(Photo: Logan Skidan | The Podium Finish)
SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Calamity corner no more?
As the NASCAR Cup Series prepares for its third race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course on Sunday, the sanctioning body has moved the restart zone in hopes of cleaner restarts.
The first two times that Cup ran the Brickyard road course, the restart zone was located on the frontstretch, like any other track. That led to chaos in Turn 1, a 90-degree right-hander. Cars dove into the corner up to five or six wide, creating carnage on restarts, especially closer toward the end of races.
However, the restart zone will be located between Turns 13 and 14 on Sunday, just before the right-hander leading to the frontstretch.
NASCAR first toyed with the idea of moving the restart zone back for the Xfinity Series race at Portland International Raceway in June. The sanctioning body put a similar practice in place at the Chicago Street Course and saw positive results, albeit single-file restarts in Cup because of wet weather.
Tyler Reddick survived the chaos last year to win at the Brickyard for his second career victory. He says the decision to move the restart zone back is “fair.”
“If we restart or start from where we started in the past, the two times that we have done this, it is just so tempting to try to out-brake the other car and then you are eight-wide and there is no room into Turn 1,” Reddick said. “You will still see plenty of racing on the restarts – just won’t be as chaotic, I guess. I think that is what we need. You see guys in there that are running top-five all day just getting wiped out because someone from 15th decides to jam it in there.”
Chase Briscoe won the 2020 Xfinity race on the road course and contended for his first Cup victory in the inaugural 2021 race. In NASCAR Overtime, he got pushed out of Turn 1 and then got penalized for short-cutting the course. Unbeknownst to the penalty, he spun Denny Hamlin out later in the lap racing for the lead.
Briscoe thinks the decision will help smooth out Turn 1 to a degree, but he isn’t sure that it’ll completely clear up the tight proximity racing issues.
“Turn 1 is just chaos every single time,” Briscoe said. “I do think the new format, or the change of the start/finish line with the restart zone, could potentially [help]. I think if we do that, it might help Turn 1 a little bit. But, you’re still going to have chaos because we’re going so fast. That’s probably the biggest delta I feel like, in Turn 1 versus straightaway speed, out of any road course we go to.
“I just feel like you’re always open to chaos there and calamity every time you have restarts there, just with how narrow it is in that section of the racetrack. But yeah, I don’t know if there’s any strategy you could do necessarily to be safe from all that.”
Daniel Suarez practices Saturday at Indianapolis. (Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
Daniel Suarez won his first and only Cup race to date on the road course at Sonoma in 2022. He thinks the change will solve most of the problems at Indianapolis.
“I think that, in my opinion, that’s going to fix 70 to 80 percent of the problem,” Suarez, Sunday’s polesitter, explained. “Nobody wants to watch a crapshoot in corner one. That’s not real racing. I was re-watching the race from last year and at one point, we were like six wide in corner one … that’s impossible. I don’t think you can go six wide on a bicycle race in there without contact, so it’s not real. It was about time to get rid of that because it was starting to become a little bit of a joke, in my opinion. So I’m happy that NASCAR was open to listen to this option and they were open to a change.
“If you have a couple of guys that have a good run, you can still be three or four wide over there and it can lead into a wreck. But what we have seen in the past of cars pushing each other five wide or six wide, like what I call embarrassing racing or like bumper cars, I don’t think we’re going to see that again.”
Kyle Busch, who has regularly been outspoken about restart procedures in the past, said that moving the restart zone back was needed from a respect standpoint. He also said he’d be in favor of single-file restarts, like at Chicago, if needed.
“You have to separate these guys and give them some separation because they have absolutely no respect and they just drive over each other.,” Busch said. “We see it every week. We see it on ovals. [Ryan] Blaney wanted to be mad last week, and yet he crashed me and he almost crashed the No. 7 (Corey LaJoie) and he’s mad, so it makes no sense. The fact of the matter is – yeah, everybody goes down into Turn 1, they know you have to be on the inside and you just pile-drive through from the inside and push people off.
“I think the only other way to help it even more would just call it right now and just go single file, and make it single file starts going down the frontstretch into Turn 1.”
Ty Gibbs practices Saturday in Indianapolis. (Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
Three Cup drivers — Ty Gibbs, AJ Allmendinger and Ross Chastain got an early look at what the restart zone will look like in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race. Gibbs led 28 laps and won. Although there were just three instances of double-file restarts, he thought moving back the restart zone helped and believed it could even go back toward Turn 13 more.
“I think it was a really big help,” Gibbs said. “I think it probably needs to be pushed back probably 15 feet. Honestly, the whole thing needs to be pushed back a little earlier, but I think it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
“From my experience of being restarted back there today, I think we’re just a little closer than what I thought we would be. Going into Turn 1, I think it was a lot going on, but not as bad as last year’s Cup race.”
Sunday’s Verizon 200 at the Brickyard is set for 2:30 p.m. ET on NBC, IMS Radio Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
