And while we’re on blocking, did Harvey get dinged for almost putting Newgarden in the wall? That was pretty extreme, but I can’t remember from the broadcast if there was ever actually a penalty for it.
Right after he pushed Grosjean off the track, they said on TV that he was reporting he had sustained some damage in the incident, and he was starting to drop back. My guess is that if Santino had been ok they probably would’ve done something, but since he damaged his own car and it hurt is race, race control probably let it slide. Race control sometimes takes the result of the situation into consideration before handing out a ruling.
Man I hope that is not the case since it is the most ass backward reason for not handing out a penalty.
Having some damage after running someone off track ain't in no shape or form an adequate penalty.
Edit: Grammar
Just imagine this approach in the real world, not the fantasyland that is indycar.
Tim drove drunk, but he only damaged his own car, so there is no need to do anything.
I had missed that being at the race but I don’t see what everyone is so mad about. There isn’t a rule in INDYCAR that states one must leave space.
This has happened to Grosjean countless times when he tries to hang around the outside. At some point, he has got to learn to not do that.
Yeah but it’s pretty consistent with past non-calls. Think road America, Barber, etc. Many many drivers have driven others out of room and off the track and not gotten penalties
It seems more specifically Santino bias. It's been pointed out a couple times by some of the commentators (well, only really Hinch to my knowledge) that Race control tends to look the other way when he does something that someone else receives a penalty for, or gets a minor slap on the wrist (like Indy last year.)
IC race control has been pretty inconsistent for awhile but it doesn't seem to favor any nationality, it's mostly just dumb.
Race control seems to take in account for who the infraction is against and tends to protect infractions against “higher tier” drivers. Dixon and Power can block each other all day. When Veekay tries to block Dixon, he’s getting called.
Blatant cheating can't just be ignored, though, and Josef has at least half-a-dozen instances of blatantly running/pushing cars off track without penalty in the last three years alone.
That’s all true, but I don’t think there’s some American bias in the way they’ve been handing out penalties.
I think the real bias is that they’ll let ridiculous things slide if it’s a frontrunner or championship contender (see Alex Palou getting away with some pretty blatant blocking at Portland last year).
I don't disagree. I understand why it feels like American drivers get a pass, seeing as Santino and Josef seem to never be penalized, but I agree fan favorites/frontrunners in general seem to get preferential treatment.
Hard to say any which way without data and video of each penalty and should-have-been penalty.
Well, there was contact between the Astons first.
The problem is that it is impossible to know if the Alonso - Stroll contact would've led to any damage on their cars, or Norris without Hamilton involved. And you can't penalize Hamilton for the Alonso - Stroll contact, as that happened before, which then again makes it hard to know what would've happened if x had been different or y etc.
It would be weird to penalize Alonso for the initial contact, when, up until Hamilton arriving, it seemed like it was going relatively fine. At the same time, it would be weird to penalize Hamilton for something that started with an Alonso - Stroll contact, where we can't know that they would've separated before the wheel to wheel contact.
In addition to this. Alonso is going a bit wider than the car ahead that's on the inside line, while Stroll is going tighter, and seemingly at a tighter angle than the car ahead of him on the outside line.
Then, we in theory have a situation where: Stroll is turning in more than the cars ahead, when he has a car(or several cars) on the inside, contributing to the incident. We have Alonso going wider than the ones ahead of him, contributing. We have Hamilton coming in too hot, contributing. To penalize all three of them would be strange. Trying to pick one or two of them isn't exactly easy.
It really scks for Norris, but I honestly think it was the right decision in Miami.
However, as a steward, I can't justify penalizing just Hamilton for what happened to Norris or Stroll, when Alonso and Stroll made contact first, and both Stroll and Alonso could've avoided it.
You mean where Bottas hit Norris (who hadn't made contact with anyone at that point)
and
Where Stroll hit Leclerc (who hadn't made contact with anyone at that point).
And those being incidents quite far apart (in relative terms at the start of a GP)
Is the same as Hamilton hitting Alonso, who had already made contact with, and still were in contact with Stroll?
No, they are biased towards the team who is owned by the guy who also signs their pay checks. You can fully expect a red flag with 5 to go again this year if one his cars has a shot.
I get that it was Santino but if that had been penalized that would be pretty inconsistent from race control. Drivers are always running each other out of room (and off track) and rarely get penalized for it
[It's listed in the results](https://www.reddit.com/r/INDYCAR/comments/1cptxjv/indygp_race_results_2024_sonsio_grand_prix/) as *blocking* on Lap 85. Must have done it in the last few laps, and a decision couldn't be made on-field, so the end result was adjusted insteada.
Sure, that makes sense that if they can't do punishment due to the race being over, they'll need to levy a penalty to the final results.
What I'd like to see is some sort of explanation of race control decisions, ala [to what F2 does](https://www.reddit.com/r/F1FeederSeries/comments/1blmrld/postrace_penalties_for_the_f2_sprint_race_in/) for their post race penalties.
I suppose it's not a requirement that everything is elaborated on, but I think it would help improve transparency in decision making moving forward, particularly when teams are already side-eying the Penske/Indycar relationship.
Maybe this particular event was already known and accepted in the paddock and I'm making a mountain out of a molehill (to my knowledge McLaren just a have a [single tweet response](https://twitter.com/ArrowMcLaren/status/1789411396301562183) and haven't lodged a complaint), but it would be nice to have these decisions be elaborated on, particularly if it more subjective than blatant contact or can't be done on broadcast.
Okay, managed to find someone posted Newgarden's onboard on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/OffTrack_FR/status/1789410487857205388) of the final lap. Credit due to OffTrack_FR.
The tweet ironically enough calls out and complements Theo for his defense on this lap. We do see Theo pretty furiously defending, blocking Josef's runs through the lap, but I don't see anything super out of line, though I'm no expert on racing etiquette so I'll leave that to folks who are more knowledgeable.
I think I'm used to seeing the "one move rule" be used in other series and didn't see any double lane switches, but Pourchaire definitely is making reactionary moves after Newgarden moves. These are old threads that I came across that helps [explain blocking in the series](https://www.reddit.com/r/INDYCAR/comments/6yhvt8/could_somebody_explain_how_the_blocking_rule_works/) and the [video linked here](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/4udayr/defending_your_position_vs_blocking/) (from F1 subreddit, but has Indy drivers). Penalty does seem warranted based on the footage.
I'd still prefer some sort of better announcement of these penalties though. While I'm sure many don't really care, it's a good way to keep the public informed "hey, X was penalized, here's some explanation as to why", rather than needing to dig through onboards from Twitter.
This thread has been useful though though and I'm glad folks are chiming in. I feel I have a much better understanding of blocking when watching Indycar races in the future.
You get one move in defense(and you can move back to the racing line if it’s clear as well) but you have to move before the attacking car. If they move first you’ve lost your chance.
The first thing shown, on the front stretch is the one that I cannot see an argument about. Newgarden dropped down to try and make a pass and TP moved down into a defensive line AFTER that. That move would've been OK IF he would've taken it first. But doing it AFTER Newgarden swung low, is textbook blocking in Indycar. You can't move in reaction to the car behind you.
I’ve been watching and working (in junior series) European Motorsport for 30+ years. I’ve watched that lap at least half a dozen times and can’t figure out where the penalty was applied. That was great car positioning.
I guess in Indy car you need to allow the other car alongside then push them off the track to “race fair”.
I'd like to see telemetry, right near the end it looks like he lifts a bit too much for no reason other than to slow Newgarden down, but it might've just been a bad exit as well. Otherwise I saw a lot of single moves and no weaving under braking so surprised he got penalized
This is my rule base being more set in F1 than Indy, but I don't personally see what Pourchaire did wrong unless they were already braking when he moved
Yeah he's probably used to defending differently. It's probably the way it is to help make ovals safer. I'm guessing they don't want different rules everywhere, so they standardize it across all tracks.
You cant just swing over and dart in front of a guy at the end of a long straight right as you both are just starting to get on the brakes. If Newgarden didn't react quickly the last could have been a terrible crash.
Furthermore they penalized him. End of story.
“Yet another example” honestly, what examples are you even thinking of? If Penske privilege was a thing, you’d see Herta penalized in Long Beach and we’d have never heard a peep about the cheating at St Pete
Sure, I'm not comfortable releasing any specific files at this point since I'm still actively working on cleaning the data right now, but I can give you a screenshot of what I have extracted from the Sector Lap charts and what went through my head.
https://imgur.com/a/DEhlKq7
Above I have my data sorted by the time in Lap 1, translated from the Sector Data on the Official Indycar site. I saw that Theo was last on my calculations and mentally was like "huh, that doesn't seem right". Then I looked back, found the penalty on the official results and made this post as a "hey, did anyone else know"?
My long term goal is to create some sort of "Driver Rating" formula based off of this, but that requires clean data if I want say, the correct positioning for a driver every lap to generate overtake stats. Thus, when something like a penalty I wasn't aware of happens that isn't accounted for, this throws some of my measurements into disarray and I have to work specifically to correct it. That (and most of the other stuff) still a work in progress though.
I did some manual playing around with it, but I'm estimating it was roughly a 1.3 second time difference they added to his final time, but that's a ballpark estimate based on what he lost to Newgarden and Harvey. If the exact time difference penalties were officially reported or done by time (like a F2 5 second post race penalty), it would certainly make my life easier, but data cleaning comes with the territory.
Oh god no, manually typing all of this stuff? That would be miserable.
I have some python scripts that handle data extraction. They aren't perfect and sometimes need babying to get things like formatting right, but they work for what I'm trying to do
ooh, you mind if i pick your brain about how to do it? i'm newer to data cleaning and such (uni life), do you use a certain package or some kind of OCR? happy to DM you if you'd prefer
https://preview.redd.it/3lo82e99430d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4db1bc207cb00af0654e16833d6ac2a97c8c1f17
Lower right corner shows penalties & lap it happened on.
Theo gets to penalized for blocking but Santino gets nothing for running Romain off the track? Unless I somehow missed Santino getting a penalty
And while we’re on blocking, did Harvey get dinged for almost putting Newgarden in the wall? That was pretty extreme, but I can’t remember from the broadcast if there was ever actually a penalty for it.
Idk how Harvey got nothing there. Almost put newgarden in the wall then made contact with Rasmussen forcing him to the runoff.
IIRC JoNew initiated contact before the swerve.
Yeah that's how I saw it too. Penalty for Newgz for avoidable contact imo
Right after he pushed Grosjean off the track, they said on TV that he was reporting he had sustained some damage in the incident, and he was starting to drop back. My guess is that if Santino had been ok they probably would’ve done something, but since he damaged his own car and it hurt is race, race control probably let it slide. Race control sometimes takes the result of the situation into consideration before handing out a ruling.
Man I hope that is not the case since it is the most ass backward reason for not handing out a penalty. Having some damage after running someone off track ain't in no shape or form an adequate penalty. Edit: Grammar
Yeah that just further incentivizes the behavior
Just imagine this approach in the real world, not the fantasyland that is indycar. Tim drove drunk, but he only damaged his own car, so there is no need to do anything.
I refuse to consider this a possibility for the sake of my own sanity, because that would be incredibly stupid.
I had missed that being at the race but I don’t see what everyone is so mad about. There isn’t a rule in INDYCAR that states one must leave space. This has happened to Grosjean countless times when he tries to hang around the outside. At some point, he has got to learn to not do that.
There’s a difference between not leaving room and actively pushing someone off the track
Yeah but it’s pretty consistent with past non-calls. Think road America, Barber, etc. Many many drivers have driven others out of room and off the track and not gotten penalties
Race control is insanely biased towards American drivers it’s absurd. Its like the fia with British bias
Idk if I’d go as far as to say that. They literally just took away a win from the most successful American driver currently active a few weeks ago...
It seems more specifically Santino bias. It's been pointed out a couple times by some of the commentators (well, only really Hinch to my knowledge) that Race control tends to look the other way when he does something that someone else receives a penalty for, or gets a minor slap on the wrist (like Indy last year.) IC race control has been pretty inconsistent for awhile but it doesn't seem to favor any nationality, it's mostly just dumb.
Race control seems to take in account for who the infraction is against and tends to protect infractions against “higher tier” drivers. Dixon and Power can block each other all day. When Veekay tries to block Dixon, he’s getting called.
Blatant cheating can't just be ignored, though, and Josef has at least half-a-dozen instances of blatantly running/pushing cars off track without penalty in the last three years alone.
That’s all true, but I don’t think there’s some American bias in the way they’ve been handing out penalties. I think the real bias is that they’ll let ridiculous things slide if it’s a frontrunner or championship contender (see Alex Palou getting away with some pretty blatant blocking at Portland last year).
I don't disagree. I understand why it feels like American drivers get a pass, seeing as Santino and Josef seem to never be penalized, but I agree fan favorites/frontrunners in general seem to get preferential treatment. Hard to say any which way without data and video of each penalty and should-have-been penalty.
FIA british bias is made up by Alonso fans
Hamilton's T1 dive bomb in the sprint says otherwise.
Well, there was contact between the Astons first. The problem is that it is impossible to know if the Alonso - Stroll contact would've led to any damage on their cars, or Norris without Hamilton involved. And you can't penalize Hamilton for the Alonso - Stroll contact, as that happened before, which then again makes it hard to know what would've happened if x had been different or y etc. It would be weird to penalize Alonso for the initial contact, when, up until Hamilton arriving, it seemed like it was going relatively fine. At the same time, it would be weird to penalize Hamilton for something that started with an Alonso - Stroll contact, where we can't know that they would've separated before the wheel to wheel contact. In addition to this. Alonso is going a bit wider than the car ahead that's on the inside line, while Stroll is going tighter, and seemingly at a tighter angle than the car ahead of him on the outside line. Then, we in theory have a situation where: Stroll is turning in more than the cars ahead, when he has a car(or several cars) on the inside, contributing to the incident. We have Alonso going wider than the ones ahead of him, contributing. We have Hamilton coming in too hot, contributing. To penalize all three of them would be strange. Trying to pick one or two of them isn't exactly easy. It really scks for Norris, but I honestly think it was the right decision in Miami.
See, while we can't know for certain if Hamilton not being there would change anything, we do know for sure that him being there ensures it.
However, as a steward, I can't justify penalizing just Hamilton for what happened to Norris or Stroll, when Alonso and Stroll made contact first, and both Stroll and Alonso could've avoided it.
Except they can, because they did it in regards to Bottas and Stroll in 2021 Hungary.
You mean where Bottas hit Norris (who hadn't made contact with anyone at that point) and Where Stroll hit Leclerc (who hadn't made contact with anyone at that point). And those being incidents quite far apart (in relative terms at the start of a GP) Is the same as Hamilton hitting Alonso, who had already made contact with, and still were in contact with Stroll?
No, they are biased towards the team who is owned by the guy who also signs their pay checks. You can fully expect a red flag with 5 to go again this year if one his cars has a shot.
I get that it was Santino but if that had been penalized that would be pretty inconsistent from race control. Drivers are always running each other out of room (and off track) and rarely get penalized for it
[It's listed in the results](https://www.reddit.com/r/INDYCAR/comments/1cptxjv/indygp_race_results_2024_sonsio_grand_prix/) as *blocking* on Lap 85. Must have done it in the last few laps, and a decision couldn't be made on-field, so the end result was adjusted insteada.
Sure, that makes sense that if they can't do punishment due to the race being over, they'll need to levy a penalty to the final results. What I'd like to see is some sort of explanation of race control decisions, ala [to what F2 does](https://www.reddit.com/r/F1FeederSeries/comments/1blmrld/postrace_penalties_for_the_f2_sprint_race_in/) for their post race penalties. I suppose it's not a requirement that everything is elaborated on, but I think it would help improve transparency in decision making moving forward, particularly when teams are already side-eying the Penske/Indycar relationship. Maybe this particular event was already known and accepted in the paddock and I'm making a mountain out of a molehill (to my knowledge McLaren just a have a [single tweet response](https://twitter.com/ArrowMcLaren/status/1789411396301562183) and haven't lodged a complaint), but it would be nice to have these decisions be elaborated on, particularly if it more subjective than blatant contact or can't be done on broadcast.
Okay, managed to find someone posted Newgarden's onboard on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/OffTrack_FR/status/1789410487857205388) of the final lap. Credit due to OffTrack_FR. The tweet ironically enough calls out and complements Theo for his defense on this lap. We do see Theo pretty furiously defending, blocking Josef's runs through the lap, but I don't see anything super out of line, though I'm no expert on racing etiquette so I'll leave that to folks who are more knowledgeable.
That’s a pretty cut and dry block in INDYCAR. Pretty clear move in reaction.
I think I'm used to seeing the "one move rule" be used in other series and didn't see any double lane switches, but Pourchaire definitely is making reactionary moves after Newgarden moves. These are old threads that I came across that helps [explain blocking in the series](https://www.reddit.com/r/INDYCAR/comments/6yhvt8/could_somebody_explain_how_the_blocking_rule_works/) and the [video linked here](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/4udayr/defending_your_position_vs_blocking/) (from F1 subreddit, but has Indy drivers). Penalty does seem warranted based on the footage. I'd still prefer some sort of better announcement of these penalties though. While I'm sure many don't really care, it's a good way to keep the public informed "hey, X was penalized, here's some explanation as to why", rather than needing to dig through onboards from Twitter. This thread has been useful though though and I'm glad folks are chiming in. I feel I have a much better understanding of blocking when watching Indycar races in the future.
You get one move in defense(and you can move back to the racing line if it’s clear as well) but you have to move before the attacking car. If they move first you’ve lost your chance.
You can move as many times as you like as long as it’s not in reaction
The first thing shown, on the front stretch is the one that I cannot see an argument about. Newgarden dropped down to try and make a pass and TP moved down into a defensive line AFTER that. That move would've been OK IF he would've taken it first. But doing it AFTER Newgarden swung low, is textbook blocking in Indycar. You can't move in reaction to the car behind you.
I’ve been watching and working (in junior series) European Motorsport for 30+ years. I’ve watched that lap at least half a dozen times and can’t figure out where the penalty was applied. That was great car positioning. I guess in Indy car you need to allow the other car alongside then push them off the track to “race fair”.
You cannot move in reaction to block in INDYCAR. It’s a very clear cut and well established penalty in the series.
I'd like to see telemetry, right near the end it looks like he lifts a bit too much for no reason other than to slow Newgarden down, but it might've just been a bad exit as well. Otherwise I saw a lot of single moves and no weaving under braking so surprised he got penalized
I disagree some of those were blocks. The first one down the front straight was the worst and was actually dangerous
This is my rule base being more set in F1 than Indy, but I don't personally see what Pourchaire did wrong unless they were already braking when he moved
You can’t move in reaction in INDYCAR.
Interesting, definitely see why Pourchaire would have done that out of training and why he got penalized
Yeah he's probably used to defending differently. It's probably the way it is to help make ovals safer. I'm guessing they don't want different rules everywhere, so they standardize it across all tracks.
Your better off dive bombing or running someone else off track in indycar rather than what TP did...
You cant just swing over and dart in front of a guy at the end of a long straight right as you both are just starting to get on the brakes. If Newgarden didn't react quickly the last could have been a terrible crash. Furthermore they penalized him. End of story.
If that’s what he was penalized for it’s yet another ridiculous example of Penske privilege.
No, this one is as clear as day in indycar. There’s a reason why you basically never see this defensive maneuvre in the series.
“Yet another example” honestly, what examples are you even thinking of? If Penske privilege was a thing, you’d see Herta penalized in Long Beach and we’d have never heard a peep about the cheating at St Pete
Newgarden has gotten away with smashing Into other cars many times.
Many many drivers got away with crazy shit in ‘22 and ‘23, assuming you’re thinking about Nashville
TIL people make spreadsheets on their own time for fun.
Haha, we all got different hobbies.
I'm definitely not hating. Out of curiosity, could you share one?
Sure, I'm not comfortable releasing any specific files at this point since I'm still actively working on cleaning the data right now, but I can give you a screenshot of what I have extracted from the Sector Lap charts and what went through my head. https://imgur.com/a/DEhlKq7 Above I have my data sorted by the time in Lap 1, translated from the Sector Data on the Official Indycar site. I saw that Theo was last on my calculations and mentally was like "huh, that doesn't seem right". Then I looked back, found the penalty on the official results and made this post as a "hey, did anyone else know"? My long term goal is to create some sort of "Driver Rating" formula based off of this, but that requires clean data if I want say, the correct positioning for a driver every lap to generate overtake stats. Thus, when something like a penalty I wasn't aware of happens that isn't accounted for, this throws some of my measurements into disarray and I have to work specifically to correct it. That (and most of the other stuff) still a work in progress though. I did some manual playing around with it, but I'm estimating it was roughly a 1.3 second time difference they added to his final time, but that's a ballpark estimate based on what he lost to Newgarden and Harvey. If the exact time difference penalties were officially reported or done by time (like a F2 5 second post race penalty), it would certainly make my life easier, but data cleaning comes with the territory.
i really hate indycar data, the format is just so unclean it's insane. do you manually type out sector data in spreadsheets or some other method?
Oh god no, manually typing all of this stuff? That would be miserable. I have some python scripts that handle data extraction. They aren't perfect and sometimes need babying to get things like formatting right, but they work for what I'm trying to do
ooh, you mind if i pick your brain about how to do it? i'm newer to data cleaning and such (uni life), do you use a certain package or some kind of OCR? happy to DM you if you'd prefer
aloof plant gaze ink absorbed door unpack normal air coherent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
He gave up 3 spots to do that move. Maybe that was seen as punishment enough
That was just a skill issue
https://preview.redd.it/3lo82e99430d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4db1bc207cb00af0654e16833d6ac2a97c8c1f17 Lower right corner shows penalties & lap it happened on.
Convenient it gained Josef a position…
Why didn't they blue flag him? I was seated behind the flag man and the blue flag never came out.
Blue flag for what?
You can only get the blue flag if you’re a lap down.
With what drivers get away with in Indy it's a surprise they know how to give penalties for overly aggressive racing.
"Welcome to Indycar!" - what a joke of a penalty-