IndyCar’s Nashville street circuit looks a bit bumpy

This weekend will see the first-ever Music City Grand Prix, an IndyCar street race held in Nashville, Tennessee and one of the most anticipated events of the season. It has been positioned as an omen of IndyCar’s growth, as the series has enough clout to close some roads in a busy city for a weekend. It is also unbelievably bulge.

Anyone familiar with American infrastructure is probably not surprised. But you’ll still bite the bullet watching these drivers take certain sections of the trail, like the transition sections between the highway and the Korean War Veterans Memorial. bridge. I think I can hear Colton Herta’s teeth clicking in this clip:

Conor Daly tweeted that he “braked and found a new bump ”during Friday practice, resulting in a fairly intense collision with the tire barriers which brought out a red flag:

It was a similar situation for Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren SP, who was the first driver to collide with the wall.

“Dude, this is violent,” O’Ward said after his collision. “At turn 4, the bumps are very violent. I mean, you go through this, and the wheel is like getting knocked over with your hands. It is very unique. This is unlike any other place we go for sure.

Herta said the Nashville track “is even more bumpy than Detroit,” the street circuit which hosts a notoriously tough double-handed schedule that typically leaves drivers with serious blisters after the race. Herta continued: “I thought the bridge was going to be bumpy, but I didn’t expect the exit from the bridge to be enough this bulge.”

Several other riders shared their thoughts on the track surface, especially when it comes to the bridge transition sections – the parts of this track that make it so unique.

After receiving the reviews, Nashville organizers appeared to take action; a Twitter user shared a photo of what appeared to be the trail after a smoothing operation meant to reduce some of the more dangerous bumps.

With a practice and qualifying session still to run today, it remains to be seen how useful this change will be.