Last weekend was the second running of the Indianapolis 8 Hour at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The race was a combination of the final race of the year in Fanatec GT World Challenge America Powered by AWS and a round in the Intercontinental GT Challenge.
At first glance, the race appeared to be a success. There were 41 teams entered in the race, a substantial increase over 2020 with a number of European teams making the trip. That number was whittled down to 39 by race time due to a practice crash and Michael Dinan getting sick, but it's still a pretty good car count. I doubt that the Kyalami 9 Hour in December
will have anywhere near that many cars.
There was a change to the course. Last year, the race used the faster infield configuration that INDYCAR and NASCAR used. However, after the travesty that was the Cup race, the race was moved onto the older loop used by MotoAmerica and Formula 1, bypassing the tricky chicane. Ultimately, this move wasn't bad, but it did contribute to one of
the big problems of the day.
That problem was cautions. The SRO likes to minimize the usage of the safety car. Issues on-track are often dealt with by a full course yellow. The full course yellow in SRO competition is quite different from what you're likely thinking. Generally, in the United States, a full course yellow is a full race neutralization with the
safety car (or pace car) on track. Here, it means that everyone has to slow down to 80 kilometers per hour and maintain that pace. At larger tracks, there are also slow zones, where only part of the track is slowed down.
It's not a new thing. In fact, it's something that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has used themselves in the past. I consider it to be the modern version of the Pacer Light system that the track used during the Indianapolis 500 back in the 1970s.
However, the SRO Full Course Yellow was effectively not used at Indianapolis all weekend. Sure, it came out, but only as a precursor to a full safety car period.
In practice, the officials on Sunday were rather quick on the trigger with the safety car periods, leading to a disjointed eight-hour race. The safety car came out 10 times during the race, which is very high for an eight-hour sports car race. In addition, some of these safety car periods were really long, so it seemed like the better part of
one-quarter of the race was paced by the Lamborghini Urus safety car. A good chunk of these incidents likely would have been covered under regular full course yellows in Europe, allowing more racing to be done under green.
The wavearound procedure was somewhat screwy, leading to the wrong cars being waved around, or the wrong ones being stuck behind the Urus. Worse, the wavearound was done without enough time for the cars being waved around to catch up to the rear of the field. As a result, teams that took the wavearound would end up restarting the race
half a lap behind. I can recall this being a problem during Cup races on road courses shortly after the wavearound was introduced to the Cup Series because NASCAR waited too late to do it.
Multiple teams also got lapped in the pits due to the pit exit being closed during the 10 safety car periods. Due to the fact that there was a minimum time of 118 seconds that had to be spent in the pit lane for full service stops, there really wasn't that much wiggle room. If you weren't caught up to the pack when you pitted, or had a lot more
work than normal, you could easily get stopped by the pit steward with the red flag at the end of the pit lane. If you're wondering, just driving down the full pit lane at the 50 kph speed limit without stopping takes 53 seconds. As a result, your car had to be stopped for roughly 65 seconds minimum in your stall.
Add everything together and you have some unhappy people. Just take Daniel Juncadella, who finished second overall for AKKA-ASP. Just starting the race was something of a joy for the team. Their Mercedes-AMG GT3 was stuck in customs in Norfolk, Va., forcing them to have to leave Indianapolis Friday afternoon and drive to Norfolk to pick the
car up. The car got to Indianapolis at approximately 5 a.m. Saturday morning. In order to get any on-track time prior to qualifying, the team had to borrow a backup car from DXDT Racing and practice that. The team ended up qualifying with a car that had not seen the track prior to the session.
Given the plight noted above, you'd think that Juncadella would have been very pleased to finish where he did. Not so much.
"To be fully honest with you, I've never been so unhappy for a second position because I felt that it was not racing out there," Juncadella told SRO America's Amanda Busick after the race. "I couldn't understand [why] there were so many safety cars. This kind of racing is not what I signed up for."
Based on a quote like that, Juncadella likely still would have been rather surly even if he had won the race. Might have sounded something like when Kyle Busch won the first COT race at Bristol in 2007.
Some of the on-track incidents were rather ridiculous. Likely the best example is when Callum Ilott crashed out of the lead in the final hour because of inexperience in GT cars. He approached the slower GT4 car of Automatic Racing's Mikel Miller, who gave him the inside lane to pass. There was plenty of room to get the pass done.
Instead, Ilott chose to go to the outside and the hole closed. The result was that Ilott hit Miller and the outside wall, breaking steering and suspension parts on both cars and putting both drivers out. Completely preventable.
In addition, there were a bunch of penalties. Sainteloc Racing's Christopher Haase, Patric Nederhauser and Markus Winkelhock ended up winning overall because Team WRT's Dries Vanthoor was given a drive-through penalty with 30 minutes to go. The reasoning? Vanthoor apparently "[disobeyed] instructions from the race
director." In short, he didn't slow down enough during one of the safety car periods. The whole scenario confused Vanthoor.
"We followed all the rules. For me it was a question mark why they [gave] us a penalty," Vanthoor told SportsCar365.com's Daniel Lloyd. "It’s the biggest nonsense I’ve heard so far in my career that I went too quick on a Full Course Yellow signal, even though in the briefing they said that when it’s Full Course Yellow you can still go quick, like over 150 km/h."
Alessandro Pier Guidi was given a drive-through around the same time, but it was a bit more obvious why. He effectively drove through Compass Racing's Acura in order to take over third overall. That was probably deserved.
Sainteloc Racing's second car (No. 26) was given a 53-second post-race penalty for entering a closed pit. That cost the team their Silver Cup-class victory and fourth overall. The aforementioned Compass Racing Acura shared by Mario Farnbacher, Ashton Harrison and Matt McMurry claimed victory as a result.
Finally, this was also the final race of the Fanatec GT World Challenge America Powered by AWS season. The first three hours of the race counted towards the championship. In practice, this was confusing as at least one car (the championship-winning No. 3 Lamborghini from K-PAX Racing) chose not to enter that race. Harrison and
McMurry claimed the overall victory at the three-hour mark. Harrison, in her first-ever GT3 race, became the first woman to ever win a GT race overall in the history of the series, which dates back to 1990.
While that is quite the accomplishment for Harrison, the whole thing is lost in this craziness. Ideally, I think it would be best if this race were separated from the Indianapolis 8 Hour. If that means that Fanatec GT World Challenge America Powered by AWS becomes a six-weekend championship and the Indianapolis 8 Hour is effectively an
exhibition event for these teams. Heck, making things less confusing might help increase the TV/streaming audience and on-site attendance, neither of which are very big.
This was more a series of small things that brought the race down. The SRO is probably going to have to look at some of what happened Sunday so that we don't see a repeat going forward.
For what's it worth, I knew this was going to be one of those days when Inception Racing's Brendan Iribe managed to spin into the gravel, get pulled out of it, slide back in on his own during a safety car period, then wreck Robin Frijns in the first 30 minutes of the race. Yes, he had braking issues, but jeepers
creepers.
Phil Allaway is the Frontstretch newsletter manager. He can be reached at phil.allaway@frontstretch.com. Photo is courtesy of the Intercontinental GT Challenge via DXDT Racing.
