IndyCar to restore morning warmups

Graham Rahal

IndyCar is considering bringing back race day warm-up sessions on all road courses in 2019, something that should never have been eliminated in the first place. Who came up with that idea?

Graham Rahal told Motorsport.com: “It was a trial run this year, to remove warm-ups for road courses. We left them on the street course schedules because obviously teams never get to test there.

“But we will have a team manager meeting this fall to discuss if removing them from most road courses was the right thing to do or not.

“I understand the point regarding the fans, for sure, and that would be the main reason to bring them back. But there are other things to consider, such as what time the races start – which is obviously linked to TV slots – and which races do the teams or the race promoters require the drivers to get involved in off-track activities, which is also a big attraction for fans.

“We have at least tried to be consistent with the basic layout of the schedules, so street courses are all the same, road courses are all the same, ovals are all the same – weather allowing. Texas has to be changed a little because we have the NASCAR Truck race on the Friday.

“Like I said, we’ll put it to the teams to see if they want to change it back."