Its always been known in the past that the two races at the Pocono Raceway run very similar to the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. While the tracks are different in nature of their shapes, they’re very similar in the length itself (2.5-miles each). They also have long sweeping corners and long straightaways.

The biggest similarity is the tires. Goodyear, will bring the same tire this weekend to Indianapolis than they did for both races at Pocono last weekend.

With knowing all of this, how will Pocono translate over to Indy?

“I think everything is relevant,” said Greg Ives, crew chief of Alex Bowman’s No. 88 Chevrolet. “I feel like, as a crew chief, every lap I learn. We used to test at Nashville or Kentucky back in the day, down to New Smyrna – every lap we learned.

“Pocono definitely has a lot of characteristics with the flat corners, in some sense, and understanding what your package is going to do there. Like I said, the character of Pocono is just going to be a little bit different than Indy. How your car is going to draft down the front straightaway versus at Indy with their long straightaways. So, there are a lot of similarities that you can definitely pull from. If you feel like you selected the wrong aero package at Pocono, it’s probably going to be the wrong one at Indy. And you’re going to do some more things to maybe trim the car out or vice versa – if you trim the car out too much and you still need the handle at Indy.

“There’s definitely a lot of similarities and like you said, you can learn from Pocono, you can learn what not to do to bring to Indy. Ultimately, definitely a different character at each track, so it’s not a complete ‘hey, I just won Pocono, now I’m going to go win Indy because of this package’. That’s probably not the best way to think about it, but it definitely correlates a lot. Both tend to have the fuel mileage race and that strategy at the end of each stage to win stage points or put yourself in the best position at the end of the race. So, a lot of similarities, a lot of things you can carry over, but it’s not a complete one off.”

Matt DiBenedetto said the similar packages keep them similar now too.

“If you asked me that a couple years ago when we ran the low downforce stuff, I would say the two tracks were completely different, but now that we have the high downforce and less horsepower, they’re actually pretty similar in the fact that it’s real strategy-oriented, extremely track position-oriented,” said DiBenedetto. “You can catch someone.  Today, I caught the 10 at the end for fifth by about four to five tenths of a second a lap, so real fast and you just get stuck in their dirty air now.  I’m no stranger.  I’m surprised Steve O’Donnell hasn’t hit me yet because I give him a hard time because the high downforce just makes it so tough to pass, so I hope we can reverse that direction in the future.  A, it just makes it really tough on the teams and the pit crews and the strategy because you just have to have track position or else you can’t make your way up there.”

For Kyle Busch, someone needing a win, he said he does see some similarities between both. That’s good in a sense that he got 675 miles of testing done last weekend at the Tricky Triangle.

“I would think there are definitely some similarities in setup you can kind of look at and we’ll definitely take notice, especially with what we learned at Pocono over those two races,” the Joe Gibbs Racing driver. “Is Indy typically closer to our first Pocono race or our second Pocono race that’s usually on the schedule, I’m not sure. As far as the overall skeptic of it, you would think whatever you have or some ideas you have that are good at Pocono can transfer to Indy. And having those races in back-to-back weeks could act as somewhat of a simulation to where you’re fine-tuning your stuff from the simulator to the real thing at Pocono. And then having someone go back and redoing the simulator to make sure it’s right, and then the data that they are looking at to get ready for Indy is the exact stuff that you want.”