Quote Originally Posted by steveaki13 View Post
As an Indy Car newbie, can I ask a question about "running Green" and cautions.

Why does Indy car go to full caution after every incident? I mean in F1 we have yellow flag zones, Double waved yellow flag zones and SC (full caution). Just wondered why Indy Car doesn't deal with smaller incidents by trying to keep the area under localised yellows.

Just a question
It's a good question. That's the way it used to be done in the early days of CART. Corner workers cleared most incidents and wreckers/safety trucks weren't on track nearly as much. Over time it changed. I think there are several reasons why it changed. One is that many of the drivers, officials, etc. were from the oval tradition. There are a lot of good reasons why you want full course yellows on an oval, also why you want to clean the track on an oval too. There were also a number of car to car incidents on road courses and, worse, a few incidents where course workers were injured or had close calls (think Vancouver) because even though the incident was yellow the drivers were in "race" mode. Bad publicity, insurance and (IMO) fuzzy thinking made the powers that be lean way to much toward trying to make what is inherently a dangerous sport into a "safe" sport. Then we got the original IRL and (old) BB, who is a dyed in the wool oval guy, and oval rules applied. Those are just my thoughts on it, others may differ.