Corey Heim won the Brickyard 400. Christopher Bell was faster, had him in his sights for 34 laps, closed to within two-tenths of a second, and still could not get by. That right there is the Indianapolis problem in one NASCAR race. And it is exactly what Jordan Bianchi was talking about on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Dirty Mo Media podcast when he made his position on the crown jewel debate very clear.
“This is a crown jewel race. There’s no doubt about it. You can walk through the garage and talk to just about anybody.”
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That was a direct shot at Kyle Petty, who recently argued NASCAR’s Indianapolis has no business sitting alongside Daytona, Darlington, and Charlotte. Bianchi disagreed. But he also said something that matters more than the debate itself.
“The actual racing and being able to make a move and complete a pass, you have to have some of that. I’m not saying it has to go from a one to a five on a scale, but you’ve got to get it to like a two and a half.”
The Heim and Bell finish in the Brickyard 400 told him exactly why it is not there yet. Bell started deep in the field after qualifying. At Indianapolis, that usually decides your day before it starts. Crew chief Adam Stevens chose a different route.
He ran an alternate-fuel strategy in Stage 3, used short pit cycles to skip Bell through traffic, and moved him into clean air without Bell having to pass anyone under green. The strategy did what the race car could not.
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When the race went green with a restart on 35 laps to go, Heim was leading, and Bell was right behind him. Bell had the faster car. Everyone watching could see it. None of it mattered, though. The second Bell pulled up to Heim’s bumper, the turbulent air pouring off the back of Heim’s car hit Bell’s front end and took away its grip. Heim confirmed it after the race, “That was a damn handful. I was hanging on for dear life once the shade went down and the pace picked up. My car got really loose.”
Bell’s car pushed wide, and the gap stayed. Heim knew exactly what he was doing too. He said afterward he spent those final laps focused entirely on his corner exits, throwing dirty air back at Bell deliberately. He was not trying to go faster, but to make sure Bell could not.
Bell’s only realistic chance was waiting for Heim to mess up. Heim did not mess up—final margin: 0.287 seconds. But Bianchi believes that NASCAR needs to make some changes to the race package. “I do think that it is really important to try and come up with a package for this track… If this is a crown jewel race, it needs to be better on that side.”
NASCAR has already shown it can engineer around a problem when the problem is bad enough. The superspeedway package will have a new shorter spoiler and reduced horsepower. This, in theory, will reduce the drag, and we will see this in action at Daytona in a few weeks.
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Then, NASCAR also added the 750 horsepower boost and has been working with Goodyear to find the right tire compound for these tracks. So why not try something different with Brickyard? Given that NASCAR visits the iconic oval of Indy just once a year, this could be a tall ask, but again they need to move the needle.
A package that pulls back the underbody strakes and shrinks the spoiler would reduce that dirty air wake and give a faster car a fighting chance to actually close in and make a move.
Bianchi went looking for answers in the NASCAR garage and came back empty. Nobody had a fix. But after watching Bell stare at Heim’s bumper for half an hour and go nowhere, the question is not going away. Indianapolis is a crown jewel. The problem is the racing does not always feel like one.
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