FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Milwaukee
First Impressions — By More Front Wing Staff on June 16, 2012 7:20 pmPAUL’S IMPRESSIONS:
Quite honestly, I just thought the race was okay. It wasn’t bad by any means, but I wouldn’t really consider it thrilling either. It was kind of a typical Milwaukee race. To really enjoy it, you have to almost view it as a street course and really understand the subtle nuances of the event. While it is an oval, the tires and fuel strategies are much more closely aligned with road and street courses. It’s not the type of race that will ever remind anyone of Chicago or Texas.
That said, there was plenty of good racing to be had, typically well behind the leaders. For most of the race, the leader ran unchallenged when in clean air, caught only when cautions led to restarts and gave chasing drivers a chance.
And restarts will be the topic of conversation this week — more precisely the penalty leveled on Scott Dixon on the lap 123 restart. Still hours after the penalty was handed down, race fans still haven’t gotten a good explanation about why Dixon was penalized or even for which restart attempt the penalty occurred. The ABC telecast showed one replay time and time again of Dixon simply following the crowed on the restart. This replay drew immediate scorn on Twitter as there was no apparent violation of any sort. Finally, ABC showed the replay of the aborted start one lap earlier. If this restart was the source of the penalty, one could make an argument for why Dixon was nailed, but I argue that he was no further out of line than the leader when the yellow flag was thrown. At worst, this was an awful call by race director Beaux Barfield that may have a significant impact on the season-long championship. At best, it is another sad example of the deplorable communication between INDYCAR Race Control and the ABC broadcast team tasked with ensuring the fan base is properly informed during the race. This failure continues year after year and severely undermines the fans’ confidence. If jumping the start is to be a violation this year, it needs to start at the front of the field with the leader. For too long, leaders have been jumping the start knowing there was little chance of repercussion. Those days need to end.
The best news of the day is that promoters Andretti Sports Marketing confirmed that the Milwaukee Mile will be back on the schedule in 2013. Whatever success this event was able to muster in four months (and all indications are that it was indeed a great event) should be easily trumped with a whole year of planning and preparation for next year’s event.
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STEPH’S IMPRESSIONS:
Right off the top: kudos times a thousand to Andretti Sports Marketing for announcing at the call to start engines that next year’s event is already a go and tickets will go on sale tomorrow. That extremely savvy move allowed us all to stop worrying about the rain delay and the empty aluminum in the stands and focus on the race.
As for the race itself, it looked promising early on, but it ended up feeling like roughly a 7 out of 10 to me based on the TV coverage. Given that this was an ABC race, though, I’d buy it if someone told me it was an 8.5 or 9 from the stands. Honestly, these guys couldn’t possibly be worse — while Ryan Hunter-Reay was making the pass for the lead that would ultimately allow him to win, Marty and Scott sounded like they were calling hole 5 of the British Open. But this is certainly not the first complaint about this and won’t be the last, and since nothing ever seems to be done about it, I’m not interested in investing much energy into complaining, especially since the flat commentary combined with the rain delay will let ABC skew the dismal ratings into an excuse for labeling INDYCAR a valueless commodity yet again.
The penalty call against Scott Dixon — which, sadly, is bound to end up being the biggest story coming out of this race — was the first time this season that a call of Beaux Barfield’s has truly left me scratching my head. It’s not because I don’t think Dixon jumped the restart — if it was the aborted restart that he was called for, I can sort of see the reasoning behind the call — but because the offense really didn’t seem that bad, and I find it extremely hard to believe that no one has done anything at least equally egregious up to now this season. A drive-through penalty at some tracks wouldn’t be so bad, but at Milwaukee it’s catastrophic, and Dixon’s actions to my mind warranted a warning or maybe a wrist-slap at most.
Overall, it warrants pointing out again that not every race can be a barn-burner, and I’ll still take this race over what we saw at, say, Detroit any day of the week. Other than the Briscoe/Franchitti incident, the restarts were remarkably clean and professional, and there was plenty of the fast dicing and hair-raising action that the Mile is well-known for. Andretti Sports Marketing did a bang-up job of turning this race into an event and putting it back on the map, and it’s fantastic to know now that it appears to have a secure place on the IZOD IndyCar Series schedule.
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ADDENDUM: Beaux Barfield has admitted that a failure in the timing and scoring system in Race Control caused the wrong replay to be used as a basis for the decision to penalize Scott Dixon.
Tags: Milwaukee Mile
I saw the first 50% of the race before it was shipped off to Weather Channel of QVC or wherever it went. You’re right, Steph, ABC will use the ratings against the series again in the future. It’s a classic case of beating someone silly and then beating them for BEING silly.
Regarding the Dixon penalty (which I didn’t see for the above mentioned reason), instead of a drive through penalty the league should consider a time penalty in the pits during regular pit stops.
For example, have Dixon sit in his pit for five seconds after the servicing is through and the jack has been dropped. A penalty of this nature would be more appropriate at smaller tracks for smaller infractions such as this one.
I gave the race a 5 because they’re painfully slow at Milwaukee this year, rivaling the speeds of nascar trucks.Still, better than Detroit, however.
The average speed of Saturday’s race, with cautions, was 122.02 MPH.
The fastest qualifying speed any NASCAR series has ever run at the Mile is 122.595.
Still painfully slow to me. I understand some of the cars were down in the 140s under green. It was obvious on TV that they were slower than in previous years. There was no need to lower the downforce at MKE since it isn’t a high-banker where the drivers have their foot mashed all around the track. The racing has always been interesting there without this gimmick.
Speed matters!
I don’t disagree that the cars were slower than in previous years, but they still have 40-50 MPH over NASCAR Trucks or Nationwide at the Mile. Heck, Indy Lights outruns both of those cars by 25-30 MPH. Even so, I’d like to see some more horsepower available for short ovals (all tracks too, but short ovals in particular).
Average race speeds for previous (since 1989, the first 160 MPH qualifying lap) Milwaukee races with a similar percentage of caution laps were anywhere from 12 MPH slower, to the same as Saturday’s race, to 7 MPH faster.
2006 – CCWS – 24.4% Caution – 116.1 MPH
2007 – IRL – 22.7% Caution – 127.22 MPH
2012 – IndyCar – 22.7% Caution – 122.02 MPH
1993 – CART – 22.5% Caution – 110.97 MPH
2004 – CCWS – 22.4% Caution – 129.86 MPH
2001 – CART – 21.3% Caution – 122.07 MPH
Thought it was a good race, and made me want to see one in Milwaukee in person. The mistake re: Dixon was unfortunate, but not totally undeserved to me. It looked like Dixon was the reason they called off the restart in the first place and that should be a penalty. The ratings won’t be good because unfortunately people don’t watch Indycar except Indy, sort of like horse racing and the Kentucky Derby.
Restarts are beyond fubared in Indycar and they need to come to a consensus on how to do them in a consistent. Double-wide here, single file there, third turn, fourth turn, green flag, whatever–they’ve always been bad recently and they’re not getting any better.
I do like the engine competition and all the twists and turns involved in that. Good for RHR and Hinch.
While everyone is straining their shoulders to give Andretti et al a pack on the back for renting a Ferris wheel and a Tilta-whirl that blocked portions of the track for someone sitting in row 22 who came to watch a race… It should be pointed out, there are dozens of Fairgrounds food vendors at the Mile, only 2 of them were open. Many of them (which were open last year) were behind a temporarily fenced off area. Spoke to one person, who stood in line 45 minutes during the rain for a brat.
Obviously, those issues, especially the food vendors, need to be addressed for 2013.