Time is up for IndyCar as unforgivable error leads to totally preventable disaster

Entering the 2025 IndyCar season, I had three main concerns.

One was the integrity of the series, primarily based on the happenings of last year with the timing of certain caution flags and the way the push-to-pass scandal was handled.

Two was the number of wrecks that start out looking innocent enough but then turn into total disasters. Think back to Sting Ray Robb getting airborne at Iowa Speedway and Santino Ferrucci being sent into the catch fence in Toronto, seemingly out of nowhere.

And number three was the fact that it's a coin flip as to whether or not race control will be asleep during the race or not, ironically tying into both of the first two points.

The number of times we have seen them hold a caution flag, for whatever reason, and singlehandedly turn innocuous-looking situations into dangerous and potentially life-altering situations is embarrassingly high.

Flip ahead to mid-2025 and Sunday night's race at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.

After its fair share of early drama, the race had settled in, with Team Penske's Josef Newgarden leading the way and well in control of what might well have been his fifth win in his last six starts at the four-turn, 1.25-mile (2.012-kilometer) Madison, Illinois oval, just outside St. Louis, Missouri.

As Fox Sports usually do for notable drivers when they transition to commercial, they showed studio shots of Newgarden on the screen for a couple seconds. But then they showed the No. 2 Chevrolet on its top, with sparks flying out from under it.

It took a few seconds to register that we hadn't gone to commercial. This was a live shot. Suddenly, for the second time since 2022, the other being at Iowa Speedway three years ago, Newgarden had crashed from the lead just as a commercial was about to start and the announcers were singing his praises.

Replay showed exactly what happened. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing rookie Louis Foster hit the wall in turns three and four, lost control of his car, and spun across the front straightaway.

Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou took evasive action, moving to the outside to avoid the No. 45 Honda. Newgarden went low, and disaster struck.

Replay showed that, from the time Foster lost control of his race car, race control waited roughly six seconds to throw the caution flag. The green flag stayed out up until the moment Newgarden's No. 2 Chevrolet smashed into the No. 45 Honda, resulting in a flip that sent him on top of the inside retaining barrier.

He was fortunate not to end up in the pit lane, and everybody involved was fortunate to walk away relatively unscathed.

What is it going to take to get race control to take their jobs seriously?

It is embarrassing. It is dangerous. And as much as I hate to say it, it is setting up to inevitably prove a lot more costly, at some point down the road, than it has in recent history.

Let's be real. IndyCar has been extremely fortunate that none of these wrecks, all completely preventable with an ounce of common sense from race control, have been worse.

Race control tried to redeem themselves by throwing the yellow as soon as A.J. Foyt Enterprises' David Malukas hit the wall later in the race, and they did so despite this incident being a lot less of an obvious hazard than Foster was as he was spinning across the track.

That's all well and good, and they obviously did the right thing here. We can complain about inconsistency; that's a given, to the point where it's almost low-hanging fruit. But on the surface, this was the correct call.

Yet we have praised race control before for seemingly learning from their mistakes, then they go right back to doing exactly what they had been doing, and more disaster ensues.

Is there any reason to believe this will be different?

Something needs to happen. There needs to be some kind of housecleaning or complete overhaul of how race control do their jobs when it comes to this. I'm sure, from top to bottom, it's not an easy job. But when the easy, yet crucial, parts of the job are consistently botched, something needs to change.

If Newgarden on his lid doesn't result in any change, I'm not sure what will. I'd actually rather not think about that.