Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will appear the following week.
Q: Please tell me why Newgarden wasn’t penalized for that poor excuse for a restart? The video evidence is clear. He brake-checked the field and the expected accident occurred. What did he expect? His post-race interview was a bald-faced lie. “IndyCar threw the green before I went…” Are you serious, Josef? All the talent in the world. all that ability, ruined by your lack of integrity.
Wick in BRLA
MARSHALL PRUETT: He did not brake check the field. If he did, I’d say he did. I spoke with the series Monday morning and ran through all of the questions I had on the matter, and in each instance, I was told race control did not find anything punishable. The series says it reviewed his data and was satisfied that he maintained consistent throttle at 80ish mph. Now, did he waver from 80ish to 78ish or 77ish? I’d support that notion. But I didn’t find anything that was close to egregious in rewatching the sequence about a dozen times.
Having reached the end of the restart zone without going to full throttle, race control went green – while Newgarden wasn’t accelerating – and the series said this is a customary response. I’m not a fan of this approach.
When asked why it didn’t wave off the start and tell Newgarden to go sooner the next time around, I was referred back to the ‘constant throttle and we’ll go green if they aren’t going by the end of the zone’ answers. There was nothing illegal in waiting until the end of the restart zone to restart the race. IndyCar chooses to step in to ensure the race goes green if the leader doesn’t go before reaching the end of the zone. I’d rather have the restart waved off, the leader barked at by race control to conduct a normal restart, and a second chance given, but that’s not what IndyCar prefers to do.
Here’s a thing we know: If you let 27 IndyCar drivers wait and wait and wait to go green, some of those 27 will get anxious, and aggressive, and outcomes like this become probable with the checkered flag minutes away from being waved. That’s on IndyCar. Yes, there’s an entire restart zone a leader can use to their advantage, but clearer expectations for a normal restart with only a handful of laps left to go need to be made at future races. Otherwise, we’ll have every leader wait until the last possible moment and hope for crashes and calamity behind them to thin the competitive herd.
Watching the in-car from Newgarden while pointed rearward, I thought I saw light color changes coming from the exhausts — flames produced with a slight lift or two — which was called out on the broadcast, but I went back and rewatched the sequence a few more times and I was wrong. There are reflections of light on the stainless steel heat shields directly behind the exhausts that made me think I was seeing exhaust flames from lifting.
The only thing I saw and heard after five replays was a slight lift while he was well back in the corner at the Domino’s billboard on the outside of the track. It’s a super brief lift, prior to any of the mayhem, but it’s also where teammate Scott McLaughlin goes from three-quarters of a car length back to closing right up to the back of Newgarden’s car.
Did that brief lift a few hundred feet before the restart cause McLaughlin to close that gap? Or did McLaughlin accelerate slightly — or was it a combination of Newgarden slowing and McLaughlin accelerating? I don’t know. But from the slight lift back in the corner next to the Domino’s sign, the gap between the teammates quickly went to zero.
As they rounded the turn and were past the start of the outer pit wall, contact between the nose of McLaughlin’s car and Newgarden’s attenuator happened. Feeling the nudge and twitch at the back of the car, it sounded like Newgarden lifted for a split second to gather the car, which led to McLaughlin lifting and gathering his car, which then caused Colton Herta and Will Power to lift in reaction to McLaughlin and caught the charging Alexander Rossi by surprise.
The trigger point to all the bad stuff that happened was the erasing of the gap between Newgarden and McLaughlin before race control flipped the light panels to green and the ensuing nose-to-attenuator nudge that unsettled the leader and second place. That’s what instigated the accordion effect that led to the crashing.
And behind them, Nolan Siegel nailed Jack Harvey and shot Harvey into the outside wall as Power, Rossi, and a nowhere-to-go Conor Daly went to the inside.
The whole thing was stupid, and a damn shame. Herta and Power and Rossi were on the wrong end of slowing in front of them when nose-to-attenuator contact happened, but I haven’t found the dastardly behavior by Newgarden that’s been alleged.
Q: Newgarden’s rear wheels were spinning while the car was in the air on last stop. Not so on McLaughlin’s car. Is this a penalty, or not? If so, why didn’t IndyCar call it?
Jeff, State College, PA
MP: It was a penalty years ago — it became a popular thing to do in the mid-’80s and was banned — but there’s nothing in the rule book under Pit Lane Violations that lists spinning the tires in the air as an infraction. But, as always, if IndyCar sees something it feels is unsafe during a pit stop, it can apply a penalty.
Q: No cable? Big problem! Venu Sports’ launch has been blocked and could possibly never see the light of day. Is there a backup plan in place? IndyCar should have taken whatever NBC/Peacock was offering. It’s starting to feel like the video game fiasco all over again.
Jared, Reading, PA
MP: The video game deal was different; IndyCar were warned to avoid the vendor, didn’t, and paid the price. Here, it’s a problem that’s not of their making, and admittedly, IndyCar is one of 50-plus sporting leagues affected by the temporary injunction against Venu.
Since the injunction was ordered on Friday, no, I wouldn’t expect IndyCar to have a workaround in place days later. Look for the series to monitor the legal developments and see what happens. This affects everything from the NFL to NASCAR to MLB to Formula 1, so I have no doubt Venu (ESPN, FOX, Warners Bros. Discovery) are highly motivated to come to a resolution and move forward for its biggest properties and its smaller ones like IndyCar.