Restarts were the main talking point in the NTT IndyCar Series’ world after last Saturday’s (Aug. 17) Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway. The penultimate restart of the 260-lap race around the 1.25-mile oval near St. Louis brought out raw emotion, procedural questions and conspiracy theories over how Josef Newgarden and race control handled lap 252.
Let’s go over what happened and then compare it to previous situations earlier in the race. Newgarden led the field around turns 3-4 and race control turned the green light on as the front of the field exited turn 4 for the restart.
From the onboard camera of second-place runner Scott McLaughlin, we can see that Newgarden accelerates the moment the green light turns on as he enters the frontstretch. Or at least we would see that if McLaughlin’s footage made any of the highlight reel packages put out on social media after the race. The Peacock playback of the race shows McLaughlin’s onboard starting 2:25:38 into the broadcast.
Colton Herta slowed momentarily behind McLaughlin, causing Will Power to do the same. Alexander Rossi in fifth place had nowhere to go and ran over the back of Power’s car. Rossi’s front wheels went airborne as he and Power went to the inside wall. Further back in the field, Romain Grosjean had nowhere to go and hit both cars near the inside wall while Nolan Siegel hit Jack Harvey, sending the Brit to the outside wall.
It was overall a messy restart, but let’s dive a little further into the footage to analyze what happened, which is easy considering that every car in the top five at the time had an onboard camera. Looking at Newgarden’s footage, the No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet seemingly had a momentary drop in speed before accelerating when the green light came on. The light flashed on after Newgarden passed the second patch of grass between the inside of turn 4 and the pit wall.
McLaughlin maintained a constant pace but slightly let off the throttle momentarily before the green light flashed on. There was either very light contact between McLaughlin and Newgarden or there were only a few inches between both cars before the eventual race winner accelerated away.
Herta had some distance between himself and McLaughlin and was accelerating before the green light came out. After the green light comes on, Herta momentarily falters before hitting the…
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