To much of the paddock’s surprise, the IndyCar Series has decided to make a change to its oval qualifying procedure. It was widely known within the paddock that drivers and owners hated the randomness of the qualifying order at oval venues.
One reason for driver displeasure is because early cars in the order have to deal with a track that isn’t quite as rubbered-in. A “green” track makes for less grip. Less grip means no traction, for Formula 1 drivers, it can spell a few tenths added; for IndyCar it’s the difference between coming down smoothly from a high-banked corner or the wall.
Another reason for drivers displeasure, for those high in the points in a series often separated by less than three seconds from top to bottom qualifying position is treated as a lottery. Under old “rules”, driver’s standing in the points were disregarded and rendered ineffectual. Under the new procedure, drivers’ standing in points mean something.
IndyCar Competition Director Jay Frye announced that at all ovals—excluding Indianapolis Motor Speedway—that the qualifying order will be determined by points standing. Least amount of points, going first.
This puts the points leading drivers in better conditions as far as track grip, ambient temperature and time of day.
Frye, in an interview with RACER said “We wanted to eliminate randomness, and a random draw for oval qualifying [order] is as far as you can go in that direction,” and adding “We could have gone a lot of ways on how to set the order; fastest laps turned by the drivers in the practice before qualifying, but the idea of going off entrant points was the only one that had unanimous support from our teams when we proposed it. So that’s what we’ll do moving forward.”
Look for the first example to be at Phoenix International Raceway April 7, 2018.
