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All Wet Behind The Gears

Tribune file photo (2008)

Pole sitter Tony Kanaan of Andretti Green emerges from the mist during last year's Grand Prix.

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By TONY FABRIZIO

afabrizio@tampatrib.com

Published: March 28, 2009

Updated: 03/28/2009 11:22 pm

ST. PETERSBURG - You're driving downtown in the rain, hands holding the steering wheel a little tighter. The street signs are hard to make out. The windows fog up. The driver in front of you brakes and you fret about sliding into him.

Now do it at 150 mph with no windshield wipers and concrete barriers on either side of the street.

Professional drivers did it in last year's Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, sending impressive rooster tails of displaced water behind them as they raced at breakneck speeds.

They'd do so again in next weekend's return of the Indy Racing League and American Le Mans Series events if the Tampa Bay region got a respite from a record drought.

Racing in the "wet," as drivers call it, is part of the program, if need be, and it's even harder than it sounds or looks.

"Here's an experiment to try," said former Indy 500 winner and sports car driver Gil de Ferran, not really recommending this. "Pull behind one of those semi-trucks when it's raining on the highway and turn your wipers off. That's the sensation.

"You mostly go with your senses, because when you're in the spray, driving through it at maybe 180 mph, you can't see much at all."
Indy drivers wear full helmets and have limited head movement. Their cars sit low to the ground and distribute spray from exposed wheels. Downforce helps the cars stick on the straightaways, but stiff suspensions make them prone to hydroplane in the corners.

"When you're behind other cars at the start of a wet race, it's literally a white-out," said team owner, former driver and grand prix co-promoter Michael Andretti.

Andretti recalled the disastrous start to the 2002 CART race at Surfers Paradise, Australia.

"I didn't know where I was on the track," he said. "I didn't know the right from the left. I couldn't even see the walls on the side. I knew there was a pit entry and that the wall would be there, and I was scared to death I was going to hit that.

"And then all of a sudden, I see a light, and bam, I hit the car in front of me. There was a pileup in front of us, and we had a big mess."

There's no racing in the rain on ovals - hence Matt Kenseth's victory in the "Daytona 380" in February. But on temporary street courses, such as St. Petersburg's, and permanent road courses, grooved rain tires make it as common as football in the mud or snow.

Enclosed race cars carry windshield wipers - even NASCAR raced in the rain last year with its Nationwide Series race at Montreal - but open-cockpit Indy cars and prototypes do not.

"There aren't too many rain races where it rains from start to finish, so strategy comes into play," Penske Racing president Tim Cindric said. "You have to understand when to go to dry tires slicks and when to go to rain tires."

Said John Tzouanakis, team manager for defending grand prix champion Graham Rahal: "You really don't want to be the first guy to go on rain tires, or the first guy to go on slicks. You kind of watch up and down pit road to see who changes first."

Some drivers are more prepared for it than others. E.J. Viso, a little-known Venezuelan who led 12 laps in last year's grand prix, cut his teeth in England, "where most of the races are run in the rain." Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan came up racing in the tropics in their native Brazil.

NASCAR's Kurt Busch had never raced in the rain before his turn came up in the 24 Hours of Daytona last year. He fared well.

"To tell you the truth, it was kind of neat," Busch said. "It felt weird running around so fast out there with the wipers going."

Teammate Castroneves didn't have it so easy when he took over for Busch in Penske's car. By then, the rain was falling much harder. The window fogged up during the driver change.

"He got halfway down the pit lane and said, 'I can't see anything - like nothing,'" Cindric recalled. "He goes, 'The car is full of water and it's like I'm in a bathtub.' I said just follow the red lights around, and he said, 'Tim, I can't see anything.'"

Visibility is the worst part of racing in the rain. Temporary street courses, made for 30-mph traffic, present additional major challenges.
Concrete barriers erected to protect people and property leave little run-off room for spin-offs. City streets have painted lines that are slippery and drainage that isn't always efficient.

"A street course has unique characteristics, like manhole covers," driver Danica Patrick said. "Sometimes you're driving through a parking lot that's part of the course and there's oil - I mean, look at how much oil there is in a parking lot. All the roads are crowned so water spills off the side."

Rain arrived minutes before last year's grand prix. Not only had drivers never turned a lap on the course in the rain, but the IRL had never raced a wet lap on a temporary street course.

"You're going into a race in the wet on a street course you've never driven on before in the rain - the idea of it is pretty scary," driver Ryan Briscoe said.

Brian Barnhart, the league's president for operations, knew he had a fixed two-hour television window and 35,000 fans who came to see a race. More than anything, though, he had the drivers' safety to consider.

He talked to several drivers by radio, and everyone agreed: There was too much standing water on parts of the course to race. So Barnhart ran the first nine laps under caution.

The race went green on the 10th lap, and predictably, the spins and other misadventures were many. Eventually the rain relented, and Rahal, a 19-year-old rookie at the time, held off Castroneves and Kanaan on a late restart.

Afterward, Kanaan recommended a homework assignment for anyone wondering what the visibility was like.

"If it's raining on the way home," he said, "open the windows of your car, don't turn the wipers on and wear sunglasses.

Reporter Tony Fabrizio can be reached at (813) 259-7994.

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