Roger Penske and his team are once again leading a Detroit downtown makeover—this time in the form of a one-of-a-kind racing circuit.
"There's no pattern, no other race, we're using for that," Denker said."Engineers are looking at it and saying, 'How are we going to ensure that when you cross this line you're going to be the first car out? Think about it, too, the distance between pit-in and your first pit box had better be to the inch, because that driver that says it's not is going to complain about someone having an advantage—left side or right side.
And, yes, Newgarden feels some of the same energy surrounding the Detroit race that he felt leading up to the first Music City Grand Prix in 2021. "That's always the case with a new circuit," he said."We'll have to see what it's like when we actually go and do it, but I think it looks much more challenging than people would think. It's not as simple as it looks. I think in racing conditions it's going to be very hard to navigate the hairpin at the Joe Louis fist. It's going to be like six lanes going into there to a dead stop. It's going to be a challenge.