![]() It produced several comments implying that Ind圜ar is “becoming NASCAR”. It is not something that the Indy 500 had seen in any of its previous red flags, much less ahead of a one-lap shootout to the checkered flag. The fact that the race was stopped with two laps to go and restarted the next lap tops the list. Ind圜ar is not rigged, and the Indy 500 is not fixed.īut even completely throwing aside which drivers are in which cars and where they’re running on what lap, Sunday’s red flag procedure raised some serious questions. All things considered, it’s a knee-jerk reaction with no true evidence to support it. It happens every time, whether it was the third Indy 500 red flag, the selective timing on the caution at Barber Motorsports Park, or the penalty to Kyle Kirkwood in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course race. You need to read through my replies then □□- JR Hildebrand May 28, 2023Ĭalls such as these are held under a microscope for that reason. Had that pace lap happened on this occasion, the race simply would have ended under yellow, with Ericsson as the winner for the second year in a row.Īs usual, when a call ultimately benefits a Team Penske driver - even if there are several others that certainly don’t and even amid uncertainty as to who, exactly, might be the beneficiary - fans jump on the “Penske ownership” bandwagon to imply that a call was made to benefit the team, since Roger Penske owns both the track and the series. In fact, most of the individuals who are upset with the outcome are upset not at the fact that Newgarden won, but how the ending unfolded.Įricsson argued that the call to restart the race was a call that hadn’t been made before and that it was not fair nor safe, given the fact that both of the previous two red flags - and all previous Indy 500 red flags, including last year’s - had preceded at least one full pace lap for drivers to warm their tires and get settled back in before the restart. While he offered congratulations to Newgarden, Ericsson was angry with the way the race ended, and understandably so. That is exactly what happened, and while Ericsson held the lead through turns one and two of the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval on lap 200, Newgarden passed him into turn three.Įricsson stayed close through turns three and four, but Newgarden was able to break the draft - by going all the way below the pit line - and hold him off by 0.0974 seconds to win the race, becoming the first American winner since Alexander Rossi in 2016. Still, the only possible way the race would finish under yellow is if Ind圜ar made the decision to go green on the lap immediately after the cars left the pits, thereby eliminating the full pace lap that is typically run after a red flag is put away for the yellow one. But with two laps remaining, Ind圜ar threw the red flag for the third consecutive caution. ![]() ![]() There didn’t appear to be enough laps remaining for the race to go green again.Įricsson was poised to now have five career Ind圜ar wins, all in races which were red flagged. So with just four laps to go, it looked as though Ericsson would be on his way to becoming the first back-to-back Indy 500 winner since Helio Castroneves in 20. It wasn’t all that unexpected, given the clear disadvantage had by the “sitting duck” leader in that situation. When the caution flag came out for a multi-car crash with four laps remaining in Sunday’s 107th running of the Indy 500 just moments after the race had gone back to green, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Ericsson, the reigning Indy 500 winner, was scored as the race leader.Įricsson, who was running in second place under the red flag before that restart, had managed to pass Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden for the race lead just before the caution flag came back out. Josef Newgarden made the third last lap pass for the win in Indy 500 history after a restart that coincided with the white flag, denying Marcus Ericsson a second straight Indy 500 win.
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