Ferrucci penalised but keeps “big deal” career-best IndyCar result
- Archie O’Reilly
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
For the third week in succession, IndyCar has handed out a penalty for a car failing technical inspection.
After a career-best second-place finish in the Detroit Grand Prix, Santino Ferrucci’s No.14 AJ Foyt Racing Chevy was found to be under the required driver ballast weight during post-race inspection.
The driver ballast is intended to equalise driver weight to 185 pounds to reduce performance impact dictated by varying-sized drivers. Ferrucci’s combined driver-and-ballast weight was discovered to be below that 185-pound mark.
The recent bout of penalties started with Team Penske failing pre-qualifying inspection with its No.2 and No.12 entries ahead of the Fast 12 session at the Indianapolis 500 and were moved to the rear of the starting field. The following week, a trio of cars, headlined by runner-up Marcus Ericsson, were moved to the back of the Indy 500 classification.
To the relief of Ferrucci, he has fared better than his competitors and the race result has been left unaltered, meaning he keeps his first-ever road-or-street podium.
Even taking into account the underweight driver ballast, the No.14 car’s overall weight was compliant with the rules. It was found during inspection that the total weight was 10 pounds over the minimum weight requirement of 1,785 pounds on road and street courses.
But despite the car meeting these overall weight requirements, the driver ballast is important to ensure consistency between teams and avoids weight being dispersed in different areas of the car in order to gain a possible performance advantage.
As a result of the findings in post-race weight determination, which is common practice at every event, the No.14 entry has been fined $25,000 and docked 25 championship driver and entrant points. Ferrucci also loses the one point gained for leading a lap, resulting in a total points loss of 26 from the initial 41 gained, and is ineligible for event prize money.
AJ Foyt Racing accepted the penalty, took responsibility and described the illegality as an “unintentional oversight” not intended to provide a competitive advantage.
Securely in the Leaders’ Circle but not in championship contention, the loss of points for Ferrucci and the No.14 entry is a blow but likely secondary to the podium result.
Off the back of David Malukas being promoted to second after finishing third on track in the Indy 500, it marks back-to-back podiums for the team for the first time since early 2013. Ferrucci’s runner-up finish confirms the team’s best result on a road or street circuit since Takuma Sato also finished second in Detroit on the old Belle Isle circuit in 2015.
After a challenging start to 2024, with no top-10 result inside the first five races, the Foyt team has rediscovered the performance that saw Ferrucci jump 10 positions in the standings to ninth last season, achieving 11 top-10 finishes in 17 races.
“This is a big deal for us,” Ferrucci said. “I’ve struggled a little bit more than David has trying to be consistent with the car and consistent with changes. We had a tonne of changes going into this weekend and we finally unloaded the car for warmup and I felt really, really happy and didn’t change anything going into the race.
“I’m hoping that we can finally catch that stride and move forward.”
Malukas qualified on the front row before his race was undone by a penalty for contact that ended championship leader Álex Palou’s race on a late restart. But after starting 21st himself, Ferrucci cycled from into the lead during a Lap 67 caution for Callum Ilott crashing.
Having pitted the lap prior, Ferrucci was able to stay out as those leading the race all stopped during the caution. He knew he rode his luck but a strategic gamble paid off for Ferrucci, along with fellow earlier-stoppers Kyffin Simpson and Marcus Armstrong.
“I had a race that I’ve probably had only like twice in my career in IndyCar,” Ferrucci said. “You get that lucky with a yellow flag… that is like perfect positioning, perfect timing, perfect everything.
“The racing gods are looking down on you in your favour. And obviously there’s more that goes into it and there’s calculations and a lot of background of when exactly to pit.”
Ferrucci and the No.14 stand were actually battling a loss of telemetry during the race, meaning emphasis was also on Ferrucci to determine when he needed to pit for fuel purposes.
Still, he was keen to outline the critical input from the team in enabling the eventual result.
“[It] was honestly incredibly nerve-racking because I was saving a tonne of fuel because the fuel light had been on for a lap-and-a-half and I was just watching the tank,” Ferrucci said. “I was just like: ‘Well, this would be embarrassing if I ran us out of gas now.’
“I can’t thank the team enough. This is more deserving of them than it is even of me. We probably drove to 11th minus the strategy just running our race. They all made great calls on the stand to pit us when they did and got lucky with the yellow when it came out.
“I had no idea I was the leader because there were cars going around the pace car in front of me. And then they stopped me and I was like: ‘Oh, well this is a pleasant surprise.’
“All I did was push the pedals and turn the steering wheel. We weren’t going to finish on the podium today without [the team] and without their help. [Post-race, there was] a lot of screaming, a lot of yelling. It was pretty cool.”
It was a first top-five finish on a road or street track for Ferrucci inside 84 starts in IndyCar. His previous best result and only other podium result was third in the Indy 500 in 2023, where there is not even any silverware for the second and third-place finishers.
Leading the field back to green on Lap 75 after back-to-back cautions, there was a phase where a first career win even looked on the cards for Ferrucci. But ultimate race winner Kyle Kirkwood surged past all three of the cars which had fortuitously jumped him courtesy of the caution period - including Ferrucci - in as many laps.
“[Kirkwood] was so fast,” Ferrucci said. “When in that situation and you know that you’re struggling a little bit, you’re obviously going to defend for the win as much as you can. But if you force him to make an error and it wrecks [him], it wrecks your day too.
“He drove straight past me down the straight, cleared me before the brake zone. I didn’t want to waste any more of our time and our tyres where I was already struggling to defend more than I needed to and I didn’t want to ruin a good day for both of us.”
Ferrucci was also passed by Will Power and dropped to third, with Kirkwood’s Andretti Global teammate Colton Herta looming. But the Lap 84 stoppage and eventual red flag, after a suspension failure caused Louis Foster to heavily collect Felix Rosenqvist, was timely.
“I definitely didn’t think I was going to hold off Colton,” Ferrucci said. “The red flag really saved us.”
Ferrucci was able to use the pause to reset and decisively got back past Power on the restart. Herta also got by the struggling Power and placed Ferrucci under duress, trying to take advantage of the No.14’s lower-downforce setup given their pre-race expectation of fighting mid-pack, thus favouring higher top speed down the 0.7-mile run to Turn 3.
But the defence from the driver in his third year with the Foyt team was bulletproof. Herta aggressively attacked into Turn 3, but fended off by Ferrucci despite contact, he ultimately fell back into Power’s clutches in the closing laps, with Ferrucci’s margin back to third at over one second at the chequered flag.
“I was managing my overtake intentionally, only using it in bursts coming out of [Turn] 2,” Ferrucci said. “I told [Herta] after it was great racing. I had to turn in and I knew he was going to hit me because I could see he was locked up.
“I was hoping he wasn’t going to bump me too hard. But rubbing is racing. I truly believe in that and I would have done the same thing if I was him.”
Regardless of post-race penalties tarnishing the result a little and dropping him to 14th in the standings, Ferrucci now has successive top-five finishes in a return to the form of 2024.
“I feel very settled inside the team,” he said. “Dealing with a lot of stressful months, having a good sports psychologist on my side almost the last year now has been a big help for me in trying to stay calm in situations like [Detroit] and honestly more enjoy it.
“We’re very fortunate to do what we do and to be out there. It was a lot of fun.”
