The Auto Channel--Sports Car International V11 I10

FITTIPALDI'S COLUMN

Open Lines

In the last few races the IndyCar rules have become more visible to the average fan than at any other time over the last couple of years, and I think that this is because the level of competition has become much more intense and drivers and teams are operating more on the edge than they have for a long time.

Of course, the disqualification of my teammate Al Unser Jr. from first place at Portland is the biggest example of the new visibility of the rules, but I can't say anything about that incident here because we're still protesting that decision.

Still, I think most fans really aren't aware of how the rules are decided and enforced in IndyCar, and that's something that does bear talking about. Interestingly, IndyCar - the organization that runs our sport - is owned by the teams themselves. The head company, Championship Auto Racing Teams, or CART, is based in Detroit and each team owner has a stake in it. Working at the actual offices Monday through Friday are about 35 people, but the amount of details that they have to manage in that time is incredible.

Official Lineup

One of the main people at this office is Kirk Russell, the vice president for competition. If it has to do with what happens on the track, Kirk handles it. He's been an Indy racing official since before CART existed, and he was one of the first employees of the company back when CART decided to split away from USAC. Kirk has an engineering background so he understands the cars pretty well, and with more than 20 years of being an official I think he understands the drivers, too - sometimes maybe too well, we all say!

One of the other people is Wally Dallenbach, an ex-driver and also the father of the current NASCAR racer. Wally is the chief steward and the guy who in the end is responsible for making rulings in disputes. Wally sees things from a driver's perspective and he has years and years of experience to call on. I don't think he'd mind if I said he's been at it a long, long time - there isn't anyone else in the world who has his level of expertise with this sort of thing.

Safe Bets

Ultimately, the very first goal of the rulemaking structure is to ensure safety for the drivers and the fans. The board of directors of IndyCar made a rules committee with this aim in mind, and the chairman of that committee is currently Teddy Mayer, the man who owned McLaren when I drove there years ago and who now works with Penske. Teddy has been racing for over 30 years, and his original background is as a lawyer - he knows how to write rules, in other words.

Other members of the committee are drawn from other teams, so the rules are truly written by people who know what they're doing and know what is best for the sport in general. They also have access to all the latest safety data, and this has proven its worth in the fact that racing in IndyCar seems to be getting safer and safer every year. Motor racing will never be risk-free, but we've been walking away from accidents today that a few years ago would have been, well, not so good.

One little piece of information that illustrates how well this scheme has played out: Each car now has a crash data recorder in it, very much along the lines of the "black box" flight recorders in aircraft. If you're in a crash they can now take the data to help find the problem and see how the car (and the driver) reacted to it.

As I've mentioned here before, my friend Dr. Steve Olvey, the medical director of IndyCar, is very involved with driver safety issues as well, and he says it used to be an accepted fact that there was no car in the world in which the driver could survive a crashwith deceleration rates over 90-100g. When Robby Gordon crashed in practice at Michigan, the data recorder showed he underwent a deceleration of 115g, however, and he came through it as hard a competitor as ever.

When the rules are written, Kirk and Wally have to take them and apply them fairly to the competition at each track. Some of the rules have to be interpreted a little differently at different tracks, however, and that's one of the reasons that Kirk and Wally have a meeting with all the drivers before each race. At the meeting we talk about any problems we've had at other races, things we think might be a problem at this track, what we can do to fix any problem that has been raised, and how we are going to enforce any rules that are somehow different than before.

Then we talk about the upcoming raceday. First Kirk and Wally lay out the way they intend to interpret certain specific issues like the blend lines and the speed limit in the pits, how the pace car is going to operate during the race, all those things. Then the drivers can again say what they'd like to see happen and why. As you can imagine, sometimes those discussions are very intense! Other times, though, we have nothing to say at all.

Then Jim Swintal, the chief starter, talks to us about what he's looking for in the start, and we all decide what the limits are going to be for a fair or a false start the next day. You may remember I had a problem with that at Detroit with Nigel Mansell, but now we work with Jim beforehand and the starts are pretty fair every time - that's a classic example of how the rules process evolves over time with input from everyone. When we walk away from a drivers' meeting we've come to a consensus, and I believe that nearly all of us honestly feel we've had a voice in how the rules are going to work.

After our meeting, Kirk and Wally do the same thing with the chief mechanics, and interesting things often come out of those meetings, too.

Talk Radio

Even when the race is going on everyone is involved in the process. IndyCar has an official radio frequency that all the teams monitor, and that way everyone gets equal access to information about what's happening on the track and why decisions are being made the way they are. That's why in general you see so few protests in IndyCar these days - the system is designed to be fair and inclusive from the start.

I think it's human nature that when lines of communication are so open you wind up with very little to complain about. It's only when these lines break down that you're likely to get problems, but when you realize this going in you can plan for it and head it off in advance. Simply put, I think IndyCar will continue going strong in the future because it's one of the few racing series in the world that's really learned to talk.