I'll be honest, I need a break from writing. From nearly two weeks of IndyCar team previews and the whole St. Petersburg weekend, I am shot. But before I take a few days to rest, I've been thinking of some of the events over the weekend and some alternative solutions.
Red Flags
One item that I have been thinking of a lot from St. Petersburg is the red flag rule in qualifying which states if a driver causes a red flag, they lose their fastest two laps from the session. The rule has been in place for over a decade and I've never had a problem with it. However, I thought of another penalty for causing the red flag but after thinking it over I realize it would be difficult to enforce.
Let's say a driver causes a red flag, instead of taking away their two fastest laps the driver's qualifying session ends immediately. So you could be the fastest in group one, round one but if you cause a red flag, your session ends. Your time maybe good enough to advance to the next round however you will not be able to participate and the best you could start is twelfth, barring no other drivers advanced but also caused a red flag and had their session end early.
However, here is where I come to the crux of the problem: What if you don't advance? What if you are ninth in group two, round one and cause a red flag? What's the point of ending your session early? Should the fastest two lap negation penalty remain in that case?
One complaint with the IndyCar rule book has been its inconsistency and I don't wait qualifiers for each infraction. Let's take James Hinchcliffe and Graham Rahal from this weekend. Both caused a red flag in qualifying and Hinchcliffe was in position to advance. I don't want Hinchcliffe to be allowed to keep his time, advance and not be allowed to better his position in the top twelve while Rahal loses his fastest top laps.
The other problem with this is timing. Rahal's red flag happened three minutes into qualifying while Hinchcliffe's happened at the end of the session. I think Rahal had done one lap of qualifying. You could argue if the rule was cause a red, session ends that Rahal would have started at the back anyway but he loses the chance to try and make up ground after his mistake.
The other problem this weekend was qualifying was a wet session. After nearly a four hour delay, the track was as slick as it could possibly be. Accidentally losing the back end because of hydroplaning shouldn't ruin a driver's qualifying session. It was something out of their control and you can't tell a driver to be more cautious when they have to be on it during qualifying. My final proposal is the losing two fastest laps for causing a red during a wet qualifying session be removed. Keep it for a dry session but when the conditions aren't ideal, cut these drivers a break because their mistakes aren't necessarily in their control.
Local Yellows
Staying on the St. Petersburg weekend for a second, the Pirelli World Challenge race not only saw the first victory for an FIA GT3 specifications car in the United States when Tomáš Enge won driving a Lamborghini Gallardo FL2 but saw only one full-course caution while using a handful of local yellows for minor, single car incidents. During the race, there were a Ford Mustang and Mercedes SLS AMG stopped on the side of the course and instead of stopping the race, they kept going and kept that section of the track under a local yellow.
And it was great.
Meanwhile, a few hours later, when Charlie Kimball blows turn one and stalls, causes a full-course caution, bunches up the field and we had a restart from hell that took out Marco Andretti and Jack Hawksworth. My question is why can't IndyCar use local yellows more often? And, to be fair, the IMSA Untied SportsCar Championship has the same problem. I'm all in favor to if you stop on track your race is over if you can't drive back to the pit lane under your own power.
If you go to the 1:09:06 mark of the Pirelli World Challenge broadcast and watch two minutes, you will see the stopped Mustang and Mercedes were in more vicarious positions than Kimball was but the race kept going. How is it that the SCCA officials view their drivers as more professional and more adequate to follow the rules of a local yellow than IndyCar officials?
IndyCar officials should have told Kimball that if he couldn't get it restarted to park it, get out and walk back to the paddock while some corner workers made sure the car was as far out of harms way as possible to keep race going. IndyCar also needs to invest in four or five cranes for road and street courses so stalled cars can be completely moved out of harms way as possible but that's another story for another day. But IndyCar really should bring in some SCCA officials and learn how to properly enforce local yellows.
Noise
Everyone has commented on the Formula One engine noise so I guess I should as well. Here I go...
I don't care. I never cared. I also don't get why people complain about a car that doesn't look aesthetically pleasing. If the product is good, who cares how it sounds? Formula E may produce some of the greatest races on the planet but you shouldn't allow the noise to factor into whether or not a race is good.
Two races into the Formula One season and two races in which Mercedes led flag-to-flag (Mercedes has led 100% of the laps through two races). The races have been interesting. McLaren looks good. Ferrari has had two interested races. Daniil Kvyat has scored in his first two races. Williams is doing well while Felipe Massa is having an "oh God, not again," moment with team orders.
You can't be to immersed in the sounds or looks or smells of motorsports. They are going to change. And if the racing on track is good, it shouldn't matter. If you refuse to watch a race because of how it sounds or how the cars look, how can you say you were a fan to begin with? That's like saying you don't watch the NFL because the players aren't as fat as you would like them to be or you don't watch Major League Baseball because some of the players are heavier than they should be and let themselves go.
It's not about the piece but the sum of the whole. If you are too worried about one piece (the cars, the sound of the engines, the tire degradation, the grid girls) you potentially forget about loving the more important sum of the whole (the racing).
Looking Forward
Formula One goes to Bahrain and for the race will be held under the lights for the first time. It will be the 900th World Championship event and funny enough, the 800th event was the first ever night races at Singapore in 2008.
For historically reference:
100th World Championship event: 1961 German Grand Prix won by Sterling Moss for Lotus.
200th: 1971 Monaco Grand Prix won by Jackie Stewart for Tyrrell.
300th: 1978 South African Grand Prix won by Ronnie Peterson for Lotus.
400th: 1984 Austrian Grand Prix won by Niki Lauda for McLaren.
500th: 1990 Australian Grand Prix won by Nelson Piquet for Benetton.
600th: 1997 Argentine Grand Prix won by Jacques Villeneuve for Williams.
700th: 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix won by Giancarlo Fisichella for Jordan.
800th: 2008 Singapore Grand Prix won by Fernando Alonso for Renault.
This will be the fifth time a century mark Grand Prix is the third round of a season (1971, 1978, 1997 and 2003 are the others).
If you want to get technical, a different nationality has won each century mark Grand Prix. Yes Sterling Moss and Jackie Stewart are both British but Moss is English and Stewart is Scottish. After that a Swede, Austrian, Brazilian, Canadian, Italian and Spaniard.
Ferrari has never won a century mark Grand Prix.
A British team had won the first seven century mark Grand Prix before Renault won in 2008.
Five different continents have hosted a century mark Grand Prix. North America and Antarctica are the two that haven't.
This night race in Bahrain got me thinking about this question: When will we see a permanent road course in the United States with lights? Technically, rovals such as Daytona, Texas, Charlotte, Atlanta, Fontana and Kansas all have lights but those aren't permanent road courses. The two you immediately think about are the two owned by the two track conglomerates in the United States, Sonoma (owned by SMI) and Watkins Glen (owned by ISC).
I went to Sonoma for IndyCar in 2009. On Saturday for qualifying I froze in the afternoon sitting in the shade with fifteen mile per hour winds. It gets cool at Sonoma so I wouldn't recommend a night race there. Never been to Watkins Glen but I can't see ISC spending money on lights there. Could Austin put up lights?
More importantly what event would be held under the lights? Is this something for NASCAR? IndyCar? IMSA? Is this a one time thing before the novelty wears off? It wouldn't be a Formula One race because that wouldn't work for the viewers in Europe (a 7 p.m. race at Austin would be on at 2 a.m. in most of Europe). It would have to be a domestic series. Sports cars have lights on them so lighting a road course doesn't make sense for them. IndyCar has had night races at Cleveland and Houston (and Houston this year should be under the lights because it's at the end of June, will be triple digits with 90% humidity) but those are temporary circuits. The expense of lights is so great that not many road courses could afford them.
If a permanent road course does get lights in the United States, would it be an entirely new road course? They would need a big event though (NASCAR or IndyCar) to draw people and pay the bills and right now NASCAR isn't looking to go to new tracks (unless it's Iowa, which they bought) and IndyCar has trouble getting people to pay their sanctioning fee.
A permanently lit road course in the States isn't necessary though. Europe doesn't have one. Australia doesn't have one. The countries that do have them do so to accommodate the European television audience and to get out of the heat of the day. It's an intelligent move for the countries that have them (Singapore, U.A.E., Qatar and now Bahrain). For the United States, permanently lit road courses don't make any sense.
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