relearn what the car felt like on that limit just before it let go, and become even quicker at anticipating it.”
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