However, we did have an abundance of caution flags, making the race a good barometer of our progress on cautions. Our general caution flag performance was much better than at our last oval track, Darlington, which was the first race of the season. Two races ago, IndyRC T only featured one caution. I think the new caution flag section in the rules page has been effective in outlining the caution flag processes and procedures.
We still have some areas to improve, though. A few of the incidents at Daytona, like Rookie's sudden encounter with the pace car, are more comical than anything. But in other situations, we're going to start penalizing for clear violations of the caution flag rules or the failure to follow or understand them. For educational purposes, here's what we found at Daytona while reviewing the replay, along with comments.
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Rookiesrock's tête-à-tête with the pace car driver:
On lap 41, the caution flag came out for an accident. The pace car driver jumped the gun a bit and, well...got himself involved in the proceedings.
Green flag restarts on laps 41, 44, and 52:
BlackKnight and a couple of other drivers were lining up out of position in the pace line prior to the restarts, drifting too far to the right and left. A few drivers just did it momentarily, and then corrected their positioning, so BK was the primary culprit in these incidents. But the point here isn't to pick on him. We need to remember rule VI-C 4 for restarts. If the field does this as a habit, then it could become a bad habit, and lead to unneeded confusion.
I should mention that everyone's been doing a pretty good job on the taking of the green flag. For the most part, the restarts so far have been fair and uneventful, apart from a little contact lining up at Darlington. We haven't seen significant issues of jumping or wrecking. Although, I suspect everyone realizes that we'll be paying extra attention to such occurrences on the replay.
A couple of drivers pitting under caution on various laps:
As everyone has witnessed, we're encountering busy pit road situations more often than we ever have in the past. For obvious reasons, due to cautions. This brings the importance of demonstrating awareness on pit road and following the pitting rules to the forefront. Overall, we've done a decent job.
At Daytona, on one or two occasions, drivers shuffled to the left and right and entered pit road side by side. We realize, technically, the rules do allow side by side entrances to pit road in certain situations. But that should really be a last resort, and it's mostly a green flag phenomenon. Obviously, we designed the pitting rules long before we added yellow flags. Side by side driving tends to contradict the general principle of not passing under yellow.
We need to be entering pit road in single file, driving in the outside lane. When you're out of position, it's easy to block the view of those behind you.
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To summarize, Daytona was reasonably good on the caution flag side of things.
Since cautions are new this year, we're just providing lots of detail in the early going to assist our future handling of them. If you have a question about the new rules, or a general suggestion or concern about yellow flags, then we'd like to hear about it and discuss it.