Q: I’m sorry but I don’t buy that race control plays favorites with Team Penske. I might buy it if you single out Newgarden. I won’t bore you with my Festivus Airing of Grievances with race control, but there have been so many non-calls that should have been called this year that the list isn’t just limited to Team Penske drivers getting a pass for sub-standard driving.
Is there any sort of an evaluation by the series when you consider calls made (like the one against Legge in Iowa) and calls not made to determine the competency of those in race control? Given the structure of the series (i.e., who owns it), I wonder if a panel of series owners reviewing and holding the stewards accountable might be in order?
Ryan, West Michigan
MP: I’m with you. If and when I have the time, I want to go back and do an accounting of how many penalties have been called since Penske bought the series and see where Team Penske rates by percentage among the other entrants. I feel like it would be a solid number.
But like I wrote in last week’s Mailbag, there is an ongoing belief that if there’s a hard call to make when a Penske driver is leading or capable of winning, no action will be taken. A belief is obviously not the same as reality, but I don’t see how this belief of an automatic bias gets dispelled without multiple instances of race control hammering Penske drivers when something important can be taken away while a race is happening.
Q: I remember Justin Wilson saying that Jaguar did not have the required resources to run two identical cars in F1 when he drove for them. I’m wondering if there is a parallel to CGR running five cars this season?
Oliver Wells
MP: There isn’t. Last year, with four, the team had three highly and consistently competitive drivers, and we saw those three win and run up front. This year, it’s five cars and two highly and consistently competitive drivers after Ericsson left, alongside two rookies and a sophomore doing his first full season. Drop three fast veterans in those cars, and the paddock has a five-car nightmare to deal with.
Q: Hello again, from your (least?) favorite student of the IndyCar rulebook.
Rule 7.7.1.3 states “The leader is required to maintain the pace lap speed until reaching the restart zone designated by INDYCAR when the leader shall accelerate smoothly back to racing speed and the Green Condition will then be declared.”
There’s nothing in the rule at all to suggest that race control throws the green if the leader fails to accelerate. Has Kyle Novak explained why that’s an unwritten rule? It seems as if there was mass confusion in the TV booth over that, and as a fan since the turbine era, I had no idea that was the procedure. There was also no visual indication of where the zone started or ended; the cones that were required to be place by race control in the previous rule no longer exist. Does race control depend on telemetry or simply visual observation to determine if the leader has crossed the exit line to go green if the throttle telemetry hasn’t indicated any acceleration?
The section times chart for WWTR proves beyond a doubt that Malukas, McLaughlin and Power all dropped from pace speed of 75-80mph at the point the pace car pulled off at the Turn 2 exit to as slow as 66mph through the Turn 3 section before the restart. Their average speeds through the Turn 4 section show that they accelerated to 110-150mph in the restart zone. None of them were penalized for failure to maintain pace speed. Why?
Next, one “reaches” the restart zone when one arrives at or enters it, not a handful of feet before leaving it. If the desired outcome is that the leader accelerates “within” the zone, then the rule should state that.
It also uses “shall,” which is discouraged in the legal community because 95% of the time it means the imperative “must” but in other cases merely means “may.” I took it to mean “must,” which is why I assumed Newgarden violated the rule and at the very least, the start should be waved off. Taken at face value, without knowledge of that unwritten rule, I wondered why a leader who failed to accelerate wouldn’t be given a drive through for failure to accelerate that resulted in a crash behind him?
Then there’s the phrase “smoothly back to racing speed.” It’s undeniable that Newgarden was nowhere near racing speed on exiting the restart zone, because the section chart shows his average speed through Turn 3 was 79.8 mph and through Turn 4, which per the diagram at the end of the chart, ends about 200 feet downtrack from the point where the green was shown. He could not have been going more than 88mph at the Turn 4 exit timing loop, otherwise his average speed would have been higher. What is “racing speed” supposed to mean?
I am unsure how open Kyle Novak is with you regarding details, but he really needs to explain clearly what fans should expect in enforcement of such a vague rule that isn’t written well in the first place.
Steve Jarzombek
MP: Kyle has been really good with me when I’ve had questions, but the series doesn’t like to make him available to answer for what I or others believe are mistakes. In my call with the series on the Monday after WWTR, I was told they will go green if the leader does not accelerate before they reach the end of the restart zone. Like penalties, race control has a matrix of actions they work from based on whatever takes place. They could have a similar sheet of restart actions to work from, and if they don’t, they also have the authority to do whatever they want.
Finally, Novak, who is a lawyer, is known for writing out and delivering explicit instructions to drivers and team managers. I do not believe the actions of race control at WWTR came as a surprise to those who sit in those regimented meetings.