IndyCar’s lack of virtual safety car probably cost Rossi IndyCar title

Did IndyCar's yellow flag crap shoot cost Rossi the title?

IndyCar's yellow flag periods are a complete crap shoot, especially the way they close the pits. And to make matters even worse, IndyCar does not have a virtual safety car system like F1 and it screws a lot of drivers races.

It likely cost Alexander Rossi the 2018 IndyCar title even though he deserves it more than any other driver given the way he has driven this year.

After the race Rossi had this to say (below) before he and his team had a chance to review the replays. Well we did review the tapes and had a virtual safety car been thrown for both the Power incident and the Veach incident, Scott Dixon would have remained almost 3/4-lap down as a result of the first lap accident and his drive thru penalty.

And although Rossi may or may not have won the race (he probably would have) we are 100% certain he would have finished ahead of Dixon and the points battle going into Sonoma would be very close.

Instead Scott Dixon has a big 29 point lead. Rossi has to win and Dixon finish no better than third for Rossi to win the title by one point. That does not include the 1 point for winning pole, 1 point for leading a lap and 2 points for leading the most laps

Rossi drove a perfect race, was the fastest driver, while Dixon had bad luck with the accident, then lost 25 sec with a drive thru, and he still finishes in front of Rossi. That is how screwed up the current IndyCar yellow flag methodology is. And it has happened many times before.

IndyCar needs to fix it.

The goal should be that the race result is representative of the on-track performance of each driver in the race, and the virtual safety car, although not foolproof, it gives you an excellent chance of that to happen. And the technology exists today for IndyCar to implement it. Mark C. reporting for AutoRacing1.com