As the Verizon IndyCar Series hits the track at the 4.14-mile, 14-turn Road America -- by far the longest race course on the IndyCar schedule -- one term that won’t be used over the weekend is “pack racing.”

After the crash-filled Rainguard Water Sealers 600 at Texas Motor Speedway on June 10, IndyCar officials and competitors can breathe a sigh of relief over that. But what the Texas race showed was how quickly the current staff led by IndyCar president of competition and operations Jay Frye are to recognize a problem and take decisive action.

Because of tire blistering issues that had developed on the newly repaved and reprofiled 1.44-mile oval, IndyCar Race Control made a precautionary decision to break the final 90 laps of the race into three 30-lap sprints interrupted by “competition cautions.”

That had never been done before in a Verizon IndyCar Series race.

“A couple things happened earlier in the race, and we weren’t sure it was a team-specific issue or if there was some sort of problem developing,” Frye told Autoweek Friday at Road America. “As the race played out, it appeared to be more random with different times and appeared that things were starting to happen between laps 30 and 35. Now this was happening very, very fast and we came up with a decision in collaboration with Firestone we came with a number that we thought would be the safest way to go.

“We thought we could get a 30-lap run out of the tires in a safe manner.”

There were no tire issues in Friday’s practice session at Texas, but the pace of the race picked up quickly and that created a tire blistering issue. IndyCar and Firestone knew they had to make some quick decisions.

“We wanted to make sure we erred on the side of safety,” Frye said. “There are other valid answers and possible scenarios, but when that was going on there were a lot of other complicated scenarios that could have been done if we had more time to prepare. Both us and Firestone erred on the side of safety, and that is what we did.”

Chip Ganassi Racing managing director Mike Hull told Autoweek IndyCar's decision to have three competition cautions in the latter stages of the race helped create the pack racing at the end. His solution would have been mandatory green-flag pit stops 28 to 32 laps on each set of tires over the final 90 laps of the race. “I disagree with the way the cautions were presented to us,” Hull said. “What they did was create more pack racing than was necessary. I may get tattooed for saying this, but the reality is if they gave us a number to pit between lap 28 and 32 under green rather than all at once that would have been the more practical solution. “It’s not that we didn’t need to pit. I understand Firestone’s situation with the tires. They didn’t provide tires that would last a full stint. So, everybody agreed to get them to last. But what bothered me the most is after Las Vegas in 2011 (when Dan Wheldon was killed), there was a consensus from everyone that we would step away from the kind of pack racing that we saw at Texas. We wouldn’t step away from wheel-to-wheel racing but we would step away from three- and four-wide racing.” Hull believes Team Penske and its driver, Will Power, controlled the race and called it a brilliant strategy. “They downforced up their cars, stayed at the front and everybody behind them ... started hitting each other because they didn’t want to lift,” Hull said. “Half the field there has never raced in a pack race. You had inexperienced people racing in a pack race for the first time and they started hitting each other or were the recipients of getting hit. “When you learn something once, you should be smarter the next time. We all knew sooner or later the result would not be what we wanted to have and the result is we lost somebody very important to us. I’m just glad everybody was whole by the time everything at Texas was finished.” Rob Edwards is the chief operation officer for Andretti Autosport and calls the race strategy for Alexander Rossi. He had issues with several situations at Texas Motor Speedway and believes it should have been left to the teams to determine the tire issue in the race instead of bunching everybody up during the three competition cautions. “There were a number of other alternatives, but anything other than what was done would have been better,” Edwards told Autoweek. “I would have preferred to have had it in the team’s hands. I would have preferred something other than what was done, to be honest.” IndyCar's decisions at Texas, however, showed how the series has evolved in the way it conducts racing and is able to make key decisions quickly. “We did what we thought was the best decision at that time,” Frye said. “Hindsight being 20/20, you have time to think about it. But when you are making decisions in real time, you have to come up with a solution as the race is going on. “And that’s what we did.”

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