INDYCAR: Hinchcliffe seethes at qualifying penalty

James Hinchcliffe was livid after a call made by the Verizon IndyCar Series race control stewards deleted his fastest lap and removed the No. 5 Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Honda from the Firestone Fast 12.

The Canadian is known for his warm personality and engaging smile, but after having the hammer dropped by the series when he spun and continued (but caused the local corner workers to wave the yellow caution flag), the "Mayor of Hinchtown" delivered a scathing verdict of his own for IndyCar.

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"I'm embarrassed for them to be honest," Hinchcliffe told RACER. "They did the same thing to us at Road America; I don't know why it keeps being us."

Per Rule 8.3.7.2, which states "If a Car causes a Yellow Condition that interferes with the qualifications attempt of another Car, the Car's best timed lap during that segment shall be disallowed," the series assessed an automatic penalty based on the flaggers waving the yellow.

And compounding the problem on Saturday, Hinchcliffe's teammate, Mikhail Aleshin, was given a penalty for impeding another driver in the Fast 12, and despite transferring into the Fast Six, he was demoted to 10th once the stewards ruled.

"We got knocked with a Draconian penalty in Texas, and then they haven't penalized us in like six days so it's about time, we were due for something," Hinchcliffe added. "It's the lack of reasoning with them, their own rules, they don't enforce them. All we've ever asked for is consistency and transparency. We have a clearly written rule and it was clearly disobeyed, and there's no logical explanation given. If we did something wrong, penalize me, I get it. But when we didn't, and the rules aren't enforced the way they're written, I really, really struggle."

Hinchcliffe, who kept rolling after his spin, does not believe a yellow flag was warranted.

"The rulebook reads if you have an incident on track during qualifying but you don't stop forward momentum, a yellow flag should not be thrown," he continued. "If you watch the replay I never stopped moving forward. The yellow came out anyway; so the yellow flag was thrown. That's the fault of either the marshals or the stewards or whoever's fault it is. That's not my mistake. That's their mistake.

"But if they want to enforce that and not retract that mistake, the cars in that sector have to adhere to a 15 percent slowing down in the yellow zone. Will Power did not do that. If you take away his fastest lap for not adhering to the yellow zone, he'd be behind me and we'd still be in it. So either way we should have been still in the session. And that's what so frustrating."

Hinchcliffe will start 13th for the IndyCar Grand Prix at The Glen.