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IndyCar sticking with controversial restart

To understand IndyCar’s controversial double-file restarts, simply imagine the parade into Noah’s Ark — only with the animals elbowing, swearing, and pushing each other off the gangplank.

EDMONTON — To understand IndyCar’s controversial double-file restarts, simply imagine the parade into Noah’s Ark — only with the animals elbowing, swearing, and pushing each other off the gangplank.

The experiment — launched this season at the urging of some of the team owners — has reached its mid-point, and no one disputes it’s made for a better show. TV ratings are up slightly.

“I think it’s great for our sport, it’s great for the racing,” said driver Ryan Briscoe. “It takes out a lot of the predictability of the restarts that we’ve seen in past.”

But he admits: “I’ve been one of the few supporters among the drivers,”

The concept is as basic as the title: when drivers restart after a full-course caution, rather than going single file as in years past, the No. 1 and 2 drivers race head to head, as do the Nos. 3 and 4, and on down the line.

The conception was immaculate, the birth a disaster.

There was a massive pileup on the first turn of the first race in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Marco Andretti literally got tossed upside down, surrounded by other cars stalled out at crazy angles, everyone looking like rank amateurs.

To prove it was no fluke, the drivers combined for another three full-course cautions in the next 14 laps.

As the pileups mounted in subsequent races, the anger spilled out over radio headsets and on TV cameras.

“They go so fast, and then they bunch up so slow,” Danica Patrick radioed back from the track.

“Racing with Dario, Will and Tony is fine. It’s all the other morons,” Ryan Hunter-Reay told his crew.

Alex Tagliani was more to the point: “Really stupid.”

IndyCar racing competition chief Brian Barnhart has responded with two words of his own — stop whining.

“This is all about discipline and you guys being smart,” he told the drivers at one meeting, adding in another that for those insisting on risky passes, the laws of physics are immutable.

“You can’t make a hole where one doesn’t exist.”

Simona de Silvestro said it’s a good innovation because no lead is safe.

“It’s great for the fans. And for us, you can actually make (up) positions, whereas before (on the single-file) restarts it was so tough that you were pretty much sitting where you were.”

The series has tweaked the restarts, ensuring more space between the cars to try to prevent domino collisions.

But some problems are inherent. Unlike NASCAR cars, with their big, bulky fenders and punishment-absorbing doors, the open-wheel IndyCars are more like kites on wheels.

“Our cars are very strong, but at the same time they’re very delicate,” said Helio Castroneves.

“That’s my discomfort. We should have something different (for the restarts).”

The other problem is the speed, and the scenario is all too familiar.

“Green, green, green, green!” shouts a voice in the headset as the restart begins. The driver touches the pedal and boom, rockets forward like a land missile on the Bonneville Salt Flats, then a second later slams on the binders as the cars get jammed up in the first turn.

For those caught in the middle, the air is dirty and discombobulated. There’s no resistance, no downforce, and the car starts sliding.

James Hinchcliffe said some tracks are better than others: wide open ovals, for example, are better than trying to jam two cars side-by-side into tight corners like at Toronto’s street course last week.

But it is what it is, he said.

“The drivers just need to do a better job,” he said.

“I think we’ll be better this week in Edmonton.

The race goes Sunday.

The new 13-turn, 2.6-mile (4.2-km) circuit at Edmonton’s City Centre Airport will see the restarting drivers rev up along a long straightway heading into a 90-degree hard left at Turn One.

Tagliani sums up the likely result in another two words: “multiple wrecks.”

Hunter-Reay disagrees.

“We’ve got a little bit of room (in Turn 1) to move around if someone tries a dive-bomb manoeuvre,” he said.

Will Power echoes that.

“It should be a little bit better because of the long straights. There’s a bit more time to sort things out, a bit more run off. I think it will be easier, this track,” said Power.

Oriol Servia said the trick is for drivers, as always, to be aggressive but not reckless.

Is there a general rule, a consensus of restart etiquette taking hold among the drivers? he is asked.

“”The rule is there are no rules,“ said Servia.

“You’ve got to be fast and ready to do anything, basically.”