Why did IndyCar let teams refuel before restart at Alabama?

LEEDS, Ala. -- Following the postponement of Sunday's Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, the Verizon IndyCar Series announced that teams would be allowed to make adjustments to their cars ahead of Monday's restart (12 p.m. ET).

Among the most controversial of those changes was allowing teams to choose how much fuel they'd begin the race with. That ruling angered many fans and a couple of drivers who were on alternate strategies than much of the rest of the pack.

Andretti Autosports' Marco Andretti said via Twitter Sunday night: "Hard to call it a continuation of a race tomorrow when they let everyone ahead of me add fuel overnight. Instead of P14 and leader on opposite strategy. We are now just P14. Bummed but ready to go again tomorrow."

So why did IndyCar allow make this ruling? The simplest answer is that series couldn't be sure its teams wouldn't try to game the system. Barber Motorsports Park is a wide open road course with numrtoud access points to the paddock. There was no logical way to keeps crews away from cars.

In a perfect world, IndyCar President of Competition and Operations Jay Frye said, the series would have impounded all of the cars and not allowed teams to make any changes. At a place like Indianapolis Motor Speedway or Texas Motor Speedway, this would have been possible since there is a sealed garage area where they can simply lock up the cars. In fact, the series did that at Texas a couple of years ago. Upon stoppage of the race, they ushered all of the cars into the garage and area and kicked all team personnel out.

"Ideally, we would have brought the cars off the track, put them into a garage, covered them up and been done," Frye told IndyStar. "Then the next morning, they would have been able to check the tires, warm the cars up and put them back on pit road."

That was not an option on Sunday, Frye insisted. Instead, the series opted to put the race under what Frye called a "modified red flag" that allowed team to make sanctioned changes while the event is paused.

After culling the paddock for a consensus, that is what the series concluded would please the most teams while maintaining the integrity of the race. Frye also added that he didn't think it was possible that too many strategies were affected.

"Think about the race yesterday," Frye said. "We never really got going. It was caution laps and this and that. if anyone had any strategy, I don't know how because it was so fluid. Strategies went out the window -- quickly."

Moving away from the fuel issues, Frye added that it was important to go to a "modified red flag" to allow teams to make adjustments to theirs cars for a dry race track Monday, since the setups are wildly different than what they were yesterday.

The goal, Frye said, is to maintain the integrity of the race as best they could while also creating the best possible show for IndyCar fans.

In that spirit, the only car not allowed to be tinkered with ahead of the race is the one belonging to Will Power. Since his car slammed into the wall Sunday afternoon after a restart yesterday, the series ruled that in order to maintain the continuity of the race, the Team Penkse No. 12 team won't be allowed to make any repairs until the race goes green on Monday.

While Power was upset that the race restarted in first place and that he got caught in a puddle on the front straightaway, Frye said the consensus of the paddock at the time was that the race was ready to resume.

"Before we went green, we were asking for teams' input," Frye said. "In race control, we were asking drivers, 'Are we good? Can we go?' ... . We had our people out there who were saying it was better than even when we started. We were asking spotters, corner workers, the (safety team) and the drivers. In this regard, the drivers trump everything. It's about safety. And they know more than anything.

"We were getting that information the whole time. At that point, there were a couple drivers who said no, but most of them, 'Let's go.' ... It's not a perfect science, but we do the best we can with all the information we have."

All in all, Frye said, Sunday was a frustrating day for the series.

"We want to put on a great show," Frye said. "We could have just kept the cars out there under caution conditions, but we want to have a race, a good race. It's frustrating when it's a rain race. We're supposed to be able to run in the rain. We are. We couldn't yesterday, and that's frustrating. Too much puddling and drainage things. That's it. We just want to do right by fans and promoters. These guys are fantastic. As good as they get, but there's nothing we could do. We went as long as we could."

Follow IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter and Facebook: @jimayello.