Jimmie Johnson is nearly halfway through his rookie IndyCar campaign, and is learning the ins and outs of the cars that are deceivingly different to the ones from his NASCAR career.
In addition to the minimal margins of error that are much smaller than he is used to, Johnson is also learning how the heat affects drivers differently in the open-wheel machines.
This weekend’s double-header in Detroit is set to be one of the toughest tests for drivers since the Aeroscreen was introduced, in no small part due to the short recovery time between races.
Coming after comments by Bourdais suggesting that changes are needed to the Aeroscreen on street courses to better deal with the heat, the seven-time NASCAR champion talked to Motorsportweek.com about how the heat is affecting him so far.
“You end up hotter,” said Johnson ahead of Saturday’s race. “The heat isn’t as high, but the physicality of the car is much higher.
“Your heartrate is higher, you’re in this anaerobic threshold where your muscles are building up lactic acid. It’s for a pretty long duration, it’s for two hours. So your body literally starts shutting down and the heat doesn’t help any of that.
“This will be my first real hot race that I’m in so I don’t have the best gauge of things. But for me, my heartrate is what I notice. It’s so much higher in these cars than I had in a NASCAR vehicle.
“I think where it will come into play is Sunday about midway through the race. We’re all trained to make a two-hour window, and things have pretty normal so far.
“What’s not normal is a full race distance, and 24 hours later doing it again.”
Johnson also mentioned that he is trialing out a version of a cool suit to help him make it through both full-length races of the double-header weekend.
Teams are left to develop such solutions as they see fit, and some do not have the resources that Chip Ganassi Racing does, leading to implementation just now being tested by some drivers.
“We’re trying [a cool suit] this weekend,” continued Johnson. “It’s wild, I helped developed that for the NASCAR side and now it’s finally making its way over here. Still in the early stages, but myself and Palou have it. We’re test dummies for it this weekend.
“I’ve got an ice bath ready to go when the race is over. Definitely hydration, nutrition schedule, PT work. I’m treating it as serious as I can to make sure I’m fresh and ready for tomorrow.”
