The funny thing is, you're going incredibly quickly but from the driver's seat, everything you do has to be done slowly. The way you turn in, you plan ahead and have to be very smooth. The one thing you've got to be quick at is catching slides when the thing gets loose. Otherwise it will stick you in the fence.
You have to be flat all the way around in qualifying to be up front. The biggest misconception is when people say, “It's flat. It must be easy.” Trust me, your brain wants your right foot to lift. You've got to force it down sometimes. If you get it right, you are flat, but by no means is that easy. It's right on the limit. And you'll hear people say they're flat, but you look at the lap time and they're 3mph off. The quicker these things go, the harder they are to drive. But Indy is one of those places where you can't carry the car too much. The car has to do some of the work for you. You've got to get it in that window.
In qualifying, you can come in and tweak it a little bit and do another run. But in the race, sometimes you just have to hang on and deal with what you've got. That's when it gets really interesting. A fast car isn't always a comfortable car. In 2010, my car was fast, but into Turn 1, the rear would start dancing and I'd be catching it all the way through the apex. Every lap I thought, “Wow!”
On the in-car cameras, you see very little movement on the steering wheel when the car is working and the driver knows what they're doing. They are very small movements but those movements are full of feeling. On a street course, you're using probably 90 to 120 degrees of lock. The steering is bouncing 20 or 30 degrees at a time when you're hitting bumps and bouncing off curbs. Then you go to Indy and just a degree or two makes a big difference. When the car does slide, the movement you make to correct it is tiny. So you completely have to change the way you work the steering wheel. I use a rather quick steering rack; to me, a slower rack numbs the feeling a little bit and you can see on my in-car that I really don't move the wheel much at all.
Something weird happens on the entry to Turn 1. Maybe it's the way the camber of the track works, but there's always this bit where the car has a little more oversteer. You actually get a different visual perception, too, because of the grandstands; it seems tighter because of the way the stands kind of crowd the track. Turn 1 also gets affected as the sun goes down and the shade comes in. People talk about that, and the first time I heard it, I was like, “Yeah, whatever. How's that possible?” But, sure enough, it's true.
The wind is usually north or south but I've experienced it in all four directions. Normally it's a tailwind into Turns 1 or 2. A tailwind into 1 is interesting because it accentuates the way that corner already makes your car loose. A wind from the west, pushing you into 2, is another tough one, because it loosens you up going in and then the car pushes coming off.
Indy's a narrow track; that's one of the challenges. It looks quite wide but the line is very, very narrow. Changing your line slightly to the entry of a corner, or how you hold the apex or how tightly you go to the white line – all these things completely alter the balance of the car.
The car completely changes in traffic, too. It's a totally different feeling if you've got turbulence. And again, because of that narrow line, there's nowhere to go to get clean air. If you have a good car on your own, getting stuck back in traffic can get pretty interesting.
The draft at Indy is unbelievable. If you come out of Turn 4 and can see a car going into 1, you're getting some help. If you're within half a straight, you'll pull another gear. If you can run flat in traffic, you're in good shape. In '07, I could sit on cars' gearboxes through the middle of the corner; that's how I got back up through the field. That car was brilliant in traffic.
That draft is one reason you can get in trouble if your gearing is off. The Hondas have a very narrow power band and there's only a small speed differential between the corners and the end of the straight. In qualifying, the revs vary a tiny amount; in the race, with tows from other cars, it varies more. We'll run two or three top gears with very close ratios. Some guys, like Marco Andretti, love to shift. Others use the engine's torque to lug a bit. The paddle-shift definitely helps because sometimes you'll pull a gear mid-corner.
The balance of the car doesn't change that much anymore over a full tank of fuel. We've gone from 35 gallons down to 22, so the weight difference from the start of a stint to the end isn't such a big deal. The car's just a little slower to respond or a little slower to accelerate, but nothing significant. Plus we have tools in the cockpit. The weight jacker can really save you. In the race, I'm on it every five laps or so, making tiny tweaks, but for qualifying in '07, I was moving the weight jacker and adjusting rollbars between corners! Come out of Turn 3, move the weight jacker, move the bar. Come out of 4, move it back for Turn 1…that was a busy qualifying run!
I love Carb Day. You can have the best car all month, then on Carb Day, it's just terrible. You want to panic and completely reinvent the wheel, and you have to force yourself not to. In all the years I've done this race, I've had one smooth Carb Day and that was 2010. I parked the thing and went to my bus happy. Every other time it's been “Aaaaagghh!”
Last year we'd had a pretty decent car, but on Carb Day, the temperature went up 20 degrees and our Target Chip Ganassi Racing cars just took off! The race was hot, too, so our cars were in their sweet spot. Had it stayed cooler, we might not have had the same advantage – or any at all, and may have had to completely change the setup. That's another tough thing: you can practice, practice, practice at the same temperature, but if it changes for the race, you'll start over again. That's where experience comes in – the team's and/or the driver's.
But then again, you need much more than experience to be a successful driver at Indianapolis. It also takes skill, bravery, and a little bit of luck, in addition to a great team with top-notch equipment. I've been very fortunate to have those things throughout my career and I think it shows in the results.
– Dario Franchitti was talking to John Oreovicz