INDYCAR: Round 3 Rewind

IndyCar

INDYCAR: Round 3 Rewind

Al Unser Jr. explains how and why penalties were/weren't assessed at Long Beach, Scott Dixon weighs in on the subject and the Golden Bowling Ball is awarded.

Marshall Pruett | Posted April 19, 2011 Fremont, CA

Helio Castroneves picked up the spare to bowl a perfect frame at Long Beach on Sunday.

What an odd start to the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Season.

With three rounds in the books, it feels as if there has been no consistency whatsoever. Take the big crashes at each race, the three different winners, uneven performances by some drivers, the growing discord between others and questionable calls and non-calls made from race control, and despite the ‘hard to get a pulse on how this season will be remembered’ aspect to 2011, we still end up with Dario Franchitti and Will Power sitting atop the points by a healthy margin.

Maybe getting a pulse on the season won’t be so hard after all.

Compared to last year, two drivers in particular must be pleased with how things have gone from St. Pete to Long Beach.

Franchitti came away from the first three rounds in 2010 with finishes of seventh, fifth and third. With a first, third and third recorded this year, the reigning champion is in a much better position to defend his title than he was last year when it took him until Indy—the sixth race—to score his first win.

Tony Kanaan’s 2010 season wasn’t a total mess to begin with, but a 10th, 10th and eighth was hardly what was expected while driving for Andretti Autosport. TK’s arc of finishes in 2011 is going in the opposite direction of what he’d like it to be, but with a third, sixth and an eighth through Long Beach, he’s in better shape than he was a year ago. He’s also third in points, which surely wasn’t expected considering he only met his new team one month ago.

2011 has started off slightly different for Team Penske’s Will Power (and massively different for his teammates). With a first, first and fourth at the first three rounds in 2010, Power is sitting on a second, first and 10th at the moment. Hardly a disaster, but had Long Beach played out differently, that 10th would have been a second or third.

ONE GOOD RACE

However, things go pear-shaped when you look at how Team Penske, as a whole, has emerged from the first three rounds. Right now, some sort of cosmic ‘One Good Race’ policy appears to be in place.

Power: Hit at St. Pete, one good race at Barber, another hit at Long Beach.

Briscoe: Hit at St. Pete, hit at Barber, one good race at Long Beach.

Castroneves: (Did the) Hit(ting) at St. Pete, one good race at Barber (yet also hit Vitor Meira), (did the) hit(ting) at Long Beach.

Out of nine total attempts, the three drivers have gotten to the finish line unscathed 33 percent of the time. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what The Captain had in mind when they laid out their plans to beat the Ganassi camp from scoring a fourth consecutive title.

Andretti Autosport has also caught the ‘One Good Race’ bug, but to make matters worse, one of its four drivers has contracted the ‘Nothing But Bad Races’ flu.

Conway: Hit at St. Pete, crashed at Barber, one good race at Long Beach.

Hunter-Reay: Hit at St. Pete, (did the) hit(ting) at Barber, mechanical issues at Long Beach.

Andretti: Hit at St. Pete, one good race at Barber, (did the) hit(ting) at Long Beach.

Patrick: (Did the) Hit(ting) at St. Pete, bad strategy at Barber, one good race at Long Beach

Out of AA’s 12 attempts this year, just three races have ended with a positive result. I guess they might actually be jealous of Team Penske’s 33 percent success rate.

STEEEEEEEEEEEEEERIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE

Sometimes determining the winner of an award requires a committee of experts, hours of deliberation and a lot of soul searching. And other times, like at Long Beach, and as Versus' Jon Beekhuis rightly called it, the award just gives itself away because the winner is so dang obvious.

For his distinguished service to single-handedly changing the outcome of two of the first three IZOD IndyCar Series races and for hitting cars in all three events this year, SPEED.com is proud to present Helio Castroneves with our latest Golden Bowling Ball Award.

Castroneves also has the honor of being the first repeat winner of the award.

And for those of you who want to win the Golden Bowling Ball at future IndyCar rounds, here's an instructional video that might be of use:

DRIVE OF A LIFETIME

If you DVR’d the Long Beach race, please go back and watch JR Hildebrand’s in-car footage. Even better, grab a stopwatch and then watch his in-car…I’d doubt you’ll find more than a few seconds on any lap where the front wheels are pointed straight.

It wasn’t fast, and he clearly wanted a better handling car to pilot around the 1.9-mile circuit, but watching the kid feed opposite lock into the No. 4 Panther Racing machine on corner entry and exit for most of the 85-lap race was nothing short of spectacular.

Rather than dial back his pace by a few seconds per lap and stroke the car home to finish two or three laps down, Hildebrand kept his foot in it, dealt with the deficiencies and put on a whale of a show to come home on the lead lap.

I don’t want to create too many awards here, but if a “How the hell did you keep that thing off the wall” award existed, JR earned about 85 of them last weekend.

OLD HABITS DIE HARD

Takuma Sato looked like a driver who transformed from a great crasher into a great finisher at St. Pete, but the likeable Japanese pilot has been a classic case study of “one step forward; two steps back” after tangling with JR Hildebrand and later, in a race-ending crash, with Justin Wilson at Barber.

Taku took another step back at Long Beach where he got tangled up with Graham Rahal, caused punctures on his car and Rahal’s, broke Rahal’s front wing, and then, with his KV Racing-Lotus car out of control, crashed hard into the Turn 8 tire barrier.

Rahal wasn’t willing to assign blame to Sato for the crash—it sounded more like a case of Taku simply not knowing Rahal was there when he changed lanes and the two made contact—but the end result was a familiar one.

Here’s to hoping Sato’s race in Brazil goes much better than it did in 2010 when he triggered a huge crash at the start.

CREDIBILITY AND CONSISTENCY GAP?

“Paul Tracy came into [Long Beach] with a clean record. His slate was clean for this year,” said one driver. “Help me to understand how he gets a penalty for hitting Simona, once, while Helio came into Long Beach with what, two or three hits? And then he hits Justin AND Will? And no penalty on either one? Where’s the consistency in that?”

That’s a great question, isn’t it?

As much as open-wheel supporters want to cheer for the good and overlook the bad these days, one thing can’t be ignored: IndyCar came away from Long Beach with a fairly large black eye in the credibility department.

Whether it’s deserved or accurate, IndyCar faces the growing belief that those who preside over each race play favorites when it comes to handing out penalties. And, to make matters worse, when the series offers no explanation as to how those penalties were determined, it fosters the belief that a bias—or possibly something else—is being kept silent and private.

Unfortunately, in the court of public opinion, silence is usually interpreted as an indicator of foul play.

To be fair, there’s nothing that requires IndyCar to explain its decisions. There are no rules or policies in place to the series to publish a ‘Stewards’ Findings’ document after every round to fill the information gap between why a penalty was or was not awarded.

But, in the case of Long Beach, where many (and I do mean MANY) drivers believe Helio Castroneves went un-penalized due to preferential treatment, and where many fans, at least according to the e-mails we’ve received, hold the same belief, can IndyCar afford to keep ignoring the elephant in the room?

Even if the negative feelings toward IndyCar’s control tower are completely unfounded, shouldn’t the Tracy/Castroneves penalty/non-penalty issue be acknowledged and addressed?

Thankfully, and to his credit, Al Unser Jr., two-time Indy 500 winner and one of the three men who form IndyCar’s race steward team, was willing to go on the record about Long Beach.

I can’t say that I agree with everything he said, and I was surprised at his candor on how Helio is/isn’t dealt with by the series, but the man should be respected for standing up and speaking his truth.

Al Unser Jr's presence in IndyCar's control tower has been lauded by many as a smart call by the IndyCar Series. (LAT)

To start, and I didn’t get the impression he was trying to do anything other than illustrate a fact that tends to be forgotten, he works in a collaborative manner with Brian Barnhart and Tony Cotman in race control. While the by-the-letter procedure was slightly vague, from everything Little Al shared during our 35-minute call, he gave the impression that a unanimous decision is needed to dole out a penalty.

In the case of Paul Tracy’s incident that caused Simona De Silvestro to spin in Turn 11, there was a unanimous decision regarding PT being at fault for avoidable contact.

In the case of Helio Castroneves spinning Justin Wilson in Turn 11, Little Al said they lacked the unanimous vote to make the same call.

PRUETT: Two drivers did the hitting in Turn 11, but only one got the penalty. How was the decision made in both cases?

UNSER JR.: For Tracy, it was from attempting a pass—I forget who he was trying to pass at the time—but he was trying to pass that car and went and overshot and hit Simona. So, Paul Tracy was attempting a pass in a very high-risk corner, OK. So, Helio was behind somebody—Justin Wilson—and it was unclear, or….it was on the fence. He could claim that Justin put the brakes on, and so on, but he hit Justin square in the back. He was not attempting to pass somebody. Helio was just following. It was enough that Helio could claim that the guy slowed down too much in front of him, or that he was caught off-guard and was unexpected. That’s one of those that falls into the column of a ‘racing accident.’ Now, if he did it again, then we would then know the first one wasn’t an accident, or what have you. That was in Turn 11.

Now when he went down and took out Will Power, that was Turn 1. And so, he’s taken out his own teammate, for one. Again, that falls into an area that, you know, we’re now going to be keeping a very, very close eye on Helio. Helio has made a mistake--a lack of good choice at St. Pete and now he did it twice in Long Beach. [I remind him of the contact with Meira at Barber.] That’s right, that’s right. So, in three races, he’s made some poor choices during the race, so he’s gonna be watched extremely carefully.

PRUETT: OK. Let me play Devil’s Advocate here. You said with PT in Turn 11, compared to Helio in Turn 11, that Paul’s actions were punishable because he was making an ill-advised pass in a high-risk zone, it didn’t work, and he hit Simona after locking up his brakes. Fair enough. Then, Helio didn’t get penalized because it was a bump—not a dive bomb pass—in Turn 11, per se.

Later in the race, we have Helio, doing everything you just described Paul as doing—an ill-advised pass in a high-risk zone, locks his brakes, overshot the braking zone and then hits and spins a car. Same move, same result, but, the difference being…no penalty. If there was any grey area in the Paul and Helio deal in Turn 11, the Helio deal in Turn 1 seems clear cut, doesn’t it? I see a lot of similarities between the two, but did he receive a penalty?

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