Hinchcliffe: Passing etiquette at Phoenix “still TBD”

IndyCar has already – and will again – drag old Firestone tires around the top lane of ISMR to try and open up a second groove for the drivers to use, but Hinchcliffe suspects this won’t be enough to make Phoenix anything other than tough on would-be passers.

“It's still IndyCar racing,” said the five-time IndyCar race winner. “It's still a tough series to pass anybody, and the level of competition is so high, and that certainly hasn't changed. If anything, it's gotten worse in the off-season with the addition of rookies like [teammate Robert] Wickens who come here with boatloads of experience and get pole in their first race!

“This track has always been tough to pass on. It's partly due to the track, partly due to the cars, partly due to the closeness of competition.

“I think the cars are going to be a little bit more forgiving in that sense. The track is still the track, and the competition is still high, so two out of the three things that made it tough to pass here before are still valid, but we're definitely hoping that with the new kits we can be a little bit more racy.”

Regarding whether frontrunners will stick to their preferred line and expect backmarkers to move, or whether the faster cars drive around the slower ones, Hinchcliffe said: “I think that's still TBD. The series obviously has been taking some measures to try to get the second groove going a little bit for us.

“Ultimately this is still going to be a mainly one-lane racetrack, so I think not a lot of people did a lot of running in traffic during the test… Surely this evening we'll see some of it, and I think it's still going to be a case of you getting your car where you want it to be and forcing the other guy to kind of lift… Or if he wants to hang around the outside, so be it.”