INDYCAR: Teams backed resuming Texas in August

Verizon IndyCar Series teams unanimously backed the decision to suspend the Texas Motor Speedway race for two and a half months after a rain delay, says track president Eddie Gossage.

The event was scheduled to run last Saturday night but was postponed by rain to Sunday afternoon, when it had to be halted again due to storms after 71 of the planned 248 laps had been run.

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Rather than delaying the race into the coming week, attempting to reach half-distance so an official result could declared or abandoning it altogether, IndyCar and TMS decided to reschedule the remainder of the event for Aug. 27. It will pick up from lap 72 with the current order, meaning James Hinchcliffe will spend over two months classed as Texas race leader.

Gossage said the unusual postponement represented the best approach for IndyCar fans.

"We are going to get together and work together and have a full race on Aug. 27," he said. "It's a one-day only with a practice session, an autograph session with all of the drivers and then the race. That was the best way to serve all the fans.

"We maybe could have hung around and got it to dry tonight to get it to halfway but that's not right. There are reasons why it wasn't wise to come back [on Monday] and to resume the race."

IndyCar President of Competition and Operations Jay Frye said the series was determined to get the full race distance in.

"If everything had played out we might have got to halfway but that is not our intention," he said. We wanted a complete race."

The IndyCar schedule is cramped at this time of year, with six rounds during June and July. Drivers Scott Dixon, Sebastien Bourdais and Mikhail Aleshin also had to urgently get to Le Mans, ready for this weekend's 24 Hours.

Gossage said after last November's NASCAR Sprint Cup race the venue added more "French drains" to help the water issues that have plagued this racetrack since it was opened in 1997.

"It's a variety of things," Gossage said. "Drivers like old asphalt but asphalt oxidizes and the small aggregate gets pulled out. With the Air Titan, it pulls all of that out and creates a porous racing surface.

"A 'weeper' to us is coming from the ground up but what we are finding now is the upper level gets saturated. If it were more sealed off on top it wouldn't get like this.

"Do you want to repave and seal it off, or do you deal with it? The answer is every racecar driver says not to repave, so we are being dealt a tough hand by nature."

Originally on Autosport.com