The RACER Mailbag, May 13

Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will be saved for the following week.

Q: Another IndyCar race, another time the app’s in-car cameras keep locking up and are useless. Guess nobody at IndyCar really cares. 

Craig

MARSHALL PRUETT: I’m gonna go ahead and predict that this isn’t going to be the main item of complaint this week… 

Q: Interesting radio pickup on Alexander Rossi.  Any consequences for that?  On a related note, what is wrong with race control? The debris in Turn 7 probably gave NASCAR officials a stroke when the yellow didn’t fly, but that’s still marginal compared to not throwing an immediate FCY for a car stranded on the pit straight and telling the driver to sit in a smoking car. 

I am curious to know if race control is now just making things up as they go now that they're independent?  Any explanation as to why things went the way they did?

Ryan in West Michigan 

MP: Yep, my prediction was accurate…

No consequences for Rossi. Yes, some of the befuddling stuff was explained in the change to how future FCYs will be treated by no longer waiting for the leaders to pit before going FCY and closing the pits.

Wouldn't you love to know what he's muttering inside that helmet... Paul Hurley/Penske Entertainment

Q: I am a longtime IndyCar fan and have read RACER’s Mailbag for a number of years. I had never sent a question in, but after watching the press conference and the question about push-to-pass, I am amazed at the responses.

I recognize the significant difference in circumstances from the Penske affair, and yet some of the reaction is very similar.  Palou acting as if he has no culpability in this because the series should keep him from using the P2P despite what the rulebook says, and also seeming to say he doesn’t know the rules exactly (see Newgarden from previous). Then Kirkwood saying that everyone would have used it if they knew it was active.  I give huge credit to Pato and his response, basically acknowledging the driver’s responsibility to know the rules and comply. 

So, my questions. Is there a general consensus across IndyCar or racing in general that it is solely the series’ responsibility to make sure drivers comply with rules? 

Is it possible for a driver to be operating on muscle memory to push the button and not realize that the 60hp boost is happening? Won’t they know by the seat of the pants?  In other words, could they have not known they were violating the rule.

Andy Brough

MP: Yes, they’d know P2P was active and could feel it.

By the letter of the rulebook prioits revision on May 5, Palou and the others who used P2P on the Long Beach restart have no culpability. They didn’t create the scenario where P2P was made available when it should have been deactivated, and there was no specific rule saying they couldn’t not use it; only a rule saying P2P would be deactivated lived in the rules.

But as I noted in a follow-up story about the new penalty for using P2P if it’s mistakenly made available, there was another, more general rule that could have been used on unsportsmanlike conduct to hit the 12. I’m a firm believer this was a huge error by the new Independent Officiating Board, and told them so after.

Every professional sport I can think of has their own version of a “in the best interest of baseball” rule where they grant themselves freedom to act and penalize without a specific rule being in place. It’s the ‘God’ rule. That’s what I wanted to see applied. I’m not a penalty-first person, but do believe a stronger message needed to be sent.

It would have been bold, but why bother going through the time, expense, and effort to create the IOB and IndyCar Officiating Inc if doing nothing – taking the easiest way out – is the answer?

IndyCar, prior to the whole IOB/IOI move, suffered massive embarrassment with P2P just two years ago. Completely different scenario where a single team manipulated their cars’ electronics and as a result, its drivers – and only its drivers – had the ability to use P2P when all other drivers could not. Two of Team Penske’s three drivers did use it (Newgarden and McLaughlin) while Will Power refrained.

All three entries were penalized for the illegally-modified electronics and Newgarden and McLaughlin had their 1-2 finish at St. Pete vacated (among the other penalties that were levied).

In the case of Long Beach, it was IndyCar as the responsible party for the drivers’ ability to exploit the use of P2P when they knew they shouldn’t, but for the average person who does little more than get their information from TikTok and memes… which is about 93 percent of the human race… they just know IndyCar can’t seem to get its **** together with P2P.

Then they remember the last people who did bad things with P2P got hit hard with penalties, and can’t reconcile while the dozen who just did bad things with P2P were given a free pass.

Again, with the basics of critical thinking applied, we know these two things are not like the other. But I don’t know if that’s reason enough for the IOB and IOI to swallow the whistle here.

Starting with the Long Beach P2P ordeal and rolling into the Indy GP officiating, there were perfect opportunities for the AIC (Acronyms In Charge) to act like parents and make hard decisions that might be unpopular, but need to be made.

Instead, the AIC come across, at least to me, as the parents who don’t want to parent and just want to be liked by everyone so nothing is done that would be disliked.

And how’s that going so far?