Detroit – What’s a lap like in an IndyCar around the Detroit Grand Prix street circuit?
It’s a rollercoaster on ‘roids.
Sandwiched between ex-IndyCar driver Spencer Pigot and a howling, twin-turbo V-6 engine in a two-seat, Arrow McLaren Dallara DW12 IndyCar, we stormed up Rivard Street, hung a left onto Jefferson in 2nd gear and then exploded down Jefferson Avenue hitting 155 mph as we passed “Speed Limit 35” signs.
No sirens. None of Detroit’s finest pulling us over. Pedal to the metal.
For one weekend a year, drivers get to go as fast as they want down Detroit’s four-lane main street. It’s an exclusive club of IndyCar, Indy NXT, and IMSA Weathertech Sportscar pilots for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix Presented by Lear. IndyCar shared the experience ahead of Sunday’s race with a fortunate few passengers from sponsors and media (like me) via its IndyCar Experience Two-Seater Ride.
“Amazing,” said Root Insurance employee and Meyer Shank Racing sponsor Scott Greer, 46, from Columbus, Ohio, as he climbed out of the IndyCar two-seater ahead of my ride. “The straightaway was super-fast. You got the tires burning, the gas-engine screaming. . . it’s pretty intense.”
At six-foot-five and 235 pounds, I just made it under the 6-5, 250-pound limit to ride in these rocket ships. After pulling on the IndyCar Experience’s largest driving suit, a balaclava and helmet, I lined up with the other thrill-seekers on the waterfront at Turn 8 (aka, the intersection of Atwater and St. Antoine Streets) under the towering Renaissance Center for my lap.
Four two-seaters pulled up next to us like a pit stop. A crew pulled out the previous passenger and strapped me into a six-point harness behind Pigot. They slid a collar over my shoulders to keep my head from pinballing in the cockpit from side-to-side g-loads. Visor down. Thumbs up.
Pigot does not give cushy limo rides.
He popped the clutch and laid rubber up to Turn 9 leading on to the pit straight, smoke pouring off the rear tires. I had previously taken two-seater rides on the Detroit GP’s old Belle Isle track which included higher-g sweepers along its riverfront Turns 13 and 14. The downtown track, by contrast, follows Detroit’s grid which makes for 90-degree, 2nd-gear turns that are less taxing on the neck.
But – WHAM! – I still felt the strain of extreme g-loads when Pigot slammed on the brakes for Turn 3 at the end of the ¾-mile Jefferson straight. Eyeballs-sucked-from-your-head strain as he decelerated from 155 mph to 50 (ahem, still well above the speed limit) into the tight, first-gear hairpin at Griswold.
“The highest g-load going to pull is on deceleration, and that would probably be near 3 g,” said Colombian race driver Gabby Chavez, who competed in IndyCar from 2015-18 and was one of four ex-IndyCar pilots for the weekend’s IndyCar Experience along with Pigot, Davey Hamilton and Matt Brabham.
I’m no stranger to speed. I race a Lola in the Sports 2000 Noth America Series which hits 140 mph and 2-plus g-loads around some of America’s greatest road courses. But 155 mph on a street circuit between concrete canyons is a different, and thrilling, experience.
Rotating 180-degrees around the The Fist sculpture at Griswold Turn 3 spat us back onto east-bound Jefferson before Pigot took a sharp right through Turn 4 onto downhill Bates Street and back towards the waterfront. The surface transitions from asphalt to concrete here and Pigot slid the Dallara beautifully out to the concrete wall.
The carbon-fiber Dallara DW12 is the same chassis that undergirded the IndyCars on Sunday’s grid – except with my rear seat added. Subtracted is the electric supercapacitor slotted between the 2.2-liter V-6 engine and six-speed gearbox that transforms the Chevrolet-and-Honda-powered IndyCars into hybrids.
The hybrid powerplant puts out 700 horsepower whereas the IndyCar Experience cars have been detuned to 550, said Chaves. That’s still plenty of grunt to haul my 235 pounds through Turn 5 and up Atwater Street’s hill toward the Detroit Marriott Hotel at the Renaissance Center and the track’s trickiest, Turn 6-7 complex.
Despite its downtown location, the Detroit Grand Prix track is surprisingly smooth thanks to the tireless work of Penske Entertainment, which preps the track ahead of its annual running. Turns 7-8 are the exception.
It’s a difficult quilt of concrete patches and our Dallara pitched violently here as Pigot jinked right-then-left between concrete barriers. Turn 6 caught out Team Penske ace and Indy 500 runner-up David Malukas in qualifying Saturday as he touched the inside wall on Turn 6 – vaulting him nose-first into the outer, Turn 8 wall. The crash put him at the back of the field for Sunday’s start.
The run down Atwater to Turn 8 ended the lap, and I climb out of the Dallara IndyCar surrounded by smiles from fellow passengers and drivers alike.
“I think they did a pretty good job picking out the best parts that they could of the city streets,” said Chavez who said he enjoys hanging it out a bit for his passengers on the slick surface. “It’s a tight course. It’s a very short, so it makes for pretty exciting racing – and very small margin of error.”
Passenger Greer said he gets motion sick from rollercoasters – but that the IndyCar ride was a much better experience. Maybe Ceda Point should consider putting in a IndyCar Two-seater Experience ride.
“I was perfectly fine out here,” he smiled. “I think the adrenaline takes over, you just don’t feel anything else.”
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or Twitter @HenryEPayne.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Henry Payne puts pedal to the metal in IndyCar two-seater
Reporting by Henry Payne, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
