I’m not a race fan at all, or I’d probably know this, but when you hear that some type of car is “The Official Pace Car of the Indy 500”, what does that mean? Why is a pace car needed?
It’s to tell the racers when there’s a problem (debris, crashes, etc.) and to limit their speeds during a “caution” (when there’s debris/crash, etc.).
“The official pace car” means that that type of car was used in that race. I’ve seen the actual cars themselves on the street, generally with “pace car for [date] [race].”
That’s the basic version, anyway.
Thanks, Chairman Pow.
Do you mean that the pace car is actually on the track during the race, sometimes?
Yes. It leads the warm-up laps and also comes on the track when a yellow flag is declared.
I’m not a NASCAR fan, so I won’t contradict claims above about NASCAR races, but in Formula One, the pace car doesn’t lead warm-up laps, the pole-sitter does. FYI, in Formula One (and other European series, I think) it is called the Safety Car, not the Pace Car.
In F1, the Indianapolis 500 (now part of the Indy Racing League), and the Champ Car World Series, the Pace Car is comes out when a caution flag is displayed during the race and sets not only the pace, but also the race order: it takes a position in front of the leading car, and the field groups up behind it. It thereby establishes who will lead when the race goes green again. It may also help guide cars through on-track debris from the accident that caused the yellow flag. Finally, using lights and hand signals, the Pace Car advises drivers when there is only one lap to go to the green flag.
I’ll quibble slightly with Chariman Pow: the pace car doesn’t alert drivers to on-track problems. The flaggers and light systems do that.
BTW, if you ever happen to meet former Indy Car driver and now TV commentator Scott Goodyear, don’t bring up the subject of Pace Cars. In the 1995 Indy 500, Goodyear was leading with ten laps to go. At a restart, the pace car was slow getting off the track, and Goodyear thought he had the green flag and passed the pace car as it pulled into the pits.
Passing the pace car is not allowed.
The officials gave him a black flag, requiring him to come into the pits for a stop-and-go penalty, which obviously would have cost him the lead. He ignored the warning, and stayed out in front until the end of the race, claiming he had won. But the officials had stopped scoring him, and Jacques Villeneuve, who had been in second place at the restart, was named the official winner. Goodyear was furious, insisting that he was the real winner. (To be fair, the driver of the pace car was at least partly at fault, IMHO. But the officials stuck to their decision.)
Ironically, Villeneuve had been penalized for exactly the same infraction earlier in the race, and had served the penalty, which put him two laps down. Amazingly, during the course of the race he lapped the entire field twice to get behind Goodyear at the end. Some people said it was the only Indianapolis 505, because Villeneuve had run two laps more than everyone else.
It was one of the greatest races in history.
In NASCAR, the pace car serves an additional purpose, in fact, they’ve gone to multiple pace cars for the opening laps.
Since the race cars only have a tachometer, and no speedometer, the drivers must rely upon the tach to gauge speed in Pit Lane. During the warmup laps, the pace car maintains pit road speed (I think this is the case in cautions too), and the drivers of the race cars double check the calculations of the team engineers with regard to tach/RPM to Speed. They go into the race with an expectation that (for example) 3450RPM in 2nd Gear is 45MPH. If they find it’s actually 3500RPM, they obviously want to use all 50RPM remaining as they “race” down pit road. No need to give up even a fraction of a second getting in/out of your pit, and across the “Pit out” scoring line.
NASCAR is VERY tough on pit road speeding violations, and it’s cost more than one team a win. They now use automated timing loops, and transponders, so there is no cheating, as there once was when they timed manually (stopwatches, and lookouts, visual marks on the asphalt/concrete).
As for the reasoning behind mulitple cars, you’ve all been in traffic, where the distances “accordian” between the cars. By splitting the field into multiple groups, speed errors don’t get worse as you move further back in the field, possibly putting them at a greater disadvantage than even their starting position gives them.
One other point, in NASCAR, the Pace Car isn’t always followed by the lead car (#1 position) following a cycle of pit stops under caution. There have been plenty of cases where the restart occurs with the race leader starting 10 or more spots behind the “front” car of the pack at the restart. This usually involves lapped traffic, and folks that chose not to pit.
Pace cars are also another tool in the marketing that drives motor sports. “Official pace car of NASCAR” is a fairly powerful marketing drive, if you buy American cars.
-Butler
Big American made NASCAR fan.
Driver of only import vehicles.