{"id":64711,"date":"2019-08-19T13:44:38","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T20:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=64711"},"modified":"2019-08-19T13:44:38","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T20:44:38","slug":"will-indycar-return-to-pocono","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/will-indycar-return-to-pocono\/","title":{"rendered":"Will INDYCAR Return to Pocono?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Will
Image courtesy INDYCAR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another Pocono NTT IndyCar Series race, another big accident. Back-seat drivers are coming out of the woodwork to eviscerate Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLLR) driver Takuma Sato for his truly aggressive moves in the second turn of the first lap of Sunday\u2019s ABC Supply 500 race.<\/p>\n

Are they right? Is Sato wrong? Social media is all abuzz about what happened on the first lap. Should Indy cars even be racing at this Pennsylvania oval where Justin Wilson died and Robert Wickens was gravely injured? Wickens definitely believes INDYCAR, the sanctioning body for the United States\u2019 prominent open-wheel series, should find another oval to contest besides this one.<\/p>\n

\"Will
Takuma Sato<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHow many times do we have to go through the same situation before we can all accept that INDYCAR should not race at Pocono?\u201d Wickens asked.<\/p>\n

While Wickens obviously has personal reasons for his statement, he\u2019s backed up by a few others in the paddock, including Sage Karam, whose debris struck and killed Wilson in 2015. Currently a part-time driver in the series, Karam, from nearby Nazareth, doesn\u2019t put down the track: \u201cI think it\u2019s a great track; it\u2019s just not meant for Indy cars,\u201d he tweeted shortly after the collision between Sato, Alexander Rossi, Ryan Hunter-Reay, James Hinchcliffe and Felix Rosenqvist, who was injured when his car took a quick flying lesson.<\/p>\n

\"Will
Ryan Hunter-Reay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The ABC Supply 500 was scheduled for 200 laps around Pocono\u2019s 2.5-mile triangulated oval track. This collision – not calling it an accident – occurred on the first of those laps. Racers were a bit too racey at the start, seemingly forgetting that \u201cin order to finish first, first you must finish\u201d mandate. Was that due to the three weeks between races? How about the lack of qualifying the day before? Even with many different camera angles from inside the cockpits, the blame is sitting on Sato.<\/p>\n

In its box score, INDYCAR noted that penalties would be set post-race. It\u2019s now Monday afternoon and nothing has been said yet. Social media is looking for Sato\u2019s head. Yet no one is asking for the promoters to exercise due diligence in the maintenance of their aging oval, nor for improvements to that circuit, where it\u2019s easy for an Indy car going 225mph to get into trouble.<\/p>\n

\"Will
Felix Rosenqvist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Would the current AFT (frontal collision avoidance) have helped Rosenqvist? That\u2019s unlikely. Would better fencing and SAFER walls have assisted? How about the new aero screen currently in the final phases of development? Or how about an emphatic message from race director Kyle Novak to the 22 drivers assembled for a pre-race meeting? IMSA\u2019s first such director, one Charlie Rainville, used to caution the troops: \u201cI\u2019ll have no crashes in the first turn!\u201d Would anyone even listen to Rainville today?<\/p>\n

INDYCAR\u2019s 2020 schedule hasn\u2019t been set in stone yet. This was Pocono\u2019s last contractual year to hold a race. Turnout was good for the contest and many in the paddock love and respect the \u201cTricky Triangle.\u201d It remains to be seen whether the sanctioning body and the track can find a happy compromise that keeps these projectiles at Pocono in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Pocono NTT IndyCar Series race, another big accident.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":64712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470,3699,5029],"tags":[4547,5614,412,7061,4172,4459,3601,7060,41,3383,1632,5896,913,708],"class_list":["post-64711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-other-racing","category-racing","tag-alexander-rossi","tag-anne-proffit","tag-crash","tag-felix-rosenqvist","tag-indycar-racing","tag-indycars","tag-james-hinchcliffe","tag-juston-wilson","tag-news","tag-pocono","tag-racing","tag-robert-wickens","tag-ryan-hunter-reay","tag-takuma-sato"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/early-Pocono-racing-credit-INDYCAR-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-gPJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64716,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64711\/revisions\/64716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}