NTT IndyCar Series officials have confirmed the chaos on the late restart that resulted in a red flag was not the fault of Josef Newgarden’s driving at the head of the field.
When the field was lined up to take the restart with 10 laps remaining at World Wide Technology Raceway, they all paced Newgarden and tried their best to second guess when he would accelerate away.
The two-time champion waited until the very end of the prescribed restart zone in order to give those behind less time to make a pass down the front straight.
Just as Newgarden accelerated, there was chaos behind when the field stacked up and Alexander Rossi was launched into the air over the back of Will Power’s machine.
There was immediate suspicion that Newgarden had falsely accelerated or waited too long to bring the field up to speed, causing the drivers behind to run into each other as they wrongly assumed that they were back racing again.
Power had a similar thought, and gave his team-mate a one-finger salute after he climbed from his stricken car.
IndyCar released car data from Newgarden’s restart after the race, the same information they used to deem that his actions did not warrant a penalty, helping clear the air about the incident.
A series official confirmed that the speed of the #2 car did not deviate from 80 MPH before he accelerated cleanly, and that his acceleration and the green flag being waved happened nearly simultaneously.
The green flag is waved by default if the leader reaches the end of the restart zone, whether or not he has accelerated. In this instance, both events took place at nearly the same time.
Newgarden also explained his point of view after the race, saying that he purposely waited as long as possible to accelerate but did not do anything that would purposely cause issues behind.
“I was trying to go as late as I could,” said Newgarden. “Sometimes people go really early, sometimes they go in the middle, sometimes they go kind of late, and sometimes they go really late.
“It’s not that different of a restart I’ve done before. I’ve done a lot of restarts from the front. It’s not that different from other restarts that have gone late.
“I don’t know that I’d change much. If anyone, especially on our team, wants to look at the data, you’re going to see a very consistent speed.
“What it looked like to me, when stopped on the red I saw the replay, what looked like happened is it went green momentarily before I went, just momentarily. I’m talking like half a second or a second.
“If it’s just that slight difference in timing, if race control goes green and I haven’t gone yet for just a second, I think people were trying to jump, which we’ve had a problem with, to be honest. We’ve had a problem with jump-starts the last two years. It’s a constant topic in the driver meeting”
For his part, Newgarden said that he will talk with his team-mate later tonight to make sure that there were no hard feelings between the two.
Newgarden went on to win the event, holding off his other team-mate Scott McLaughlin during the final six-lap run to the checkers.
