Scott McLaughlin believes IndyCar’s restarts are a “joke” which create an “amateur-ish looking finish to races.”
The Team Penske driver finished second in the Nashville street race when he was unable to overhaul Kyle Kirkwood in a three-lap dash to the chequered flag after two late Caution periods.
McLaughlin admitted his latter restart was poor and he would have to review what happened, but also expressed his anger at IndyCar’s rules, or lack thereof.
“I just think from a sport perspective, the restarts are a joke,” he declared, post-race.
“I think we need to start on the start/finish line; we cannot pass until the start/finish line.
“You’re always going to have these yellows, you’re always going to have these clusters that cause red flags and make us look like…
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“You know, there’s no cadence. Once there’s a yellow flag on a street circuit, it’s just a free-for-all. People [dive]bomb.
“We’re well within our rights to do that. I just think, if we want to have a pure race… we could have had a 10-lap shootout, me and Kyle there at the end.
“Instead, we’re stop, start, stop, start. The action is fantastic. We just had no race. I find it frustrating.”
This year’s Nashville street race was a relatively clean affair of three Caution periods (four if one counts the waved-off start) when one considers that the first two produced a total of 17.
However, the final Caution of the afternoon was called almost immediately after the previous one ended.
Felix Rosenqvist, who was stuck on the outside of Ryan Hunter-Reay, understeered into the tyre barrier at Turn 11 and was in turn shunted by Agustin Canapino and Benjamin Pedersen.
That triggered a nowadays not uncommon red flag, in order to ensure a green flag finish to the race.
The drama this year came after IndyCar implemented a new restart zone between Turns 9 and 10, whereas the race starts further back, at the end of the Korean Veterans Bridge.
“It happens at Long Beach and we talked about doing it, about not passing ‘til the apex of the last corner or whatever,” explained McLaughlin.
“At least that, because I think when it goes green, there’s kamikazes at the back that don’t care, and just throw it in there.
“They’re well within their right to throw it inside when it turns green – that’s fine – but we just have this terrible just stop, start, amateur-ish looking finish to races.
“I’m going to speak to Jay [Frye, IndyCar President] about it, Kyle Novak [Race Director].
“We just need to go ‘apex [of] last corner or start/finish line’. Just make a point where you can’t pass, just to get it going.
“Look, I might be wrong, they might crash in Turn 1. What I’m saying is, I’ve done it in Supercars, Formula 1 does it, other sports around the world do it. It just gets the race going.
“Everyone’s on cold tyres. Someone is going to have a mistake. The guy behind him is going to go, ‘I’m going to have a crack,’ and then they lock-up, boom, bang, bang, concertina, big shunts, people getting hurt, rah-rah-rah.
“I just think it looks amateur-ish, it really does.”
He added, “Road America this year, I passed [Graham] Rahal before the last corner.
“I felt like a kamikaze but you’ve just got to do it, you’ve got to run the rules how they’re run.
“It’s just such a simple thing. We move restarts, we do this, we do that. Nothing works until we, like, police it. We have to police something.
“It pisses me off, it really does.”
The IndyCar season continues this weekend on the Indianapolis road course.
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