It is the month of May, and Patricio O'Ward opened with an audacious pass to win the IndyCar race from Barber. Indy Light's first contest in over two months was a wet-to-dry thriller. U.S. F2000 has an emerging star and a third-generation breakthrough. Acura continues to dominant Laguna Seca. Formula E's second trip around the full Monaco circuit was mellow, but still satisfying. The expected happened in Supercross' penultimate round. The NASCAR Cup race got through nearly 80 laps and then weather washed the rest of it to this afternoon, and people were upset with the later start time. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
Excessive and Unnecessary
The month of May started a little early this year. Indianapolis 500 news came down in the final week of April, and we have a qualifying change. Instead of pole position being decided in the two-round Fast Nine format that has been used since 2010, this year will see pole position determined over three rounds with the fastest 12 cars from the Saturday session advancing with the fastest six from round two held on Sunday advancing to the final round on Sunday evening to determine the first two rows.
Essentially, the Indianapolis 500 is adopting the road/street course qualifying format IndyCar has used since 2005. Though it is understandable and something IndyCar viewers are accustomed to seeing, this change is excessive and unnecessary.
Indianapolis 500 qualifying has been good with the Fast Nine session. It has focused the pole position battle to one final session usually held at the end of a qualifying day. Instead of pole position possibly determined at 1:25 p.m. ET and over four and a half hours of qualifying taking place afterward it is now decided within a one-hour window in a sequence of nine qualifying attempts. We know it will be one of those qualifying runs.
It was a break from tradition, but a good break when IndyCar implemented it over a decade ago. With such a good thing, any changes must not take away from what we already have. I think this change could dilute qualifying and turn it into a redundant spectacle.
One of the advantages of the two-round Fast Nine format is each session has finality. Round one sets the Fast Nine. That is the clear goal. It also sets the rest of the field or at least sets up to 30th position with the remaining cars going to the Last Row Shootout, but it is bang-bang in terms of pole position. Make the Fast Nine, then go for pole position. Simple.
An additional round doesn't change much, but it increases the risk of things becoming stale. Round one is the same with the only difference being the top 12 make it instead of the top nine, three more participants. One of the negatives about IndyCar's road/street course qualifying is sometimes we see so much action to make it out of round one and then so much to make it out of round two that by the time we reach the Fast Six, it ends up being a flat session. All the teams are on worn tires. There was such a high to advance to the final round that the run for pole position is anti-climactic.
All the teams will have new sets of tire for Indianapolis 500 qualifying, we will not have to worry about that, but I think that same risk is still there that by the time we reach the Fast Six everyone will be drained and the spectacle will suffer.
There is also the fear we could see three identical qualifying rounds and the final round only mirrors what we already knew from the first two rounds. In six of 11 years with the Fast Nine format, the fastest car at the end of the initial qualifying round won pole position. In nine of 11 years, the pole-sitter was one of the three fastest qualifiers from the initial round. If the same six cars end up in the same six positions after three rounds viewers are going to be disgusted because the last round confirmed what they already knew from the first two. They don't want their time to be wasted.
With extra qualifying runs also comes the increased risk of an accident. No one wants to see the top teams tearing up cars because they have to make additional qualifying runs for pole position. There likely will not be three or four accidents in the final two rounds of qualifying, but if the top teams have to change to backup cars or run repaired but not as polished chassis that could hurt the race. We shouldn't be eliminating competitive cars before race day because we need a dramatic qualifying session.
This change also lowers the bar. There might be 12 really good cars but making the top nine forces everyone to shoot higher. One or two competitive cars might end up on the wrong side of the cut line, but too bad. That is sports. The Los Angeles Chargers missed the NFL playoffs this past season because it lost its final game of the season on a last-second field in overtime to the Las Vegas Raiders. Los Angeles was a 9-8 team, and it has a promising quarterback. It missed out by half-a-game. Los Angeles might have won a playoff game if it had made it, but it had to be one of the top seven teams. It fell short. The NFL didn't add an eighth playoff team because Los Angeles might have been good. It was top seven or nothing.
A bar needs to be set. The top nine was a good level for everyone. The top 12 is now a little over a third of the field. I understand the change as it brings more teams into the competition on Saturday. A team in 16th after the first run through the qualifying line might look at the gap to ninth and settle with the spot it has and call it a day. With the bar lowered to 12th, that team in 16th might take a run at it. The same might go for a team in 17th or 18th.
All of a sudden, half the field is still in play for the final three hours of qualifying. This change comes in a year where we are likely not going to see 34 or 35 entries, we will not have bumping and we will not have the battle to make the top 30 on day one, locking in a team's spot in the Indianapolis 500 and avoid the Last Row Shootout. There are ulterior motives to this format changes, but in the chase for attention IndyCar might have gone one step too far with these changes.
IndyCar had a good format that didn't need changing. The Fast 12 could work. We could see three thrilling rounds of qualifying, but the change wasn't necessary. IndyCar could have stuck with what it had because it was working.
Champion From the Weekend
Eli Tomac clinched the AMA Supercross championship with a fifth-place finish in Denver. It is Tomac's second AMA Supercross championship.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Patricio O'Ward, but did you know...
Francesco Bagnaia won MotoGP's Spanish Grand Prix, his first victory of the season. Ai Ogura won the Moto2 race, his first career victory. Izan Guevara won the Moto3 race. Eric Garnado swept the MotoE races.
Linus Lundqvist won the Indy Lights race from Barber Motorsports Park. Reece Gold and Nolan Siegal split the Indy Pro 2000 races. Myles Rowe and Jagger Jones split the U.S. F2000 races.
The #10 Wayne Taylor Racing Acura of Filipe Albuquerque and Ricky Taylor won the IMSA race from Laguna Seca. The #8 Tower Motorsport Oreca-Gibson of Louis Delétraz and John Farano won in LMP2. The #9 Pfaff Motorsport Porsche of Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet won in GTD Pro. The #16 Wright Motorsport Porsche of Jan Heylen and Ryan Hardwick won in GTD.
Josh Berry won the NASCAR Grand National Series race.
Stoffel Vandoorne won the Monaco ePrix.
Jason Anderson won the Supercross race in Denver, his third consecutive victory and his sixth victory of the season.
Shane van Gisbergen won the bookend Supercars races from Perth with Will Davison taking the middle race.
Lucas Auer and Nico Müller split the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters races from Portimão.
The #53 AF Corse Ferrari of Pierre-Alexandre Jean and Ulysse De Pauw and the #89 AKKodis ASP Team Mercedes of Timur Boguslavskiy split the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup races from Brands Hatch.
Coming Up This Weekend
Super GT has a mid-week race at Fuji.
The inaugural Miami Grand Prix... but not really the inaugural because Miami has hosted many grand prix before... Formula One's inaugural visit to Miami. That is an accurate statement.
FIA World Endurance Championship will be at Spa-Francorchamps.
NASCAR is at Darlington.
Supercross concludes its season in Salt Lake City.
The Pau Grand Prix is run for the first time in three years and the World Touring Car Cup season will also begin in Pau.
