Standing Starts here to stay in IndyCar

The standing start in Long Beach worked perfectly fine

IndyCar President of competition Derrick Walker said there are no plans to ditch the standing starts despite the accident at the start of the GP of Indianapolis.

"The system we have on our cars is not as good as it needs to be," Walker said Thursday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. "It's tricky to set up. The manufacturers set that up, the way the system behaves. It's enough to say it's not foolproof. It needs a lot more work than we've given it."

"Even if the standing start doesn't work, there's a function called anti-stall," Walker said. "The engine should always be running. I don't think the manufactures have gotten that one correct yet. They're trying to go fast and we're trying to make sure the engine is running when something goes wrong. The car isn't perfect."

Knowing the system is flawed, Walker said IndyCar should have been more proactive and put in a session where they had time to practice.

"If all the drivers say, 'We can't do it like that, we have to change,' then I guess we'll go back to the drawing board and do it again," he said. "But there are a lot of drivers that come up and say don't change standing starts. Don't change restarts. They want us to modify it a little bit, so we're looking into it, getting input on improving it. I don't think it's all thrown out the window. I don't think you toss it out just because we've had a couple of tough ones."

Walker also said the cars were spaced too close together, and Munoz and Aleshin should have used dedicated spotters.

"We gave them permission to put a spotter on the roof, right on top of the Pagoda," Walker said. "Usually only Christ gets to stand up there. There's only so much we can do."