After the thrilling finish of this year's Indianapolis 500 ever intrusive television camera's found second place finisher, Marcus Ericsson, quietly weeping for coming with one second of winning the big prize. This emotional response, especially when the margin is slight, comes about when you have thirty three extremely talented and highly motivated drivers all chasing a prize only one can catch.
The t-shirt often seen at NASCAR tracks that says: Second place is just the first loser, sums up the mindset of many like Ericsson as they chase their dream at speeds well over 200 mph. As gut wrenching as the near miss was, Ericsson had to absorb another punch to the gut – this time from his own team. His car, along with two others failed the post race inspection and were relegated to the back of the field. This is in addition to two of the fastest cars starting at the back because they failed tech inspection before the race.
The shocker in this sad tail is that these were not small, under financed teams but giants in the racing world – Penske and Andretti. They did not get caught in some gray area of the rule book. The rules were that certain parts were to be used just as they were manufactured. It does not suggest they should not be modified or tweaked, it says don't mess with them. Simple enough. Twenty eight teams were able to get it right.
In fairness to the Captain and the Andretti's, these are not the people turning the wrenches and working on the cars. In Roger Penske's situation, he fired the three men he found to be responsible... experienced team members who should have known better. His problems were found before the race so at least they had a chance. However from starting at the rear of the field and working his way up to fifth place, Josef Newgarden thrashed his car so hard it eventually gave up before the race was over.
I don't know why Andretti's parts issue was not discovered before the start, or how they handled the situation within the team, but in both cases, there were lower level people working in a highly competitive environment where one second at the end of five hundred miles can make the difference between success or failure. It's not just the drivers and owners that want to win, that spirit permeates the entire team.
It is no surprise that some will go beyond the rule book looking for an advantage. In the early days of NASCAR, slipping something past the tech inspectors was almost expected and car builders like Smokey Yunick built a reputation on it. He claimed to be responsible for half the rule book. The TransAm series gave Roger Penske's team the opportunity to have their own “legendary” interaction with that rule book. With Indy cars, teams bought or built their chassis and if it passed the safety inspection, it was good to go.
The system worked fairly well, despite each circuit losing a driver or two every year. However, costs increased. Speeds increased. With Indy cars, the decision was made for everyone to use the Dalara chassis. While there is no way to be absolutely safe traveling in a pack of cars going well over 200 mph, the record is remarkable as drivers are now walking away from crashes that would have been life ending the past, or at the very least, career ending.
This is why the organizations tend to come down hard on certain modifications. This is why there are plenty of ways to find more speed and why there are parts that should be left as-is.
I'm not one to follow rules just because they are rules, and probably neither are half the people reading this. I don't know what the safety impact would be for the modifications in question, but it does give a background to the disqualification issue.
The point is that someone, probably not the top guy took it on themselves to make a tweak to the supplied parts, possibly endangering the driver and chance of victory for the entire team. I'm sure they did not think about it that way at the time, but in a win at all costs culture that we see today, it's easy to understand how some would try for an advantage and just hope they don't get caught.
We see this in the corporate world, in other sports, in politics – where it hurts all of us. There is very little honor left in out system. In some companies, there are more lawyers than planners and builders. They have book length contracts where these lawyers try to cover any devious plan that could be developed. These lawyers are good at coming up with devious plans as that is what they get paid for.
President Reagan used the term “trust but verify” to describe his foreign policy. The hand shake deals are a thing of the past in most cases. Would I like to go back to that? Not with the people we are dealing with today!
Disqualifications in racing are just a byproduct of our society. They can take the word of the teams that everything is on the up and up... but then they need to SEE FOR THEMSELVES!