INDIANAPOLIS – Following a calamity-filled ending to Sunday’s Verizon 200 at the Brickyard, NASCAR and Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials discussed their concern and dismay when the curbing in turns five and six deteriorated, leading to some massive crashes.
The delamination to the curbing, known as “turtles,” created a hazardous condition that destroyed several race cars, including those of top contenders William Byron, Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr.
The curbing came apart after the first major crash and was removed by NASCAR and IMS track workers, with the exception of one section a few feet off the apex of the turns.
The race was red flagged for 19 minutes and 53 seconds before returning to yellow as safety crews worked to get fluid and oil dry cleaned up around the course before going back to green for overtime.
On the first lap of the first overtime restart, Michael McDowell’s car hit the lone remaining piece of curbing and launched off the track, triggering another massive crash that also involved the cars of Tyler Reddick, Austin Dillon, Ross Chastain, Cole Custer, Truex and Corey LaJoie.
That brought out another red flag to stop the race before one last attempt at an overtime restart.
The final three laps saw a side-by-side, fender-rubbing battle down the long front straight entering turn one of the road course with Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe as the lead two cars followed by eventual winner A.J. Allmendinger.
Briscoe’s No. 14 Ford got punted off the course and drove in a straight line through the grass, shortcutting the track. He returned alongside Hamlin and NASCAR officials ordered him to serve a penalty for unsafe return to the track.
Briscoe claims he never heard the order and with Hamlin’s Toyota in front, Briscoe tapped him in the rear bumper, spinning out the leader.
Ultimately, Briscoe’s Ford overshot turn 12 and that put Allmendinger in the lead.
One lap later, Allmendinger won his first race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the second NASCAR Cup Series race of his career. His first came at Watkins Glen Int’l seven years ago.
NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller and Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Doug Boles admitted after the race they considered ending the race early if the damaged curbing could not be removed.
“Without being able to remove the curbing that was damaged over there, that would have been our only option,” Miller said a few hours after the race concluded. “We had a lot of fans here, a lot of energy, a lot of fans watching on television. We always strive to finish the race with the checkered flag. If we couldn’t have gotten those damaged bits out of there, that would have been what we would have had to do. But the fact we could take them out and race over that part of the race track, allowed us to continue.
“Obviously, that thing had deteriorated with that last big wreck quite substantially and there was no way we could justify leaving it like it was without removing it. There was some debate. It was obviously going to have to come out for us to continue. There was some debate about taking the other piece out, but as we worked through putting the track together for Xfinity before last year’s race, there was a big ask by the drivers to have something back there because that section was just way too fast. There was that grass and going into Turn 7 they would have been running 15 or 20 miles an hour faster. We weren’t going to sign up for that. That other one had to stay and that was the only way we were going to get back to racing today.”
Miller explained why the turtles are an important part of that section of the race course.
“When we laid out this track and did some Xfinity testing before the race, all of the drivers said we had to have something there because it would have been way too fast to go into that area,” Miller said.
Boles, who grabbed a broom to help clean up the damage in the area during the red flag, said the curbing gave no indication of breaking up at any point during the race weekend prior to the end of Sunday’s race.
“The curbing that delaminated is the same style of curbing that we had when we rebuilt the road course in 2014,” Boles said. “Those curbs have been replaced, repaired and we have never had an issue with those curbs at all. The only curb we’ve ever had an issue with was driver’s exit, which we haven’t seen in a couple of years.
“We look at that curb after every session, at night and in the morning and there was no indication early today there was every anything wrong with that curb. It was a surprise to us when we started having an issue with it during the race.”
Several drivers, including former multi-time Brickyard 400 winners Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick, were quite vocal about running a race at IMS on the road course instead of the oval. The drivers prefer the history and challenge of the 2.5-mile oval, but with attendance dwindling in the last 15 years, IMS and NASCAR officials decided to move the race to the road course this year.
“From the promoter’s standpoint, the energy level of today from our fans that came today was unbelievable,” Boles said. “I was so excited this morning to interact with folks. The weather was great today. There were all kinds of positives.
“When you look at today’s crowd, even compared to Saturday when we had IndyCar, Xfinity and Cup all running some level of racing on the same day, our crowd was 20 percent up today over yesterday. It’s clear that this is one of those events that we have made the right decision for right now. We want to have it back again next year on the road course and I want to see where it goes. I don’t think this has any impact on it.
“There was a lot of great action throughout the field and our fans were having a great time, so we felt very good about it.”
Both Boles and Miller said despite Sunday’s late-race issues, they expect future NASCAR races to return to the IMS road course instead of the oval.
“We had our problems today,” Miller admitted. “This is one of those deals where you take a lot of learnings today and you come back and put on a better event avoiding some of the problems that we had today. I think we saw some exciting action out there and the course itself puts on a really good show.”
Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Doug Boles (left) and NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Scott Miller (right) addressed the media after the chaotic end to Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race. (Bruce Martin Photo)