It was Leap Day and a handful of races took place. The MotoGP race from Qatar has been cancelled due to coronavirus outbreak converns. The Moto2 and Moto3 races will go on as scheduled as the teams were already in Qatar this weekend for testing. Alex Bowman dominated the NASCAR Cup race in Fontana. Formula E continues to have different winners. There were more photo finishes at Phillip Island with the World Superbike and World Supersport seasons starting. Supercross was really just a battle from third to about tenth. Formula One wrapped up testing. Fernando Alonso will drive for McLaren at the Indianapolis 500. IndyCar is bringing back engine penalties, which is where we will start this week. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
IndyCar Engine Penalties 2.0
We are within a fortnight of the 2020 IndyCar season and news is coming out ahead of the first official session.
Two weeks ago, the news was Roger Penske announcing $2 million being added to the Indianapolis 500 purse and new bathrooms and last week it was IndyCar announcing grid penalties for engine changes would return after six seasons without any punishment for an unscheduled engine change.
In the first two years of the DW12-era with the introduction of the 2.2 L turbo-charged V6 engines from Honda and Chevrolet (and Lotus for a year), a ten-grid spot penalty was the punishment if a team made an engine change before it reached its mileage limit.
The grid penalties were met with pushback, especially after the 2012 Long Beach race, where every Chevrolet team took a penalty for an engine change prior to the event for an update. This flipped the grid considerably and grid penalties occurred throughout the 2012 season and into 2013.
In 2012, there were 70 total grid penalties due to engine changes, 13 of which because of Lotus engines. There was at least one grid penalty in every race, except for the Indianapolis 500, a race IndyCar has protected from grid penalties. The fewest entries to take a grid penalty was at St. Petersburg, the season opener, where Simon Pagenaud was the only driver to take a ten-spot slide down the order. The most entries to take a grid penalty were 14 at Long Beach and Fontana.
The good news is in 2013, the number of grid penalties for engine changes dropped significantly. There were only 37 over the entire season. None happened through the first six races. There was at least one grid penalty in 11 of 19 races but five of those races had only one or two penalties. The most was eight at the Fontana finale.
The 2020 regulations for engine changes will be different from the first iteration used at the start of the DW12-era.
The rule for 2020 is each entry is allowed four engines for the season and grid penalties will not start to come into effect until an entry switches to a fifth engine. Switching to a fifth engine will see a six-position penalty if it happens at a road/street course and a nine-position penalty if it happens at an oval. Any change to a sixth, seventh, eighth or more will carry the same penalty.
Unless a team has a disastrous start to the season, we will likely not see grid penalties last Barber, Long Beach, Austin or the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
If you are wondering what it would look like in 2020, let's look back at what happened in 2019.
In 2019, the first driver to exceed the four-engine limit was Josef Newgarden at Mid-Ohio. That would have incurred a six-spot penalty. Six entries exceeded the four-engine limit at Pocono. Takuma Sato took on his fifth engine at Gateway. James Hinchcliffe, Santino Ferrucci and Ryan Hunter-Reay all took their fifth engine at the Laguna Seca finale and Newgarden took a sixth engine before the final race.
As you can see, the number of grid penalties taken would have been much less than what we saw seven and eight years ago. We would be looking at somewhere between 12 and 20 penalties over the entire season. The penalties would come much later in the season and there may be a few races where the number of penalties is exhausting but for the most part we will not see ten, 12 or 14 grid penalties like we did twice in the 2012 season.
Engine changes could shape how the championship plays out. These penalties will come into play late in the season and the timing of it all could dictate who wins the championship. The 2020 season is not like the 2012 season. The finale is Laguna Seca, not Fontana. A six-spot penalty could significantly shift the championship battle. One driver could go from second on the grid, two spots ahead of his or her main championship rival and controlling its destiny to starting eighth and having to fight from behind with the championship rival now five spots ahead.
The 2012 finale at Fontana was a 500-mile oval race. Starting position didn't really matter. You could start 20th but in ten laps be in the top ten and still have 480 miles left. While we saw a fair amount of passing in the 2019 Laguna Seca race with Will Power going from seventh to second, Felix Rosenqvist going from 14th to fifth, Sébastien Bourdais going from 19th to seventh and Ryan Hunter-Reay clawing his way back to tenth after having a long first pit stop dropped him outside the top twenty there is no guarantee that will happen again.
The one thing that has to be said is these penalties are a lot more forgiving. Six spots is much better than ten. Dropping from pole position to seventh is much better than dropping to 11th. If the 2020 season plays out similar to 2019, we will likely not start seeing penalties until Iowa at the earliest. A nine-spot penalty at Iowa is not great but it is surmountable. It would be tougher to make up at Gateway. Mid-Ohio and Portland have seen good amounts of passing. After all, last year at Mid-Ohio the podium were drivers that started eighth, sixth and tenth. A grid penalty for an engine change would not be a reason to lose all hope.
There is a lot of pushback to IndyCar re-introducing grid penalties for engine changes. No one was really advocating for grid penalties to return. We were going to be fine in 2020 if grid penalties did not exist but this could be a case of protecting teams from themselves.
The original penalty for exceeding the four-engine limit was that entry could not count toward the manufactures' championship but that really is a slap on the wrist. Do you really think Josef Newgarden or Alexander Rossi cared their results could count toward the manufactures' championship? No, the focus was on the drivers' championship.
We have an increased incentive for teams not to take a fifth or sixth engine. Teams now have to think twice before making a change. Instead of having a championship team gaming the system to make sure it could take a fresh engine at the finale and really having no ill-effect other than making Honda or Chevrolet rely on an entry further down the order to score toward the manufactures' championship, a team could be set behind the eight ball if it chooses to take a new engine and exceed the four-engine limit. That is a sort of a good thing. It will add another layer of strategy to the season and it will reward teams can do not exceed the four-engine limit.
I do not buy the thought processes that an engine failure is something out of a team's control and teams should not be penalized for it. The team put the engine in the car. It tuned the engine. A driver puts it under a certain amount of stress. It has some control over it. A team isn't rooting for an engine failure but to act like it is completely innocent when one does go is naïve. A team plays a part in an engine expiring. It sucks when it happens and it sucks to be penalized because of it but those are the rules and everyone is competing with the same rulebook. Teams are going to have three free changes if they did it. It is when teams go back for a fourth change that will end up costing them.
A lot of anger is from fear because we see grid penalties in Formula One and Formula One is kind of the extreme of grid penalties to the point they are farcical. It doesn't make sense when a car takes a 50-spot penalty and there are only 20 cars in the races. IndyCar's penalty system is much more controlled and it will not have the same frequent as Formula One. It is going to mix up the field in some circumstances but it is not going to be every race. It is not going to make qualifying pointless. Eleven teams ran an entire season without exceeding the four-engine limit. There may be one or two races where the number of penalties is notable but for the most part it will be one or two penalties in a given race.
When compared to NASCAR or Formula One, IndyCar is almost too low when it comes to grid penalties. There has to be times when someone has to go to the rear, whether it is because of an engine change, going to a backup car or failing inspection. It would be foolish to sell to people that IndyCar is the one series where 100% of the time everyone is good to go after qualifying and there are no reasons for any entries to be moved down the starting order. There has to be the occasional change to the starting order because no one is perfect and every once in a while someone has to pay a price for a decision made.
People should not get worked up over the new grid penalties for engine changes. They are going to occur infrequently. There is a chance it could affect a championship-contending driver late in the season and it will be alright. It adds another dynamic to the game and gives teams more to ponder when making crucial decisions. Some decisions have to haves consequences. What fun is it if there is no risk of choosing incorrectly?
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Alex Bowman but did you know...
Harrison Burton won the Grand National Series race from Fontana, his first career victory.
Toprak Razgatlioglu (Race one), Jonathan Rea (SuperPole race) and Alex Lowes (Race two) split the World Superbike races from Phillip Island. Andrea Locatelli won the World Supersport race on debut.
Ken Roczen won the Supercross race from Atlanta, his third victory of 2020.
António Félix da Costa won Formula E's Marrakesh ePrix, becoming the fifth different winner in five races in the 2019-20 season and the championship leader.
Coming Up This Weekend
Only Moto2 and Moto3 will race at Qatar.
NASCAR has one final race out west at Phoenix.
Supercross heads to Daytona Bike Week.
The GT World Challenge America series begins its season in Austin.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
