'Most amateur driving I've ever seen': Zak Brown on IndyCar driver etiquette, penalties
SALINAS, Calif. – After a race that set a post-2006 IndyCar record for penalties (17), saw more than half the race’s elapsed time take place under caution (more than 70 minutes) and 20 of the field’s 27 cars serve sizable roles in the eight cautions, several drivers summed up the season-finale chaos post-race with variations of this one simple line:
“That’s IndyCar.”
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown believes the series should set its sights much higher.
“That was some of the most amateur driving I’ve ever seen,” Brown told IndyStar after his team, Arrow McLaren, suffered multiple bouts of heartbreak to cap its winless three-car 2023 campaign. “The series needs to figure out an additional penalty system for drivers to discourage this type of driving.
“We didn’t put on a good show for the fans today. That wasn’t what IndyCar racing is about.”
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Sunday’s 95-lap crashfest, won by championship runner-up Scott Dixon, saw four of the top-6 finishers (Dixon, Scott McLaughlin, Will Power and Christian Lundgaard) penalized for avoidable contact, along with 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, four-time 500-winner Helio Castroneves, Santino Ferrucci and Devlin DeFrancesco.
Dixon's penalty, ironically, set him and strategist Mike Hull down a path strategy-wise to run away with the wide-open race down the stretch.
And after the dust settled on his 7.3-second victory over McLaughlin, Dixon was apoplectic about race control’s ruling his Lap 1 contact that spun Rinus VeeKay and led to the Ed Carpenter Racing driver’s 18th-place finish, two laps down. Dixon believed he was doing his best not to be collected in the nearly half-dozen cars in front and behind him that ping-ponged into the drivers’ right gravel patch.
In watching the bird’s-eye-view replay, it’s unclear whether a slight tap to the right rear from Colton Herta was what sent Dixon into a bobble, or if it was simply a product of putting power down on a newly-repaved track. Whatever the cause, Dixon’s wiggle delivered VeeKay a hip-check that left him beached.
“I have no idea what goes on up there (in race control), seriously. I don’t know what to say,” Dixon said post-race. “Man, some races for that you’ve got to give up one spot. Today, it was a drive-thru (penalty) for some people. I really don’t know, man.”
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It was Dixon’s hip check on Felix Rosenqvist one turn into the IndyCar season that sent the season-opener into complete disarray, triggering a chain reaction that collected nine cars, ended five drivers’ days and sent DeFrancesco airborne on the streets of St. Petersburg. The way the series has officiated on-track action and its drivers’ sometimes brazen actions has been an ever-present topic since.
In Nashville, Dixon told IndyStar his biggest issue had been the inconsistent way a series of incidents at St. Pete (Power and Herta), Long Beach (between he and Pato O’Ward), Road America (VeeKay and Rosenqvist) and Toronto (the start including Jack Harvey) were handled. Dixon said he no longer was confident in understanding race control’s chain of command between its pair of stewards (Max Papis and Arie Luyendky), race director (Kyle Novak) and series president (Jay Frye).
“I think they’re trying to find their feet a little bit,” Dixon said in Nashville. “I know they try to say, ‘You’re all professionals and you should be able to figure it out,’ but we’re also racecar drivers, and everyone needs to know their boundaries.”
Dixon and others, including Alexander Rossi and Marco Andretti, expressed concern over blatant jump starts at the end of this year's 500 during the race’s three red flag restarts. Some drivers admitted doing it purposefully despite believing it was an infraction.
“Definitely some heated moments throughout the race,” Dixon said Sunday. “Pretty pissed off a times.”
Add drivers' and teams’ frustrations that May’s 500 restarted with one lap to go (seen as an unprecedented and an unsafe roll of the dice aimed at a green flag finish), the promotion of Jack Harvey’s Road America jumpstart as tactful racing on social media, Alex Palou being allowed to finish Toronto with a front wing hanging on by a sponsor sticker, slow triggers to call yellows at Iowa (for a loose wheel on-track) and Portland (with Agustin Canapino off in an unsafe spot on a high-speed portion of the track) and the decision that led to Andretti Autosport’s loss of more than $1 million in 2024 Leaders Circle payments, and Dixon and Brown believe serious conversations need to be had this offseason.
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There, they hope, drivers, owners and series officials can get on the same page as to what IndyCar deems appropriate on-track action – and the penalties for when those lines are crossed to deter repeat offenders.
“I think I hit everything but the pace car today,” McLaughlin said post-race Sunday, albeit with mixed feelings. “Certainly one of those crazy days, peak IndyCar days. Things that didn’t go my way, things I probably shouldn’t have done either, but we just kept our heads down and kept working.
“I didn’t say I enjoyed it. I think you just never give up.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: McLaren's Zak Brown irate over driving, penalties in finale
