Strategy set to play key role at Thermal Club IndyCar GP

If the predictions from drivers and race strategists are correct, this weekend’s 65-lap IndyCar Grand Prix at The Thermal Club will play out more like a chess match than an afternoon of intense charging to reach the checkered flag.

Thermal’s combination of a long 3.067-mile layout with frequent turning and a punishing track surface that accelerates tire wear is where the 27 drivers and their strategists have been given a major challenge to overcome. More than most IndyCar races, Sunday’s contest is likely to be determined from pit lane by the best tire usage calls and on track from those who strike the right balance between tire preservation and going fast enough to win.

“Whoever wins will be thanking his strategist,” Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward told RACER. “Strategy is going to be a big, big teller to how results end up playing out. I think qualifying will be important, but I think strategy is going to have a way bigger sway in things, especially because we’ve never done a full race distance there. So everyone’s going to be just learning, learning, learning throughout the race.”

Last year’s non-championship event, which culminated in a 20-lap “All Star” race that was cut into two 10-lap heats with an intermission, serves as a guide for all that could unfold over 65 laps. Most drivers used the opening 10 laps to conserve their tires and ensure they had enough grip to survive the final 10-lap run without plummeting down the finishing order.

Firestone went into the 2024 event with its harder primary compound as the lone tire option, but this year, it’s bringing six sets of primaries for each car — which have been made even harder and more durable — and four sets of the softer alternate compound, which haven’t been used at Thermal.

“Last year, the degradation was huge,” said Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou, who dominated the All Star race. “And if you look at all the lap times during the heat races, you could see that there was a lot of people, especially the first segment, taking a lot of care on the tires, like going a lot of seconds slower each lap on purpose to try and have better tires at the end.”

Palou’s point is underscored by the disparity between his pole-winning lap on primary tires (1m38.568s) and his fastest lap in the race (1m41.615s), which was more than three seconds slower by intent.

The directive for Thermal is to drive below the limit of the tires for the entirety of each stint — achieving the best average lap time between pit stops — instead of pushing to the tire’s ultimate capabilities on each and every tour. It’s the tire equivalent of fuel saving. Forget setting lap records; Thermal is about the long game.

“The expectation is that it’s going to be really tough on tires,” said Team Penske president Tim Cindric, who handles race strategy for Josef Newgarden. “And the hard thing is that we never really saw the full impact of the track surface last year because the length of those heats were pretty short, and the cars out front just babied everything until the end, so we don’t know how bad it could get.

“It was hard for guys to pressure each other, so that’s something we’ll have to figure out in this longer deal. But it’s going to be a track-position race, for sure, because it’s very difficult to pass.”

From an educational standpoint for the 11 teams once the opening practice session gets under way, there’s a revised primary tire to benchmark and learn its degradation profile, a new alternate tire to explore and learn how long it will last before surrendering, and a need to perform simulated race runs to see if tire life can be stretched beyond 10 laps. Early predictions are for a three-stop race, which would push some stints to 15 laps or more.

And this is the first race with IndyCar’s heavier hybrid powertrain — cars are up 105 lbs from last year at Thermal — which adds to the work for teams in practice as they attempt to tune heftier Dallara DW12s to excel around the 17-turn circuit. The forecast also calls for high heat with plenty of sun and a peak of 89 degrees to warm the track and tires on Sunday.

Put it all together, and there will be virtuoso performances to celebrate when the green flag waves, but not through displays of epic car control. Firestone’s harder primaries should alleviate the need for the same degree of extreme tire conservation, but Palou still isn’t sure what to expect.

“It’s a bit blind at the moment because we’ve never done this race,” he said. “Obviously, we did the All Star with the heats, but now it’s a different tire. We didn’t have the hybrid, and the hybrid doesn’t help on tires. So I think we might be in a similar scenario as last year. Because, yeah, we go a little bit harder on the primary compound, but we are adding the hybrid weight. We’re adding laps. Obviously you’re adding a strategy that you need to go as fast as possible for 65 laps, not 10 or 20. So I think it’s going to be interesting. And then the alternates, who knows?”

Working with his race engineer Julian Robertson, Palou arrived at a chassis setup that allowed the Spaniard to make speed at Thermal without having to abuse the car and correct excessive amounts of tire-killing oversteer or understeer. Palou’s natural driving style, which is inherently tire-friendly, also played into this dynamic as he rarely applies heavy loading onto his tires in yaw. If there’s a formula for others to follow this weekend, it was written by Robertson and Palou in 2024.

Coming off a season-opening race at St. Petersburg where drivers dealt with long-lasting Firestone primaries and short-life alternates — a race won by Palou, as well — the demands at Thermal could mimic some of what was seen to start the year.

“The key to winning races this year, if the tires continue to do what they did at St. Pete, will simply be who can conserve the life of the primary tire the longest while they drive the longest on primary tires,” said Mike Hull, Ganassi’s managing director and strategist for Scott Dixon.

“There wasn’t a lot of racing going on at St. Pete. And by that, I mean there weren’t a lot of people that were using their tires trying to get around people, so what it did was it spread everybody out. This racetrack will have the same characteristic. So that means that drivers can still run at whatever speed they elect to run without being overly pressed by people behind them. They’ll do that so they can maintain the tires throughout the last 20 percent of a green stint.

“Whoever does that the best is going to gain a lot of track position with those tires as people who can’t start to fall off in the last 20 percent in each stint. And if they don’t win, they’ll at least get onto the podium.”

Taking what they learned about the alternate tires at St. Petersburg, Hull expects teams to get off the short-life rubber at their earliest convenience in Thermal.