They did, but it cost Barrichello a few spots iirc.
I'd like to know what method they use to determine the finish order. If they considered the session red flagged and used the last lap results, then RHR shoulçd probably fall behind Rubens et al. as well, shouldn't he?
Not sure how they had Sato finishing 8th and Barrichello 9th when Sato crashed half a lap earlier and DNF'd, though.
Results are determined like in F1, by laps completed. The race wasn't red flagged. Only 7 cars finished all the laps.
If that was the case, the drivers who were still on the lead lap but behind 11th would all have finished ahead of Rubens and Helio, as they went through pitlane.
They must have not completed the final lap (i.e. crossed the s/f line)
edit: also of note is the fact that the cars that did finish on the lead lap had already passed the crashed cars before they were able to get going again
Is it just me or does http://indycar.com not work?
It's not only you... however, how ironic is it to have an off-track lotus as picture for the failure of IndyCar.com website
http://indycar.com/public/images/404-page-bg.jpg
I thought that as well, hahaha.
Glad I am not the only one with the problem.
Good officiating? Yes
Good broadcast? No
Alot of the times the cameras missed the important things that were going on
. I never have liked NBC's coverage of anything when it comes to announcers either despite their good head voice of the boradcast.Quick note: First time in my memory that an Indy Car race had more yellow flags and more laps under yellow flag than a Sprint Cup race that occured on the same weekend
Didn't you just start watching IndyCar, though?
There were plenty of races in the last few seasons where the majority of the race was run under yellow.
And the broadcast was quite good, I thought. Might just be halo effect from the complete shittiness of ABC's efforts, though.
In a serious mannor it is my first year even though I have watched a quarter of the races just about the last 10 years.
I'm meaning the number of yellow flags more so than the laps under it. Indycar does run long yellow flags typically for some reason (probably because of the way that the cars scatter all their debris).
I'm thinking that it was the halo effect honestly.. ABC broadcasts are typically horrible for any form of auto racing (or sport for that matter)
I thought the broadcast was pretty good (Sky Sports piggy-back the NBC race feed, with their own pundits), I only actually saw the last half of the race but it seemed fairly sound 
I know it might be a bit early to say it just yet, but indy lights has been able to bring in some decent talent into the main series, hildebrand, Hinchcliffe and newgarden have seem to adjusted to the main series pretty well.
I don't know, I found the broadcast pretty much decent.
Granted, they might have missed one or two things, such as the Viso vs Tagliani clash. OK, they managed to mess up the grid walk again, but this was more amusing than annoying(poor Robin Miller). Apart from that it was pretty good.
IndyCars sweeps the track during the yellows, which is why the cautions are always long. Granted, NASCAR does that too, but it takes some time to do on a road/street course. They were hoping to reduce the lenghts by letting the pitlane open all the time, but does that really work? It's hard to tell, because so far this year many cautions periods have had unexpected things occuring. (ie: TK and Simona stopping on track at St Pete, Sato's car's recovery getting very wrong at Barber, Dixon stopping on track at Long Beach, etc).
I don't know, really. These days, for 3 or 4 pretty good kids, you have 11 or 12 slightly uninspiring journeymen drivers.
The series had a nice break in 2008/2009 partly thanks to reuinification, with healthy car counts, and the likes of Hildebrand, Matos, Lloyd, Hinchcliffe, Davison, Kimball, Saavedra, Beatriz, Cunningham, Plowman, Romancini. But it's pretty much gone downhill since then.
The fact that Newgarden walked away with the championship last year, despite being barely in midfield in 2010 GP3, tells a lot. Granted, he was a very young guy back then, with little car racing experience.
It'll be interresting to see where the current drivers end up. Vautier will one to watch. Maybe Guerrieri, but it's about time he makes a constistant championship challenge - the guy was already racing F3000s back in 2004! Also Saavedra if he calms down. But apart from that...? Hmm.
That said, Star Mazda and F2000 seem to be in pretty good shape, so let's see if that good form strikes Indy Lights in the next few years.
What a shame that Cunningham and Lloyd are still rideless BTW. Given the right equipment I'm sure they could be potential race winners. Now I hear that Wade is one of the favorite for the second Foyt car at Indy, would be cool if that happens.
Well Guerrieri did absolutely insane in 2010 F3.5 with the ISR despite missing half the races he still was in contention for the title.
its a serious shame Jean Karl Vernay couldn't get a ride, hes career looks impressive, from basically being signatures noly decent driver in F3 euro series in '09 to destroying Indy lights in 2010(including hinchcliffe) but then dissappearing into the wilderness.
Ill agree though there is a big gap between the top and midfeild/bottom drivers in that series, but generally you can say that there has always been a good driver in there at any given time(whether it be 1 to 3 drivers).
I do think though that since the merger its slowly going to eventually sort out those problems, the ideal level for it would be around GP3/F2 Level.
its a serious shame Jean Karl Vernay couldn't get a ride, hes career looks impressive, from basically being signatures noly decent driver in F3 euro series in '09 to destroying Indy lights in 2010(including hinchcliffe) but then dissappearing into the wilderness.
Ill agree though there is a big gap between the top and midfeild/bottom drivers in that series, but generally you can say that there has always been a good driver in there at any given time(whether it be 1 to 3 drivers).
I do think though that since the merger its slowly going to eventually sort out those problems, the ideal level for it would be around GP3/F2 Level.
Yes, Guerrieri is great, but seriously, he's been very disappointing last year. He got beaten by a guy who was around 13 while he was already knoking at F1's door. Not only that, but he was the one looking like a rookie, crashing out of the race at crucial moments, while Newgarden was cashing the points. No matter where you look at it this is just plain wrong. His win at Long Beach is a good first step for his 2012 redemption, but let's be honest, Vautier will be another very tough rival.
I think Verney is out of IndyCar for good, which is why I didn't think of listing him, but yea you're right, damn good driver. He's focussing on endurance now. If that's the case, he'll be the first Lights champion since the early 90s to not make any start in IndyCar. IIRC he didn't speak English anyway? No wonder why he got back to Europe. Tough to find sponsors in these conditions, not to mention the daily issues.
Yea, there's always pretty good drivers at the front on the Lights field, the problem is more in midfield and lower, indeed.
Maybe if you ignore the latter half of the field, they're not far from F2 level, but that's not being very ambitious is it? F2 is like the 6th or 7th F1 feeder series driver pool quality wise. GP3? Not there yet. Although the GP3 debuts of former IndyLights star Carmen Jorda will help to lower the bar a little bit
I don't know if it has much to do with the merger... Car counts were as high as 26 in early 2009, but they quickly dropped to 10-15 for 2010-2011. Many seem to blame it on the economy, but I can't seem to recall of any other high-profile motorsports series taking such a big hit during that period. You would've thought that Atlantics' death would've helped IndyLights, but no.
That's a huge hit when you know that they didn't change specs in the meantime, and that "IndyCar" was going stronger than it's ever been since 1995. We'll see how they recover. Car counts aren't THAT bad this year(15), but a better field quality would be nice.
http://indycar.com/en/News/201 ... Rahal-placed-on-probation
Rahal placed on probation for Long Beach incident with Marco.
Any thoughts?
Rahal placed on probation for Long Beach incident with Marco.
Any thoughts?
Yann look at MT89's channel, Bourdais had his crash so they waited and called the caution when the leader was at the pits at the end of lap 20, people pitted as they were open and the restart happened at the beginning of lap 23 - pretty quick I'd say compared to if they closed the pits and had to do an extra lap under SC.
I really like that Beax seems to act. He gives a straight line. Last year there was no clear line in Administration decisions. I also like the fact that the pits stay open. I hated closed pits since Paul Tracy ran out of fuel in Toronto (ChampCar back then), because the caution came out like 50 m before he reached the comitment line. I guess in Toronto, which has sometimes the tendency to develop into a caution fest, we will see how much it reduces the actual time under yellow.
Loved each one of Beaux's calls so far this year! That guy really makes a change. A big step to credibility for IndyCar.
To those(not on this forum but I've read many of those on others) who are shouting "favoritism" over the Franchitti/Newgarden clash, take note that he did give penalties to both Rahal and Helio - this shows that he's not affraid to give penalties to the big 2's drivers if needed.
I agree with the call on Rahal too. "Probation" might sound severe but at the end of the day it's just a probation, which means "warning" in nowadays' racing terms. I like that he did not give a grid penalty or something like that too, because the DNF was enough of an "effective" penalty IMO.
Good that he got rid of the "blocking rule", wasn't so convinced with that at first, but to be honest it made the racing much better. It didn't reduce the passing, and now you can see ballsy outside pass attempts like Helio at St Pete and Newgarden at Long Beach, something that was almost physically impossible with the previous ruleset
And yes boothy, you're right, clearly the current SC rules are more time-efficient.
To those(not on this forum but I've read many of those on others) who are shouting "favoritism" over the Franchitti/Newgarden clash, take note that he did give penalties to both Rahal and Helio - this shows that he's not affraid to give penalties to the big 2's drivers if needed.
I agree with the call on Rahal too. "Probation" might sound severe but at the end of the day it's just a probation, which means "warning" in nowadays' racing terms. I like that he did not give a grid penalty or something like that too, because the DNF was enough of an "effective" penalty IMO.
Good that he got rid of the "blocking rule", wasn't so convinced with that at first, but to be honest it made the racing much better. It didn't reduce the passing, and now you can see ballsy outside pass attempts like Helio at St Pete and Newgarden at Long Beach, something that was almost physically impossible with the previous ruleset
And yes boothy, you're right, clearly the current SC rules are more time-efficient.
Eh, not really. Probation is basically just a warning.
Constant pit open under yellow will save time by 1 lap (or 2 if lap down cars were required to pit a lap after the lead lap cars such as in NASCAR. I don't recall how that went in IndyCar prior to this year despite being at Kentucky. I think they all pitted together last year?)
Of course let's just hope that they do close pit lane if somebody is to crash in the area of pit road. Certainly they would in that event correct?
Probation makes it sound like a absolutely final warning though... As in "You really should be suspended, but we'll be lenient this time. As long as you don't mess up again, even a little bit."
I don't understand why they don't call it a warning if that's all it actually is. Because in my mind at least, there can be multiple warnings before a suspension.
AH, but you're forgetting that after probation comes the "suspended ban", and only then a real ban - which, of course, no one is stupid enough to get.
2012 IndyCar Series
(957 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG