IndyCar Austin Postscript

Colton Herta

By now, you know the story. Colton Herta, the 18-year-old son of 4-time Indy Car race winner and current team owner Bryan Herta, drove the No. 88 Harding Steinbrenner Racing Honda to victory lane in this past weekend’s INDYCAR Classic at the Circuit of the Americas. At 18 years and 359 days old, Herta surpassed Graham Rahal (19 & 93) as the youngest winner in American Championship Racing history.

And yes, Herta greatly benefited from a well-timed late caution(we’ll get to that) which proved to be back-breaking for Alexander Rossi and would have been back-breaking for Will Power had he not experienced driveshaft issues (more on that also coming) in the pits. However, no one should be scoffing at Herta’s maiden victory.

For one, if you go back to the preseason test at COTA something about track and driver seemed to agree. That momentum carried over to this weekend as the six-time Indy Lights winner was fast in every session, qualified an impressive fourth and ran in the top-3 nearly the entire race, at one point maintaining pace with Rossi and Power. Herta also managed to not just hold off Josef Newgarden, who was second on the final restart, but pull away and finish 2.7s ahead of the 2017 series champion.

[adinserter name="GOOGLE AD"]Young Herta also showed a degree of patience in his maiden win, not fighting Rossi too hard as Rossi made a bold move down the inside on the backstretch to overtake the Harding Steinbrenner car. In short, if you didn’t know Herta was 18, everything he did Sunday would have made one think he’d been in the series 20 years.

Yes, Colton Herta got a nice break with the late caution. But he also did everything possible to put himself in position to take advantage of the break. A very impressive win indeed.

Power

Herta’s banner day came of course at the expense of others, mainly Power and Rossi, but for this section I’m going to focus on the 2018 Indy 500 winner.

To begin, is it me or might Power have an inherent driveshaft/transmission/clutch problem? Remember, last year at Portland when he lost the lead after he couldn’t get the car in gear on lap 8? Remember, two weeks ago at St. Pete when he lost a lot of time after Rosenqvist passed him, presumably with a shifting-type problem? And then there was Sunday, when Power could not get the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet in gear following his pit stop on lap 45.

Will Power thinks IndyCar's closed pits rule is horrible

If there is a problem Team Penske certainly isn’t offering anything to me. However, by my count that’s three of the last 4 races, Power seems to have had a driveshaft/transmission type issue. And I think it’s fair to wonder if there might be something more to your typical mechanical gremlin.

Second thing with Power: while he hasn’t found victory lane in 2019, when it comes to his post-race TV interviews, the always direct – and sometimes a little salty – Aussie showed himself to be in mid-season form.

“I hate the way this series does the pits-closed BS," said Power in reaction the ill-timed yellow flag. “Yea, you can be best guy out there, lead all day, a yellow can fall, and someone can just fall into a lottery…It’s the only series in the world that does it this way and it needs to change."

These type of situations have of course occurred before, and I think it begs a fair question: is Power right?

Virtual Safety Car

If you’ve read this space for the last few years, you know I’ve been saying it over and over and over: with the current rules closing the pits when the caution falls, teams that don’t pit their drivers early in the pit window run the risk of getting “caught out" by an untimely caution. We have seen the decisions to wait backfire on quite a few occasions over the past few years. And while there was merit in the decisions made by Team Penske and Andretti Autosport to leave Power and Rossi out respectively, those teams knew the risk and it ultimately bit them.

IndyCar needs to implement the F1 Virtual Safety Car (VSC) system and use it whenever they can. A full safety car can always be deployed when needed

Noting the above, and noting that there will always be an element of fortune in any competitive endeavor it’s likewise fair to say that the rules should be constructed in a way that facilitates the greatest possible chance for a fair and worthy result. Keep in mind, a caution is not strategy in the traditional sense, in which teams say attempt to maximize tire performance along with fuel conservation to give their drivers an edge. A caution is a safety measure that is entirely random. Yet in the world of the world of modern INDYCAR, it has a huge impact on the outcome of an event. I think we can agree the series should seek to minimize the impact such random events have on the competition.

Of course, a major item that must be accounted for with IndyCar is that the series is committed to closing the pits under caution. While many such as Power offer this as the problem, a conversation with Derrick Walker a few years ago convinced me that closing the pits is in the best interests of safety. Of course, the issue is that closing the pits creates a significant advantage for those who pit early, and an incredibly stiff penalty for those who wait.

The solution, as I’ve written for about 4 years now, is a Virtual Safety Car procedure. The technology exists and although there have been some minor hiccups, the VSC has been implemented successfully in Formula 1.

The VSC would allow for the series the option to not have to close the pits, save for cases like Rosenqvist’s crash Sunday (ironically). And even it could keep VSC conditions intact until all teams have had an opportunity to pit.

No, I’m not saying the VSC would be perfect. But the idea that someone leads all day and then is shuffled back to 15^th because a necessary safety measure was implemented is absolutely silly. And INDYCAR should be looking to fix this scenario sooner rather than later.

Rookies

Patricio O'Ward turned the backmarker Carlin car into a front runner

Herta’s performance obviously stood out Sunday. However, Herta is not the only young driver to have presented him well in 2019.

• Santino Ferrucci started 23^rd at Pete before finishing 9^th. At COTA, the Connecticut native started 11^th and was running ninth until a damper issue shuffled him back in the order.
• Felix Rosenqvist led 31 laps and finished 4^th at St, Pete before a tough race at COTA.
• Patricio O’Ward started 8^th for Carlin and ran in the top-10 all day before ultimately finishing 8^th. The reigning Indy Lights champion, of course, had an impressive weekend at the series finale last year at Sonoma, where he qualified fifth. The kid seems to have real talent, and from what I was told had a very healthy support contingent in Austin this weekend.
• Jack Harvey has also quietly come home 10^th in both races so far in 2019.

NBC Sports Gold IndyCar Pass

NBC isn't making any money on NBC Sports Gold from IndyCar fans. So few signed up the cost to deliver it far outweighs the revenue.

I’ve been told that there are some cool features one gets when they sign up for the IndyCar Pass on NBC Sports Gold. Hard core IndyCar fans expressed to me that they enjoy radio transmissions and other content they find unique.

That may be so. However, in an era when consumers have literally millions of FREE entertainment options in the palm of their hands, aside from family and friends I don’t see a lot of people paying $54.99 watch IndyCar practice and a few Road to Indy races. I mean let’s be honest: these events weren’t setting a ton of viewership records before.

In particular, the ladder series drivers struggle so much already for exposure putting them behind a pay wall makes an already difficult battle all the more difficult.

There may be a good reason this is done. I just don’t really see it.

Brian Carroccio is a senior columnist for AutoRacing1. He can be contacted at BrianC@AutoRacing1.com.