The RACER Mailbag, May 27

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: I know it probably is because of a rule about when the yellow flag is thrown, but it seems odd that Hunter-Reay is credited  for finishing ahead of Legge in the Indy 500.  He crashed first,  and technically her Dallara finished further down the track. I hope  it is not a  Ken  Miles rule, she started  further back…

Rick Smith, San Diego, CA

MARSHALL PRUETT: Scoring is done with the last completed lap. Since Hunter-Reay and Legge did not complete the lap where they crashed, scoring reverts to the last lap and RHR was in front of Legge. Doesn’t matter who crashed or where their cars ended up on track – if one was ahead of the others – since scoring rolls back to the last official record of who was ranked in front.  

Q: Maybe I'm just getting cranky as I get older, but it seems over the past few years the post-race traditions  at the 500 have been kind of falling apart. Drivers stopping on the track, the time it takes to ride Roger's elevator up… Hopefully someone at IndyCar takes notice and will try to tighten things up. Let's get back  to driving straight to the dairy department for that cold drink ASAP. 

Joseph, Birmingham, AL 

MP: Let’s not. I don’t watch motor races for strict and swift adherence to post-race procedures. Celebrate with the fans. Lose your mind. Be real. Make everlasting memories. Why on earth would the greatest victory in a driver’s life be expedited to receive a beverage?  

Q: Red flag with seven laps to go. That’s NASCAR baloney.  


Jack 

MP: Let me tell you about a little 500-mile race held in Indiana back in 2023…

"NASCAR baloney" led to the closest-ever finish in Indy 500 history. Brandon Badraoui/Lumen via Getty Images

Q: Why was the Palou penalty five points and not a DQ? The exact same rule was cited and PREMA disqualified last year for the exact same thing. 

Fire the whole lot of ‘em. 

Ryan 

MP: It wasn’t the same thing in any way.

PREMA was hit for an incorrectly installed front wing end plate that was clocked on the wing at an angle that did not comply with the min/max height rule for end plates. The penalty was extremely harsh and was levied out of an alleged belief that the illegal installation was intentional — done with a disregard for compliance.

Palou’s front wing was tilting due to a bolt loosening. Looking at it from the front, the right side was high and the left side was low. There’s a belief by IndyCar Officiating Incorporated that it was an assembly error by whomever bolted the wing to the nose where a thread-locking solution like Loctite was not applied, which allowed the bolt to back out to the point where Palou’s front wing assembly could be seen slightly leaning to one side in the second half of the race.  

Palou also struggled as the race went on and lost his front-running speed. One person I spoke to with knowledge of the situation feared the front wing would have broken free from the car if more laps were run under green. There would be no reason to leave a single bolt loose to cause the front wing to tilt; it would cause aerodynamic instability.  

So, that’s just explaining the differences and how there was zero in common with PREMA. But that doesn’t speak to penalties.  

We have to acknowledge that what the referees chose to do last year at Indy can’t be compared to this year at Indy because there’s a completely new team of referees in charge of calling penalties. Many of the inspectors and race control officials are the same, but the actual head referees – the three-person independent board and the new managing director of officiating – are brand-new. They weren’t there in 2025 and aren’t beholden to whatever penalties their predecessors applied to PREMA, Andretti, Penske, and so on.  

Simply put, it doesn’t matter what the referees did last year at Indy because those people are no longer in charge of assigning penalties. I thought last year’s were far too harsh, but they also seemed to fit a desire to send a message to the field. It felt like examples were being made to set – to reset – expectations for a new and tougher take on post-qualifying/race tech. 

So that’s nuance. In isolation, and without the Penske attenuator mess, I don’t know if the PREMAs and others get hammered so hard after the race. That’s why I don’t look at the PREMA DQ as an automatic so-do-the-same-to-everyone-else-afterwards approach. But the fine and light points loss for Palou and Ganassi felt like a token penalty. 

If you comply, you comply, and if you don’t, you don’t. Having left bolts loose in my days as a race car mechanic (not many, fortunately), I can say that most things like what happened with Palou’s wing are byproducts of mistakes instead of intent to cheat.  

But when did being legal or illegal get graded on a curve due to perceived intent? If it’s clear that a team made an effort to cheat, I’m good with the penalty being escalated. But I don’t see it as an all-or-nothing situation where only clear cheating is treated in a more serious manner. If you comply, you comply… 

Leaving Indy, I’m still trying to get a feel for how the new refs are calling the game and won’t pretend to fully understand all of the ruling in May.