What is “Push to Pass” in IndyCar?

IndyCar

When watching IndyCar races, you’ve probably heard of the Push to Pass button. Basically, it is a button on the driver’s steering wheel that gives the driver more horsepower on the car, helping the driver to overtake, defend from another driver’s pass or help increase lap times.

When this is activated, the wastegate in the cars is closed, causing the gas pressure to build and increase. Higher exhaust gas pressure exerts more force on the supercharger, which spins faster. This causes an increase in the amount of air pulled though the supercharger and into the engine, making the engine to be more efficient and increasing the horsepower it can produce. In easier terms, Push to Pass feeds more air to the engine, allowing it to increase the horsepower in the car, raising its top speed.

There is a limited time to be able to use the Push to Pass feature in each race, which varies from track to track. It can be limited from 150 to 200 seconds per race in road courses and street courses. Push to Pass is not available in high-speed oval tracks. It is available in up to 20-second increments at one time, at which the drivers can choose to use all 20 seconds or deactivate it earlier and save it for later in the race.

There are some limits on when it can be applied in a race. The drivers cannot use this feature on race starts, restarts, or the first lap after the start or restart, not to mention that it isn’t available in oval courses. When it was implemented, drivers had to be 1.5 seconds off another car to be able to activate it.

Besides the limited amount of time to use the Push to Pass, the only other downside is that it consumes more fuel, possibly affecting the driver’s strategy of where to use it, when to use it, and how much to use at any given time.

Push to Pass can be considered cheating, but it has brought more strategy games and excitement to each race. It has brought a certain level of unknown to the driver about how much of the feature their competitors have left, adding even more excitement and the unknown for the fans, the drivers and the teams.

Other categories that have features like the Push to Pass are Formula 1 and Formula E. In F1, we have the DRS, which doesn’t increase the car’s horsepower, but eliminates the air resistance and makes the car go faster only in predetermined zones and within 1 second of the car ahead. In Formula E, there is the attack mode, which consists of 8 minutes of power boost that can be used throughout the race after crossing completely an activation zone. They also have implemented fanboost, which is voted by the fans and awarded to the most voted driver.

Written by Kauany Gouveia