IndyCar News: Are Yellow Free Races Desirable?
The NTT INDYCAR Series has been setting a new standard with the street and road courses in the 2025 season by having no yellow flag laps during the race. With only six laps of yellow in the season’s first race, Firestone Grand Prix of St Peterburg, and no yellow flag laps in the next three races, Alex Palou just drives off into the distance.
When Autoracing1 asked the second and third place finishers from Long Beach what they thought about this sudden change, they both had a decent answer.
“One of the reasons is now we can start the car with the electric motor when we spin out, commented Alex Palou, the winner of three races this season. “Before, as soon as you could see a car out and parked, you would have to throw the yellow. Now you can wait a little bit and probably restart the car. Thermal would have been a yellow flag with McLaughlin and Devlin stalling. I think that’s probably helping on the yellows.”
Arrow McLaren’s new driver, Christian Lundgaard, added his thoughts. “I mean, personally, I think the hybrid weight makes it difficult to be close. Why there’s not really yellows, I don’t know. But I think there’s less kind of close racing because of the hybrid, in my opinion. It might be completely for a different reason. ”
Today, we asked Felix Rosenqvist what he thought of the caution-free races. “In a way it’s pure. Like the quickest guy wins. There’s no way around it. I think Alex (Palou) winning those races is a pretty clear — there’s no luck. There’s no ingredient that makes it easier. It’s just pure racing, which I think is cool.”
“There is definitely less action, less overtaking. I find myself in Barber kind of like waking up in a dream, like it feels like you’re just going around forever on your own. So it gets kind of lonely.”
Pato O’Ward added his thoughts on the yellow less races. “I mean, I’m gonna agree with Felix, like the guy that’s winning is truly the guy that deserves to win. Alex has been the quickest car, and he’s been the one to beat, and I think that obviously makes the racing a lot harder, even if you do have the strongest car, and have been doing the best job, you you can still, kind of, you can still get screwed by someone else’s stupid decision, basically, or someone else’s accident, right? And, you know, that’s what you have to juggle in, for example, the Indy 500 right? I think that one is definitely more prone to happen. But just seems like now, even yet, I would say here in the road course, one of the races where it’s less yellow prone.”
“I do think the racing has definitely been worse. I think there’s something that we need to look into to make the racing better, because the whole point is making the product good for the fans. And I feel like what we used to offer in terms of racing product, I don’t think we have that anymore, especially with this, you know, with this new addition, new package that we have.”
“The hybrid is definitely been a cause of making a little bit tougher for that. It’s kind of boring for the fans.”
But with little passes and limited pit stop strategy, the races are not so exciting for the fans. Watching the IndyCars drive around single file can be monotonous.
The series has also added a kicker to the 85 lap race on Saturday. Each driver has to use two sets of the primary (black) tires and two sets of the alternate (red) tires for at least two complete laps in the race. Which means every IndyCar will have to pit three times during the race. The teams will have to build a different strategy using fuel and pit stops instead of tire wear.
Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin commented on the change. “No, I think there’s a lot of cars out there that are on the black tire that are not as good as they are on the red tire, or vice versa. I think that’s going to be probably really interesting for everyone to follow is just how people look after their tires and how they play that into their own strategy.”
“Yes, it puts some emphasis back into the team and what they call, but ultimately the red/black tire thing, I guess you’re trying to see a bit more disparity rather than just
running the worse tire for six laps of the yellow to pulling it off and then putting reds or blacks on or whatever the best tires are for the rest of the race.”
“I’m excited. We did discuss this earlier in the season, and we all said no to it. So it’s kind of nice to be able to — I guess they’ve said stuff that we’ll try it, and that’s a good
thing.”
It will be interesting to watch the new strategy with tires on Saturday for the Sonsio Grand Prix at IMS. You can watch the race on Fox at 4:30 pm ET.
Lucille Dust reporting live from Indianapolis