Rossi: "The Drama That Exists in Turn 2"

“I do want to talk about the drama that exists at Turn 2,” Alexander Rossi said to his fellow podcasters James Hinchcliffe and Tim Durham in this week’s episode of their “Off Track” podcast. “I think it’s a little bit of a mystery to everyone, including myself. And James, we’ve talked about this. Considering, as we all know, all of the corners are the exact same, it’s very weird that—at least in my career in IndyCar, aside from starts—more than 70% of the incidents occur in Turn 2. The two times I’ve had a crash at Indy, it’s Turn 2. Do we know why?mThere was a whole YouTube series about fixing the bump in Turn 2.”

“The bump ain’t it!” said Hinchcliffe. “That wasn’t the problem!”

“The bump that I thought they were fixing, they didn’t,” said Rossi. “So they went through that whole effort and didn’t fix all of the bumps.”

In the pre-COVID, pre-Penske years, I would shoot a portion of the race from the roof of the Turn 2 suites. During that period I saw multiple crashes occur when cars would snap loose at the exact same spot. Rossi himself had one of those “crashes that didn’t happen” early in a pre-COVID 500 when his car snapped sharply one way and then the other, his quick hands catching it.

I personally saw Juan Pablo Montoya, Danica Patrick, and Ed Jones all lose their cars at the same spot.

So I asked Alex about that today, and he elaborated in a technical way that had more to do with tires and sunlight than bumps. “Alexander, you seemed to want to talk more about Turn 2 in your podcast the other day. I’ve seen a lot of cars snap loose at that same spot. Can you elaborate more about that spot in turn two?”

“It’s tricky, I think, because it’s not shaded, so it’s always kind of in the sun,” Rossi said. “Turn 1 and Turn 3, even though they’re higher speeds, you have the whole straight to kind of cool the tire down. Turn four is usually protected from wind, for the most part. There’s certain directions there’s not, but for the most part it is. It stays cool.

“The tire saturation effect that you get in Turns 1 and 3, it just has a bigger impact in Turn 2 because the conditions there are usually the worst. The tire is kind of already at its limit from going through turn one, then turn two is a hard corner from conditions.

“Turn 4 the tire is also at its limit, but the conditions are easier, so it’s just less traumatic.”