IndyCar at Pocono Raceway: Nothing goes as planned

IndyCar visited Pocono Raceway for the seventh consecutive year this past weekend, but nothing about the weekend resembled a typical race weekend.

In the final year of its current contract with IndyCar, Pocono Raceway hosted America’s premier open-wheel racing series for the seventh consecutive season for the ABC Supply 500 this past Sunday.

At the end of the race, the championship standings reflect nothing more than a typical IndyCar weekend having been completed. But what happened over the course of the weekend reflects far more than that.

Or in this case, far less.

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The ABC Supply 500 race weekend is one of very few race weekends to feature only two days of on-track activity, a polar opposite of the other 500-mile race on the schedule, the Indianapolis 500, which features practice sessions nearly two weeks in advance of the race and close to 10 in total.

For the ABC Supply 500, there were two scheduled practice sessions and a qualifying session for Saturday, August 17 and the race was scheduled to take place on Sunday, August 18.

There was no rain during the first scheduled practice session from 9:30 a.m. ET to 10:30 a.m. ET. However, because of rain in the area and the low clouds as a result of it, the medical helicopter could not operate as it is required to during practice sessions. As a result, this session never happened.

Shortly after this practice session would have ended, it began to pour. But while qualifying was not scheduled to take place until 12:30 p.m. ET, IndyCar canceled qualifying and instead doubled the length of the second one-hour practice session to two hours.

When it was all said and done, this lone two-hour practice session ended before the second practice was even scheduled to begin at 4:00 p.m. ET, and the day’s on-track activity was done with the race’s starting lineup set based on entrant point totals.

Last year was the first season of the new UAK18 aero kit, and one of the two practice sessions for this race was canceled due to rain. Because of the limited weekend schedule to begin with, this lack of track time was a disaster waiting to happen, especially with it having been so difficult to pass in the Indy 500 earlier in the year.

That disaster happened on the race’s first green-flag lap when a five-car wreck took place and Robert Wickens was launched into the turn two catch fence of the three-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) oval in Long Pond, Pennsylvania, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

The total practice time for Sunday’s race up being the same as it would have been had the initial schedule been maintained. But it still proved to not be enough, and the fact that it happened the way it did crammed into a single session as opposed to split into two separate sessions with a qualifying session in between may have been a factor.

What happened in 2018 on the first green flag lap heading in turn two nearly happened again this year on the first green flag lap heading into turn two.

Here's how drivers saw the Lap 1 incident at @PoconoRaceway. #ABCSupply500 // #INDYCAR pic.twitter.com/Kv4C25557p
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) August 18, 2019

Watching Rosenqvist go up the track and get above the wall felt like watching 2018 all over again, and based on how the cars were running between turns one and two, you could see it coming long before it happened.

All in all, this wreck, from start to finish, was probably more violent than last year’s. Fortunately, the impact with the catch fence that Chip Ganassi Racing rookie Felix Rosenqvist made was not nearly as severe as the impact with the catch fence that Wickens made last year, and nobody was seriously injured as a result of the incident.

However, like last year’s wreck, this wreck resulted in a lengthy red flag period for track cleanup and catch fence repairs. This year’s repair process was shorter than last year’s, but it still lasted for 45 minutes, and that ended up playing a role in the race result.

The race got back underway under the sunny sky, but dark clouds began to roll in at around the halfway point. There were lightning strikes in the area that could be seen from the grandstands, but the race continued.

Then, several laps later, the caution flag flew for conditions that were exactly the same as they were 20 minutes prior, and the red flag then flew for the threat of bad weather. Fans were told to leave the grandstands, at which point the sun was now shining again between the dark clouds, and only several minutes later did the wind pick up.

Only several minutes after that did the rain begin, at which point the race had already been called since more than half of its 200 scheduled laps (128) had been completed.

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IndyCar has experienced some strange race weekends before, but this one stands out as one of the strangest from start to finish. Literally no sessions happened as planned for various reasons, and while there were several decisions seemingly made on the spot throughout the weekend that ultimately played a role in the ABC Supply 500 unfolding the way it did and becoming the ABC Supply 320, many of these decisions were the best possible decisions at the time.

When we look back at this particular weekend in the future, we are truly going to be how on earth it could have possibly ended up being this skewed from the norm.