How does wisdom square with the raw speed of youth? Road America outcomes illustrate an unpredictable relationship
An old English proverb says there’s no substitute for experience, and racing drivers tend to agree.
“Anytime a driver gets years and years under their belt, up to an extent they just progress,” NTT IndyCar Series rookie Kyle Kirkwood said recently.
But what does that mean, fully?
A big mental notebook no more guarantees success than minimal history prevents it.
As much as young drivers such as the 23-year-old Kirkwood envy the depth of wisdom 41-year-old Scott Dixon has, Dixon will tell you there are parts of his game at which a younger version of himself was better.
The same for Josef Newgarden, who at 31 and in his 11th season fits neatly between those two.
“There’s balances,” said Newgarden, a two-time series champion.
“The youth side typically brings pure speed. You sort of have the most energy you’re going to have and you can really channel that into the car. It’s that raw talent that comes out typically.
“And then on the back end, you have the perspective, you have the experience, you have the better mental side of it and so you kind of marry those two.”
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As the series returns to race Sunday at Road America in Elkhart Lake, the track’s seven-race history of IndyCar events demonstrates the unpredictable relationship between experience and success behind the wheel.
The past two have been won by some of the least seasoned drivers in the field, but before that came Dixon, nine days short of his 40th birthday and 20 years into a career in which he had won 48 times over 324 starts.
“I don’t know if there’s something I don’t envy about him,” Alex Palou, the 2021 winner, said of his teammate Dixon. “Everybody knows how to go fast in IndyCar. … I don’t think that makes you a good driver or not.
“I think it’s about how you race, how you understand racing, how you bounce back from bad days, and I think he’s the best at doing that. We’ve seen that in the past; we still see that nowadays. And then if you get more specific, how he saves fuel or how he makes different strategies work, he’s the best.
“He just puts himself in the situations he needs to be in. It’s not like he’s always lucky with the yellows or lucky with the crashes. He knows where to put himself every time.”
Dixon began his career at age 20 in Champ Car and moved to IndyCar with Chip Ganassi Racing in 2003, so he has seen numerous iterations of Indy cars. Success, too. He started the season with 51 victories, third on the all-time list behind A.J. Foyt (67) and Mario Andretti (52).
But all those years of experience haven’t helped him the way he’d like when it comes to driving the latest version with the aeroscreen that shields drivers from flying debris. Even if he did win four races in 2020 – including the first three – when the aeroscreen was introduced.
“One of the things I struggle with now is the road course tire because it is quite sensitive whereas my style is more of an aggressive driving style, where I can really blow through the front tire quickly,” said Dixon, a six-time series champion.
“That’s something that I have to change my natural style quite a bit, whereas the 2000s to 2010s, the tire was very robust. And not blaming the tire. We’ve added all this weight to the car now that the tire has really not changed it’s just got a lot more to deal with.
“It’s hard to change what your natural ability is. A lot of champions, you’ll see that’s where they are quite good is that they are able to adapt, but there will be some (issues) that will be very difficult.”
Along the same lines, Dixon wonders how he might be different today if he had had access to the vast amount of data competitors are given today. Dartfish analysis and training software, for example, allows video of one driver’s lap to be overlaid onto that of another, allowing both to see where they are gaining or losing time relative to the other.
“Where you would just purely do it on feel, now you can look at Dartfish and how somebody does a line, to now we get all the data from every car in the field,” Dixon said. “So we can see what they’re up to. The preparation has changed a lot.
“I wish I knew what I know now but had openness of when I was younger of just trying stuff. The problem is you end up getting caught up in a cycle sometimes.”
More: Five fun facts about Elkhart Lake's Road America, Wisconsin's IndyCar and NASCAR racetrack
Dixon is the only two-time winner in the seven-race IndyCar Series era at Road America. Counting the additional 25 CART/Champ Car races that began in 1982, Mario Andretti and Michael Andretti share the all-time lead with three.
Dixon also is an outlier on the RA IndyCar winners list in that he has nearly twice as many starts as the next most tenured driver. Will Power was in his 12th season and 174th race when he won in 2016.
Expanding the sample size to 10 races, IndyCar’s seven and the final three for Champ Car, paints these portraits of the winners: The average age is 30 years 4 months for a driver in his eighth season, making his 119th start, numbers skewed considerably by Dixon’s two victories. The median age is 28 years 10 months for a driver in his fifth season and 77th start.
“Everyone knows in life – anyone who’s in their 40s understands – how valuable the experience of their life is,” said the 41-year-old Power, who moved to the top of the series standings last Sunday with a victory in Detroit. “It’s hard to put a finger on it because it’s so complex what it applies to.
“I don’t want to say you’re willing to take more of a risk (when you’re young). Maybe you just don’t understand the consequences of the outcome of some of those risks, and sometimes they work. So maybe you pull off moves you wouldn’t do in your 40s just through kind of luck, because it did you the right way.
“I’ve kept my speed. I’m still able to extract the most out of the car, still able to get a pole on the road course. So I reckon that’s a thing that would fall off as you get older is the ultimate speed, trying to extract the most out of the car, which comes down to energy and how far you’re willing to take it.”
Colton Herta, in his fourth full season in IndyCar, remains one of the youngest drivers in the series but also is more experienced than those closest to him in age. Herta has won seven races, the first of those coming in just his third start in the series in his 2019 rookie season, and had three victories last season, tied with Palou for the most.
But the 22-year-old is confident that he will get better with seasoning.
“There’s so much information that you need to know, not only for the race but just for driving around,” Herta said. “You could do the same change every time and it would have different reactions in different weather and different grip when the rubber’s down.”
Graham Rahal also was 19 when he won an IndyCar race for the first time – his debut, in fact – on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2008. He had run the previous season in Champ Car and collected four podium finishes, including a third at Road America.
Rahal’s strongest results came from 2014-16, his 25- through 27-year-old seasons, when he won five times and finished fourth, fifth and sixth in the championship.
The biggest difference between Rahal at 33 and Rahal at say, 20, is his mentality, he said. As a young driver, he saw an unlimited number of chances to win ahead of him and he took chances then that in retrospect didn’t make sense.
“You look back at Texas 2012,” Rahal said. “I had that race, two laps to go, brushed the wall not under any pressure at all. Just stupid.”
The line is a fine one.
“The end result can be the same sometimes, but two different things,” Rahal continued. “When you’re young I think you’re brave and stupid because you don’t know. As you get older, you’re still brave, you’re just less stupid. It changes.”
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: IndyCar drivers discuss experience vs. youth before Road America race
