The IndyCar series has announced changes to how a Full Course Yellow will be applied from now on following the events on Saturday afternoon involving Alex Rossi at the Indy GP. It follows on from the Push to Pass saga at Long Beach.
On lap 21, the 34-year-old stopped almost perfectly on the start-finish line as he seemingly had a hybrid failure. Initially only a local yellow was shown at turn 14 and on the main straight. As Rossi exited his ECR car on the inside, his rivals were going past him at 150 mph+. Eventually a Full Course Yellow appeared. The top 3 from Saturday did pit between the time it took for a FCY to appear.
Understandably, Rossi, commentators, journalists and fans were left baffled by the delay. IndyCar has moved to make changes.
The changes for a potential Full Course Yellow in an IndyCar race after Indy GP
“Effective immediately, INDYCAR Officiating will no longer take into consideration pit windows and the running order of cars on track before deploying a FCY.
“While there is no change to local yellow procedures, initiation of a FCY will be based primarily on: driver status, vehicle position and condition, the location and readiness of safety personnel, recovery access, and the speed differential between affected cars and approaching traffic.”
INDYCAR Officiating’s Independent Officiating Board chair Raj Nair:
“The Lap 21 incident on Saturday made clear that there needs to be a cleaner standard for how race control moves from a local to a full course yellow.”
“INDYCAR Officiating, with INDYCAR’s full support, has made this change of approach to ensure that the only inputs to the full course yellow escalation are safety ones. Streamlining the assessment will also save time as competitive considerations are no longer a factor.”
INDYCAR President J. Douglas Boles:
“The most important job in race control is to ensure the safety of our drivers, crews, safety workers and fans. Saturday highlighted that we must not waver from that central mission and aligning everyone on that philosophy was critical to discuss over the last 48 hours.
“The Independent Officiating Board, the new managing director of officiating, race director and INDYCAR are all in agreement and the metrics used to determine when to initiate a full course yellow will now ensure that when there is any risk to driver safety that race control will initiate a full course yellow.”
