The main talking point this week in IndyCar is whether or not Helio should have been penalized and why was PT different. I know I am in the extreme minority here but I for one think that race control got the exactly right last week at Long Beach. If you watch the Helio / Wilson contact and brake down what happened to cause the incident you‘d see that Wilson was the second car in line. The car in front (I do not remember who it was now) break checked Wilson in the hairpin. This is not a dirty move. This is a standard defensive move to make it harder for Wilson to get a run down the front stretch and make a pass going into turn 1. Wilson therefore had to check up to avoid getting into him, in essence break-checking Helio in a standard accordion effect. Helio could not see the front car brake check Wilson and ran into the back spinning Wilson. Would I call this “unavoidable contact”? No, I would not go that far but I would call it a racing incident and not deserving of a penalty.
So how is this different from the Tracy / Simona contact? As we were never shown video of this incident it makes it hard too assess. The reaction on Monday was this was the same contact and should have had the same result. I however kept on saying, “hold the phone there. We haven’t seen video of the Tracy / Simona contact and you are putting a lot of faith in Tracy by saying it was the same thing just because it had the same result.” (A car spun on exit of the hairpin.) I kept on point out the Tracy has a history of attempting bonehead moves and has tried (and failed) to make a pass in the hairpin before. Therefore, I was not sure this was not the case again. I am sure there are some people that want to cry conspiracy theories claiming that IndyCar does not want you to see the video because they do not want you to see the similarities of the contact and just want to stick it to PT. First Versus is the one who opted not to show us the video not IndyCar and what does Versus have to hide? They would love to show the video if they had it they just must not have it. So how did race control see it? Race control uses a different set of cameras. These unmanned stationary cameras are more like security cameras then high definition television cameras. Whether or not Versus have access to this footage is yet to be seen if I would to take a guess I would say no and we will never see video of this incident. So how do we analyze the contact then? There are two possible answers to this. One you simply take the high road and do not analyze it at all. This is what writers in respectable newspapers would do. (See Curt Cavin’s Q&A as the perfect example of this.) But this is just a blog not any respectable news source we are here just to create arguments so we do not have to stand up to the same line of ethics as a professional writer does. So I can go with answer two and that is take the word of someone who saw it. This becomes hearsay and you have to make decision on which you are going to believe where there are conflicts. For this case, we have Al Unser Jr. and Scott Dixon. Scott said the Helio’s move was far worse then Tracy’s and does not understand why Helio was not penalized. Here is the quote:
“I was one car back from it. It was totally blatant. OK, Justin was struggling a little bit for rear grip, and it was coming towards the end of the stint, but it still doesn’t make it OK for the following person to say, ‘You’re slowing me down—you’re kind of ruining my race—so I’m going to spin you out so I don’t have to deal with you anymore.’”
What Dixon said about the Helio wreck was just dead wrong. He claimed that Wilson was holding everyone but wait a minute Wilson was not the car holding everyone up it was the car in front of Wilson that was holding up the train and anyone who calls hat a blatant punt has lost their mind! (Please note that I consider there are four kinds of contact that can happen in a race. Unavoidable, Racing incident, Avoidable, and Punt.) I tack this up to Dixon just being mad and talking with out facts. The other witness we have to choose to speak publicly about it is Al Jr. As one of the marshals, he would have the best view available for review of both incidents. When he decided to come out publicly and talk about it. I was proud to say what I thought happened (even with out video) is was Al said happened. Tracy was trying a very ill-advised pass in a non-passing zone and caused a wreck. That is a big difference then what Helio / Wilson contact where Helio was just the third car in line. My verdict avoidable contact minor penalty.
What about Helio’s move into turn one then? What happened here (we know because we have video) is exactly how you describe what Tracy did. Let us break this down and see what really happened here. Helio has a run down the front stretch pulls to the inside of Oriol Servia. Servia moves down (not enough to block not even by IndyCar’s extremely stick definition) moving Helio farther on to the dirty line. Helio kicks up dust does not slow down enough and plows into Power. If Helio was trying to make a move on Power then that would be a bonehead move and he should have been penalized but he was not trying to pass Power. He was trying to pass Servia and slot in behind Power. In racing when you attempt to make a pass sometimes things go wrong that is by definition a racing incident. If you attempt to make a clean pass in a passing, zone and fail there should be no penalty. My verdict racing incident no penalty.
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