IndyCar makes rule revisions with immediate effect

From this weekend’s Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park, the Firestone Fast Six shall consist of six minutes of guaranteed green-flag time – up from five minutes – and the session clock will stop during any red-flag situation.

Should a red flag occur near the end of the session and the remaining time is not enough for entrants to complete a timed lap, all entrants will be given an opportunity to complete one timed lap when green-flag conditions return.

This follows Will Power’s incident in the Firestone Fast Six, where the clock continued running under red flag as the IndyCar Safety Team retrieved the #12 from a runoff area. The limited green-flag running at the end of the session left the other five drivers struggling to get their tires up to temperature to set a representative lap time.

A car that causes a red-flag condition in Segment 3 will not be permitted to continue in the session and a car causing a red flag in any qualifying segment will have its two best lap times disallowed and will not be allowed to advance to the next segment.

Jay Frye, IndyCar president of competition and operations said:

 “The change in Segment 3 of road/street course qualifying was made to simplify the process, create a sense of urgency to have cars on track and give the fans a better show.

“We want to avoid situations where the Firestone Fast Six concludes on a red flag, so we’ve put in place the opportunity for each car to post one timed lap at the end of the session.”  

Timing back-up

After the failure of the timing loop at the final hairpin during the second segment of qualifying at Long Beach, there was much confusion regarding who had advanced to the Firestone Fast Six.

The timing and scoring team had to download the data afterward to determine who had graduated, and was then forced to use the speedtrap at the end of the back straight as a temporary start/finish line.

Henceforth, backup timing and scoring data decoders have been placed at both the traditional start/finish line and the timing line used for qualifying at Turn 14 at Barber. A similar procedure will be used at all tracks as conditions permit.

“Adding backup data decoders at the alternate start/finish lines puts a system of redundancy in place to assure accurate and quick results," said Frye. 

Upgrade to pit-exit blend lines

Following the huge debate over whether Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud should or should not have been punished more severely than a warning for his pit-exit transgression at Long Beach, an electronic pit exit commit line has been embedded in the track surface.

The transponder in each Verizon IndyCar Series car must cross the embedded line to determine a legal pit exit. This procedure will be in use this weekend at Barber and at other series tracks where conditions permit.

Said Frye: “The addition of the electronic pit exit commit line uses technology to improve enforcement of the lane usage rule and creates a system to determine if an infraction has occurred. The race stewards’ penalty guidelines remain unchanged.

Extra tire sets

Entries completing five laps on one set of tires (including “in” and “out” laps) within the first 20 minutes of green-flag conditions during the first on-track session of an event weekend at a road or street course, including promoter test days, will receive an additional set of primary tires for use during the weekend (Rule 15.2.1.1). Previously, the time limit to complete the five laps was 15 minutes.