Saturday's IndyCar race was an edge of your seat, thrill a minute spectacle, as exciting as any race we've ever seen. Saturday's IndyCar race was almost certainly too dangerous for the competitors, and we were very lucky everyone escaped serious injury.
Races like Saturday show how entertaining IndyCar's oval product is. Less than 10,000 people were at Fontana to see it, and the ratings will likely be subpar at best.
Race Control has made it a precedent this season to not penalize pit road infractions until post-race. That precedent prevented the eventual race winner from receiving an in-race penalty that would've likely kept him from winning.
All six of these sentences, while in some ways contradictory, are all essentially true, and that's why IndyCar fandom is up in arms in frustration after Saturday's MAVTV 500. It's the frustration of knowing what's wrong and either a.) not knowing how to fix it, and/or b.) not knowing if those in charge are capable of fixing it, or worse, don't acknowledge there is a problem.
I missed the first 90 laps of the race due to family obligations, but text messages were letting me know how fast and furious the action was. At lap 90, I finally made it to a TV to watch the race with my 15 year old sister and parts of her family off and on (Her grandparents were even nice enough to let us watch during dinner). Because of this, I saw the race without being on Twitter, for the first time at a non-Indy race is quite some time. Thus, my reactions are mostly uncolored by what was going on on social media.
During most of the race, I was basically doing a Steve Matchett impression, a cacophony of WHOAs and WOWs. I could barely stay seated, and for the most part I didn't. My texting partner was letting me know there were people calling it pack racing, but I didn't quite see it that way, at least not like it was in Vegas. There, the cars were stuck in their line, and thus it was two and three-wide lap after lap all the time. On Saturday, there was a lot of two and three (and four and sometimes five) wide, but the cars could get by in relatively short order. This plus the skill of the drivers probably saved us for more crashes, despite some very aggressive moments.
Of course, the crashes at the end of the race between Will Power and Takuma Sato, followed by the last lap horror wreck between the Ryans Briscoe and Hunter-Reay made it clear how dangerous this race was. The drivers for the most part were not happy with how things went, and given that they are the ones who risk their lives for our entertainment, we owe it to them to listen. No one is saying this isn't dangerous and potentially life threatening, because it always will be. However, the sport has an obligation to not create unnecessary risk. If the drivers felt the race conditions were an unnecessary risk, than they were.
Finding the right package for ovals is a difficult task. Too much one way the race is boring. Too much the other way and everyone's holding their breath for the wrong reasons. The problem is how much does finding that package actually matter? Everyone saw the crowd on Saturday, and worse, everyone knew it was coming since it was another date change that put the race in California in June in the afternoon. Even worse, that rightful complaining forgets that Fontana hasn't drawn well since it returned to the schedule in 2012. Milwaukee and Pocono feel like they're on the edge as well, and Texas is always at the whim of Eddie Gossage. No other oval has gotten past the rumor stage in terms of getting added to the schedule. So other than Indianapolis and maybe Iowa, IndyCar's oval situation is a disaster.
Add to all this the Graham Rahal non-call. Now, this season most pit road related penalties have been assessed after the race, and for the most part, that's not been an issue. However, in this case, we had a piece of pit equipment end up on a hot track in a position that resulted in a caution flag. Regardless of whether it was intentional or whether it was Graham's fault, that should have been an exception to the precedent. That should have been an in-race, drive through penalty. Now in fairness, the late yellows meant that Graham could've gotten his way back to the front in time and still won the race, and his part in the win was perfectly legitimate and congratulations to him. He still should've had to deal with that handicap, even if it's not his fault the officiating dropped the ball.
What wraps all of these issues together is the general feeling that no one running IndyCar is capable of solving these problems. We know the oval situation is a problem. We know we can't have anything close to pack racing. We know the schedule is hurting all the stakeholders. We know Race Control is inconsistent at best. What we don't know is what the plan is from Miles and company? Do they know these are problems? Do they care? No one is talking, and when they do, it's mostly meaningless corporate-speak.
No one who's made it this far loving IndyCar wants to be negative about the ways things are, but right now, it's hard not to be frustrated. Saturday's race was in many ways a microcosm of IndyCar at the moment: thrilling racing that skirts a little too close to disaster that nobody is watching, with no plan to fix it that anyone outside can tell. That's how a race that broke the record for lead changes could cause such consternation. The only saving grace for IndyCar is the blowback means that someone still cares. Any more apathy from their potential customers would be just another nail in the coffin.
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