Frye explains Iowa finish

Verizon IndyCar Series competition president Jay Frye says ending the Iowa Corn 300 under caution was unintentional.

With the yellow flag thrown on Lap 294 of 300 for contact between Ed Carpenter and Takuma Sato that left most of Carpenter’s left-front wing endplate resting on the racing surface, the series spent the remaining laps attempting to get the field in order behind the pace car.

A number of drivers also pitted to take new tires in anticipation of a late restart. Most notably, Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden and Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ Robert Wickens surrendered podium finishes by pitting and quickly learning there was insufficient time for IndyCar to complete its restart procedure prior to the checkered flag waving under caution.

“We always want to end race under green...that was 100% our intention. When yellow comes out we have a process [and] we did all we could to accelerate that process. Caution laps click off very fast at Iowa Speedway. Ultimately between the amount of debris/car re-ordering we ran out of laps,” Frye wrote on Twitter.

With the field set under yellow, SPM’s James Hinchcliffe maintained his lead and took the win with Carpenter’s teammate Spencer Pigot and Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Sato taking second and third as beneficiaries of the stops by Newgarden and Wickens.