Why IndyCar didn't throw late red flag at Iowa: 'Whatever's going to make everyone happy'
NEWTON, Iowa – Across the 2023 IndyCar season, Josef Newgarden has won on an oval under caution. He’s won after an uber-late red flag in a one-lap come-from-behind sprint. He’s won in a clean, caution-free run to the finish.
And Sunday, the ‘Oval King of IndyCar’ won after a late-race caution where race control again abandoned procedures, keeping the pits closed even with 10 laps remaining at the time of Ryan Hunter-Reay’s late brush of the wall, to, as an IndyCar official said, attempt to ensure a green-flag finish to the Hy-Vee doubleheader weekend at Iowa Speedway.
“Whatever they were going to do, I’m fine with it. We’ll figure it out and still try and win,” said IndyCar’s winner of each of the past five oval races — dating back to August of last year. “What they did today, we lived with it. I thought it was fair enough, but if they want to do it differently in the future, I’m all game for whatever anybody wants to do.
“Whatever’s going to make everyone happy, that’s what we should be doing.”
How he did it Sunday: Josef is still king of Iowa with IndyCar weekend sweep
From Saturday: With a dominant Iowa win, Josef Newgarden eats into Alex Palou's championship lead
By that point, he could hardly contain his laughter behind the cheeky smile the championship challenger was wearing. “Every. Body. Every. Person.”
The banter with reporters was a wink back to this year’s Indianapolis 500, which Newgarden won after race control red flagged the race with just two laps to go — previously never seen in the history of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. After a midfield crash during a restart with four laps to go, IndyCar race control opted not to immediately tell the leaders to cycle through pitlane to prepare to stop and instead sent them through the crash site, where the pace car picked them up, and had them cycle through one more lap under yellow.
The decision then allowed for only a single warmup lap and a one-lap sprint to the finish — one the race leader Marcus Ericsson felt he was in an impossible place to hope to keep Newgarden behind, and one his competitors told IndyStar post-race the Chip Ganassi Racing driver was a “sitting duck.” Complaints were levied that race control hadn’t given cars the proper amount of time to warm-up their tires after the stoppage and that some cars were barely making it out of the warmup lane before Ericsson jumped on the gas for the restart.
It was all done, a series spokesperson said post-race, in the spirit of trying to give the more than 300,000 fans in attendance and nearly 5 million watching at home the finish a race of that stature deserved.
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Ahead of this weekend, Sunday’s podium finishers told media post-race that race control told the field in their ‘drivers’ meeting’ that in a late-race wreck with roughly 10 laps to go, they should expect a caution, but a closed pitlane, to shorten the caution period and ensure the race could return to green.
So Newgarden, Will Power (second place) and championship-leader Alex Palou (third place) weren’t caught off-guard.
“There weren’t enough laps left (to open the pits), I guess is what they were thinking,” Power said. “It is what it is, but it’s kind of interesting. It would have been a big battle if it was new tires. A bit less with old tires. Kind of close, but still would’ve been a fun restart.”
Palou agreed.
“It would’ve been a really fun restart for me (with new tires),” he said. “I honestly said it on the radio, asking if we would take tires or not, but it’s true that the lap is so short that, 10 laps is nothing. Yeah, I think they did the right call.”
The alternative would seem to have been to throw a red flag as soon as possible, bring the entire field into the pits and shut cars off while the track crew cleaned up any remaining debris. How soon race control could’ve called for a caution and gotten the pace control in front of the field to lead it down pitlane, of course, is unclear.
But it’s conceivable to imagine a scenario – given the minimal carnage from Hunter-Reay’s brush with the wall – where two or three laps might’ve been left at the time of a restart, after three laps or so to gather the field and stop it on pitlane, followed by rolling again and cycling lapped cars through pitlane, giving everyone a chance to pit, presenting a pit exit lap – plus one more – to warm up their tires and prepare for a green flag.
Rather than operating like this year’s 500, where the use of red flags, to at first preserve as many green-flag laps as possible and then to ensure a green-flag finish, were clearly the priority, drivers were told ahead of this weekend that the use of a late-race red flag would be a “last resort, not a first resort,” according to the series spokesperson.
In other words, the end of Sunday’s race followed the playbook laid out to drivers ahead of the weekend, while abandoning the precedence the series seemed to set less than two months ago, on a day where NBC had plenty of runway for a lengthy planned post-race show that could’ve instead been eaten up some by a brief stoppage.
Such a red flag situation would’ve put Newgarden, out ahead of five lead-lap cars at the time, in a tough spot, having to either:
>> Decide to take on new tires and quite possibly watch the other four lead-lap cars stay out and leave him in 5th-place, in need of passing four cars with 50-lap-old tires in a two or three-lap sprint, or…
>> Opt to stay out and preserve his track position, which likely would’ve been a clear signal for the other four to dip into the pits, not sacrifice any track position and strap on a set of new tires with which to try and hunt the leader down with.
It’s anyone’s guess how such a scenario might’ve played out, but neither would’ve been exceedingly great for the driver who led 212 of 250 laps Sunday.
“I think if you look at it from a fairness standpoint, if you’re going to let everyone have pitstops, okay, we’ll do that, but you’ve still got to move lapped cars, and I still just don’t think we had enough time on this length of track,” Newgarden said after his weekend sweep. “I think the only way we can approach this stuff is to get the lapped cars out of the way and get to a restart. It’s probably the fairest thing you can do.
“I still didn’t love it. I would’ve preferred to keep the lapped cars in between us, but looking at it as a competitor, I think it was the fairest way to approach it.”
Newgarden’s answer comes with the experience that, with seven laps to go in 2018, the race was yellow-flagged after another one-car crash (from Ed Carpenter). Also dealing with five total cars on the lead lap at the time, race-leader James Hinchcliffe opted to stay out with the pits were opened, while second-place Newgarden and third-place Robert Wickens dipped in, under the assumption the race would be restarted with a couple to go.
It remained yellow the rest of the way, dropping the pair to fourth and fifth, respectively.
“I like to think we would’ve been just fine (had the pits opened),” Newgarden continued Sunday. “But this race can change quickly, and the balance can get away really fast.”
Said Palou, as he imagined what an alternate universe might’ve been like: “I hope the might’ve stayed out and made us pit. Maybe with new tires against 50-lap-old ones, I could’ve had a chance. But with the same conditions? No.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar bucks Indy 500 precedent, doesn't throw late red flag at Iowa
