Welcome to the main takeaway from the 104th Indianapolis 500... should IndyCar have thrown a red flag while the track was littered with debris and a demolition attenuator sat at the pit lane entrance after Spencer Pigot pinballed off the barriers with five laps to go?
Some expected a red flag to fly with the end of the 2014 Indianapolis 500 fresh in everyone's mind. Six years ago, Townsend Bell's accident in turn two damaged the SAFER barrier with ten laps to go and a red flag came out. This allowed the proper amount of time for the repair to be made and the race to restart with seven laps to go. Those seven laps ended up being one of the most memorable battles in Indianapolis 500 history, with Ryan Hunter-Reay against Hélio Castroneves.
While many believe that 2014 race was the first time an IndyCar saw a late red flag to ensure an attempt at a green flag finish, the die was cast in 2012 at the Fontana season finale when Tony Kanaan had an accident with ten laps to go and a championship was on the line between Hunter-Reay and Will Power. That race restarted with seven laps to go and still ended under caution when Takuma Sato, of all drivers, spun in turn two on the final lap. The yellow flag flew, Ed Carpenter had passed Dario Franchitti only moments earlier for the lead and the Carpenter got his team its first victory while Hunter-Reay took the title.
Both red flag decisions came under different leadership in race control. At that time, Beaux Barfield was the man at the helm. Since, we have seen Derrick Walker and Brian Barnhart in charge and currently Kyle Novak is race director for the NTT IndyCar Series.
Every official has his or her own perception of the rulebook. There are black-and-white calls that will almost universally be made but there is plenty of grey. Some will have a greater tolerance for what is defensive driving versus blocking. Some will throw a caution when a car brushes the wall while others will let such a less incident go unless there is obvious debris on track from that contact.
What about red flags? Truth is that there are no rules written about what constitutes when a red flag can be thrown or mandates a red flag be thrown in late race situations. When Barfield did it, it was unprecedented, but in both instances, it prevented a ten-lap caution from ending the race. It allowed each race to have at least six more laps of green flag racing through one of those races still ended under caution.
Since Barfield's departure, there have been other cases when a red flag did not fly late in races. At Pocono in 2015, when Walker ran race control, Sage Karam's spun in turn one and Justin Wilson's fatal accident after debris hit Wilson's head came with 21 laps to go. Instead of red flagging the race, 13 laps were run under caution. A restart still came with eight laps to go, but considering the number of laps left, a red flag to allow for a few more green flag laps was a possibility. That race still ended under caution after Gabby Chaves lost an engine with four laps to go.
At Texas in 2017, a four-car accident involving Sato, Scott Dixon, Conor Daly and Max Chilton occurred entering turn one with five laps to go, like this year's Indianapolis 500. This race ended under caution. Perhaps having six cars on the lead lap and having 13 of 23 cars already knocked out of the race due to accidents had something to do with it.
The following year, Novak's first season as race director, Ed Carpenter brushed the wall with seven laps to go, bringing out the caution. It appeared a restart was going to be possible, but after all the pit stops and the time it took to get the order correct, the race did not have enough laps for the green flag to fly and James Hinchcliffe took the yellow and checkered flag together. Could a red flag have been used? Probably, but Carpenter's accident did not require a tow truck to retrieve the car, nor was there any damage to the barrier that had to be addressed. Throwing a red flag for what appeared to be nothing would have appeared over-cautious.
Similar to Texas 2017 and Iowa 2018, this year's Indianapolis 500 did not have enough time for a restart to take place, especially when you consider the extensive damage to the attenuator, which estimated repair time was from 60 to 90 minutes.
Compared to Townsend Bell's accident in 2014, where the red flag took less than ten minutes to make the necessary repairs and allowed the final seven laps to go take place under green flag conditions, this would have been at least an hour of waiting for at most two laps, or possibly just one green flag lap, which likely would have seen an accident anyway. The Indianapolis 500 could have turned into a one-lap dash with the drivers having an hour or more out of the cars. Those ingredients are not going to mix well.
The decision to ride out the final five laps under yellow and not throw a red flag is similar to the decision over when to red flag a race for rain and when to call it. If it had started pouring rain with five laps to go instead of Spencer Pigot's accident, and it was going to take two hours for the track to dry, the race would have been called and everyone would have accepted it.
At the same time, if Pigot's accident had occurred with 60 laps to go, just like if it had rained with 60 laps to go, and there would be a two-hour delay and sunset was not an issue, we might have sat through that and it would have been understandable to sit through it.
The decision to throw a red flag and attempt at least one more restart is a fluid situation and there is a point of no return. Pigot's accident likely occurred just after it.
Ever since the 2014 Indianapolis 500, I have theorized whether or not IndyCar should put a stipulation in the rulebook to allow race control to allow one flag in the closing laps of the race. Not guarantee a red flag but allow one if necessary. Pigot's accident would have required a red flag in 99.9% of instances. If it happened on lap nine, lap 19, lap 95, lap 125 or lap 160, a red flag would have come out. There would still be a considerable amount of time left in the race in all those instances.
With five laps to go though, a red flag would not have done much, especially when the cars have already done a lap behind the pace car, knocking it down to four to go and then would have crossed the line entering pit lane with three laps to go if the red flag had been shown immediately after the pace car picked up the field. I can't imagine the race would immediately go green off a red flag, so you lose two to go and then it sets up the green and white flag being shown together, a one-lap dash and likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in crash damage because someone is going to roll the dice for the Indianapolis 500 without a care in the world for himself or the other drivers around him.
As much as people are saying the Indianapolis 500 should not end under yellow, should it really end with a one-lap dash after a 60-minute or 90-minute red flag, cars on cold tires with cold brakes that will likely see another one or two or three cars damaged in an accident? That is not a fitting ending either. It was a lose-lose scenario.
This red flag conversation has spun into whether or not Indianapolis 500 should adopt green-white-checkered procedures for another attempt at a green flag finish.
Matt Weaver of Autoweek had a thought-provoking piece on the finish and how we the viewers need to stop obsessing with how a race ends and appreciate everything that happens from the drop of the green flag at lap one to the checkered flag.
Truth be told, we as motorsports fans need to ask ourselves why we don't love these series enough as they currently exist and why we think change is a necessary to get more people to love them. It is not just an IndyCar thing or NASCAR thing. It applies to both series and other as well, but we will focus on these two.
All these changes and ideas for change, green-white-checkered finishes, stage breaks, double-file restarts, choose rules, Chase/playoff formats, double-point races, etc., are done because the series don't love something about themselves. They try to change to draw the eyes of others, to fit in to other people, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to include more people and open the door to more people, but when these changes are done and people are not entering and more are leaving than are coming in, you have to ask if change was necessary at all.
In motorsports, we have gotten obsessed with finishes. The finish is the end all be all. The Indianapolis 500 could have had the first 197 laps run under green flag conditions with 100 lead changes and over 1,000 passes but if one car had spun in turn three and forced the final three laps to be run under caution, people would have decried the race for how it ended, not for what happened in the 197 laps prior.
That's insane! Does NASCAR deserve a little of the blame since it is the only major series with a green-white-checkered rule? Yeah, a bit. It is not all NASCAR's fault. Part of it was NASCAR responding when fans were upset with how some races finish. A certain Talladega race that Jeff Gordon won and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. didn't comes to mind. I remember it raining garbage. Maybe NASCAR succumbed to mob mentality, but this mob was acceptable because it was for NASCAR's Messiah.
As Weaver writes in his column, NASCAR has been focused so much on "game seven moments" that it fails to realize not every game seven has "game seven moments." Nine years ago, the Boston Bruins went to Vancouver for a game seven in the Stanley Cup Final against the Vancouver Canucks. Boston showed up and Vancouver didn't. It was a 4-0 victory for the Bruins in an otherwise forgettable game.
Last year's Stanley Cup Final went to a seventh game, this time in Boston with the Bruins hosting the St. Louis Blues. St. Louis scored two goals late in the first and played a shutout second period. The result became more and more clear as the third period wore on. St. Louis added a third and then a fourth and with 4:38 left to play it was clear the Stanley Cup was heading to the Gateway City. Boston added a consolation goal with 2:10 to go, but there was no comeback. There was no game seven moment. Game seven was just another game. One that meant the world to St. Louis, stung Beantown and the ultimately did not change the world.
Not every Super Bowl ends with a Hail Mary or last second field goal. If a team has a fourth-and-goal from the eight-yard-line and fails to score a touchdown but there are still three seconds on the clock, it doesn't get one more chance because it will be excited. Turnover on downs still exists and the other team will take a knee and end the game in the victory formation.
Not every Final Four game ends with a buzzer beater. Sometime the team with a 12-point lead gets to dribble the clock out. The trailing team doesn't get one final possession with a shot worth 13 points just because it would be exciting to watch.
Circling back to St. Louis, the St. Louis Cardinals won the 2011 World Series in seven games over the Texas Rangers, but the most memorable game was not game seven, it was game six.
Down two in the bottom of the ninth, David Freese, on a 1-2 count, hit a two-run triple to tie the game for St. Louis and force extra innings. In the top of the tenth, Texas scored two runs and St. Louis responded in the bottom of that inning, tying the game again despite being down to its final strike. In the bottom of the 11th, Freese led off the inning and with a 3-2 count hit a walk-off home run to win the game and force a game seven.
Game seven did not hold a candle to game six. Texas scored two in the top of the first and St. Louis scored two in the bottom of the first. The Texas bats went cold while St. Louis ran out to a 6-2 lead, won the game and the World Series.
Hockey, football, baseball and basketball do not look at how the big games end and then create rules to craft a better finish. Those sports allow the event to take place, and sometimes you get Super Bowl XLIX with Malcolm Butler intercepting Russell Wilson on the goal line with 26 seconds left (and then Tom Brady taking a knee to kill the clock). Sometimes you get the 2010 Winter Olympic men's ice hockey final with Sidney Crosby winning the gold medal for Canada in overtime over the United States by the score of 3-2. Sometimes you get Christian Laettner draining a shot from the foul line.
Other times you get less memorable results and those are ok. The same applies for motorsports and we should not be furious when a race ends under caution or when the margin of victory is 4.5 seconds. Not every race can be Gordon Johncock vs. Rick Mears, Mears vs. Michael Andretti, Hunter-Reay vs. Castroneves or Simon Pagenaud vs. Alexander Rossi.
Was anyone happy the 104th Indianapolis 500 ended under caution? Well... perhaps Takuma Sato, Bobby Rahal, David Letterman, Mike Lanigan and the rest of the RLLR team, but generally speaking nobody is happy the race ended under caution, the same way nobody is happy the race was held without spectators in attendance. Nobody likes it, but we accept the circumstances.
We should love motorsports for what it is, and like every other sport, the ending might not be grand but there is more than a finish and we should love a race for what happens in its entirety.
