MOORESVILLE, N.C. — One of the reasons why it’s so expensive to operate an NTT IndyCar Series team was on display Monday at Texas Motor Speedway.
Nine drivers and cars were set to spend a full day of testing on the 1.5-mile, high-banked oval in preparation for the March 20 XPEL 375.
But it was too cold to test.
Firestone Racing engineers and IndyCar Series officials use a formula that combines ambient temperature and track surface temperature before any race car is allowed on track. If that combined temperature is less than 100 degrees ambient/track, then the cars remain parked.
Monday morning in Fort Worth, Texas, the ambient temperature struggled to get above 39 degrees before 12 noon. Because of the cold conditions, the track temp wasn’t much higher, so teams that were ready to test packed up and headed home.
The exception are the Chevrolet teams, which decided to stay over until Thursday when the weather is supposed to be more favorable.
Teams absorbed a tremendous expense traveling to TMS without ever turning a wheel in testing.
“Texas was a wasted day,” defending IndyCar Series champion Alex Palou told SPEED SPORT. “We flew there, and we had some good barbecue, which made the trip better. But we lost a day of testing to get ready for Texas. We thought it was important, but we could not get any laps in because of the cold weather, so we had to come back home.
“The weather looked quite bad, and we could not wait a week for the weather to get better and the track is also busy. We’ll get that day back and test somewhere else later in the season.
“Here we are, getting ready for the Texas race at home.”
It was a wise move to return from Texas because Tuesday’s weather was also 39 degrees by 12 noon.
“We realized quite early that it was over by 1 p.m. on Monday,” Palou explained. “We had a target to go on track or go back home and that was lunchtime. We couldn’t reach it with the track temperatures, and it was not looking better, and also there was water coming from the track. It was not looking great, we decided to go back home and other teams did as well.
“Unfortunate, but these things happen. We didn’t lose the team test, we just had to postpone it.”
In Palou’s case the man who loves to eat fried chicken got a chance to visit the famed “Babe’s Chicken House” in nearby Roanoke, Texas.
“We went to Babe’s and had lunch,” said the driver from Spain. “We had chicken with some biscuits and it was insane.”