IndyCar drivers rally against lapped-car rules: “Time for us to grow up”

Credit: Joe Skibinski

The argument surrounding IndyCar’s lack of rules to prevent backmarker cars from holding up the race leaders has been reignited after Sunday’s Grand Prix of Portland.

Within IndyCar’s current rules, cars at the end of the lead lap are not mandated to move over to let the leaders past. This has long been a divisive topic surrounding the series, given other elite racing series, such as Formula One, employ blue flags to indicate a backmarker must immediately cede position to cars at the head of the lead lap.

“It was like a lapped-car race,” Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist, runner-up in Portland, said of the end portion of the race. “Sometimes you’re getting three seconds because of a lap car; the next time you lose three seconds. 

“Without sounding salty - I don’t think I would have won the race anyway - it’s time for us, as a series, to grow up and not have the lapped-car situation. It makes us all look stupid. 

“When you work hard and all of a sudden you lose five seconds behind a lapped car, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think anyone wants to see that. Again, I don’t think I would have won anyways. [But] I think all drivers probably agree with me.”

Each of the podium-finishing cars encountered backmarker traffic at some stage across this weekend’s 110 laps in Portland. In the penultimate stint, alongside the Swede running the softer alternate tyre compound, this was part of what allowed Rosenqvist to close a five-plus-second gap on Chip Ganassi Racing’s ultimate race winner Álex Palou.

Credit: Joe Skibinski

But as he ran second and was placing Palou under pressure in pursuit of the race lead, Rosenqvist then was caught out by a backmarker himself when Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Louis Foster exited the pits between himself and Palou.

Andretti Global’s Will Power also had his race influenced by a backmarker in the form of Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Sting Ray Robb. The eventual third-place finisher missed the initial call to pit for his final stop - onto the fast alternate tyres - and lost what he theorised was “three seconds” stuck behind Robb, who defended his position staunchly.

“I agree with that,” Power said of Rosenqvist’s argument. “I mean, I’ve said it forever: it’s kind of ridiculous we have a 1970s rule going on. But we’ve always done that. It’s a little bit different now; drives me crazy, all these cars. 

“If IndyCar won’t do anything, I think all the drivers get together and have a gentlemen’s agreement. If IndyCar’s like: ‘We don’t make rules. We keep the same ones since the ’70s.’”

When it was mentioned to both Rosenqvist and Power by the IndyCar press-conference moderator that this would be a good off-season discussion point, Rosenqvist clapped back to claim “nothing will happen” and Power insisted it is the “same discussion every year”.

On the flip side, there is an argument that backmarker cars deserve to fight for their lead-lap position in case a caution brings the field back together again. A command blue-flag rule, which currently only exists if a car is already a lap down to the entire field, would likely trap drivers off the lead lap, given IndyCar does not allow cars to regain their lap under caution.

Credit: Joe Skibinski

That counter-sentiment is shared somewhat by Barry Wanser, strategist for Palou, even though his driver and CGR team are often on the receiving end of backmarker traffic.

“I think we’ve established with IndyCar that as long as you are battling to stay on the lead lap, if you’re not a lap down to the entire field, you’re not blue-flag eligible,” Wanser said. “You have the right to be there and fight. A yellow can give you an opportunity to be back on the lead lap, then you’d be fighting for a greater position. 

“That’s just part of IndyCar. We’ve been caught behind lapped cars before. I’m sure it will happen again in the future. That’s just part of how we race.”

As a driver who has developed the skill and often showed the poise to navigate his way past slower cars at the opposite end of the lead lap, Palou himself concurred with the notion that drivers should have a right to fight for every position. 

“As long as we keep it consistent, it’s the same for everyone,” he said. “We had races where the traffic hurt us a lot and allowed everybody to close the gap. We had Portland last year, where that slowed down Power and [Christian] Lundgaard in front of me. I was able to close a 10-second gap. As long as we keep it consistent, I’m happy.”