INDYCAR: 2013 Rules Q&A With Beaux Barfield

SPEED.com catches up with INDYCAR president of competition/race director Beaux Barfield to discuss the 2013 rule book…

Marshall Pruett | Posted January 23, 2013 Charlotte, NC

INDYCAR president of competition/race director Beaux Barfield gives SPEED.com a look inside how the series' 2013 rule book was developed. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)

SPEED.com caught up with INDYCAR president of competition/race director Beaux Barfield to discuss the rulebook updates he and his team have authored for 2013, and also reviewed a number of other policy and procedure changes for the upcoming season.

PRUETT: What are some of the big ticket items you've addressed in the 2013 rules?
BARFIELD: I'll go through some of the high points, and we already covered my first item, doubleheader events.

One rule change that we've thrown in this year just to simplify the process is that we've taken away acompetitor’s right to select what side to start from for the pole, and that applies for the polesitter and also the leader on double file restarts. That's one seemingly significant change because it takes a right away from a competitor but, ultimately, that was only opted for one time all season from what I would consider the norm (at Baltimore when then-leader Ryan Briscoe took the outside line and paid the price).

For the sake of the fans, we have gotten more strict on how we apply the encrypted radios rule that teams tend to use during the event where the encrypted radio rule applied only on race day. It now applies to the entire event. Therefore, any time the fan is in the stand and a car is on the track they should theoretically be able to scan and hear their favorite driver on track; practice, qualifying or race.

There is a slight adjustment in the breakdown of points beyond 19th place (placing 19th through 24th used to pay the same 12 points, but now 19th pays 11 points on down to 6 points for 24th.)

There is an additional bonus point on the line for leading a lap, which was not in there. Any driver that leads a lap officially will earn a point (the driver who leads the most laps will continue to earn two points).

I changed the penalty for qualifying interference, which I wanted to do last year. It’s basically just a programming item. If you violate the rule, if you're a slower car during qualifying and you get in somebody's way, then you will not transfer to the next segment. Whereas, it used to be a loss of the fast two laps which could, potentially, have led to a non-penalty if the blocking driver was fast enough. This puts a very clear penalty and a very clear expectation.

Engine change penalties, we've been all over the place on it, but (the 10-spot grid penalty) remains the same.

Push-to-pass parameters are all pre-designated in the rulebook. So we had some issues last year with delay, this, that and the other; we’ve simplified, streamlined, and even gone so far as to say: here's exactly how much push-to-pass everybody gets in each event this year. No delays. So that's outlined in the rulebook.

(Event, Total Pushes, Time Per Push, Total Time)
St. Petersburg 10-15-150
Barber 10-20-200
Long Beach 10-20-200
Sao Paulo 10-20-200
Detroit 10-15-150
Toronto 10-20-200
Mid-Ohio 10-20-200
Sonoma 10-15-150
Baltimore 10-15-150
Houston 10-15-150

PRUETT: Seems like you’ve ended up with something more along the lines of a number of revisions and housekeeping items, compared to sweeping changes.
BARFIELD: I think this being rule book version 1.1 since I’ve arrived, as conservative as I was with the approach for 2012 implying that I was going to be pretty aggressive this year, the reality is that the rule book project itself was fairly simple in that a lot of the changes are rules that we made on-the-fly, so to speak, through bulletins during the 2012 season.

Referring back to those bulletins as a basis to begin our 2013 rule book project was a great start. And giving credit where credit is due, Holly Hodge, who is Will Phillips’ assistant, already had that working document ready for us as soon as the checkered flag waved at Fontana.

And we were really off and running. So, in terms of general philosophy, as aggressive as I felt I was going to be, it became really unnecessary based on some changes that we made during the season and carried forward.

PRUETT: The verbiage in the 2013 rulebook is a bit less menacing than what I’ve seen in recent years.
BARFIELD: It is a very subtle change to some of the tone of the rulebook--some of the wording that maybe created a sense of a very overbearing power. Yes, we have the power, but at least preserving some of the competitors’ rights and such we thought was important to have a look after the way we approach presenting the rules.

And therefore, one specific item to the general point would be, for example, the protest and appeal fees have been dropped to make that a little bit more open for the competitors. It went from $10,000 and $20,000 per protest and appeal, respectively, back down to five and 10. So we cut them both in half. I think it certainly puts it more in reach to some people that might have looked elsewhere to take action against if they felt like they were unjustly punished or whatever the case may be.

So we discussed philosophically what the higher price protest and appeal fees might've resulted in and decided to drop it back to where it was a few years ago.

PRUETT: How did the rules for standing starts come together?
BARFIELD: I had a good starting point from different series that I've worked with in the past (Champ Car and Atlantics) that had standing starts. So we put some notes down on what was good or bad about those and we put them up on a screen in an office and discussed the process and some of the important timing that was necessary for IndyCar, based on sitting still for a certain amount of time and potentially overheating or whatever the case may be, and came up with a process that we thought made sense for the competitors, for the fans, and for us to officiate.

That definitely came together with Will Phillips and the INDYCAR technical team as a cooperative effort. I think there's still a few very specific items potentially to be ironed out as teams begin developing or practicing launching the cars and such that could still be in a bulletin at a later date, but the overall process is defined very clearly in the rulebook.

PRUETT: The doubleheaders seem to shift those race weekends into “all business” affairs. Quick Friday practice, then onto qualifying, another quick qualifying and a pair of races over Saturday and Sunday…
BARFIELD: Well, it’s going to be a different format because of the way the schedule works now going through from beginning to end for a doubleheader weekend. Friday morning we’ll still have what would have been our normal Friday schedule in terms of a relatively long hour and 15 minute practice session. Followed in the afternoon by our normal qualifying Firestone Fast Six format, which will apply to Saturday's race. And then Saturday morning there will be a 30-minute session that's open for all cars, which will be a qualifying session for the Sunday race.

And so we considered a lot of options, but in terms of what we really think that the competitors deserve, this was the best approach. If we had anything from Race 1 that used a finishing position or fast race lap that qualified you for Race 2, we felt there was too much of a chance that you would therefore end up with two shot races on one weekend. So the 30-minute qualifying session on Saturday morning for Race 2 made the most sense to mitigate that potential catastrophe. I certainly had more aggressive ideas in mind but that's where we ended up.

So, Saturday morning qualifying, afternoon race, Sunday morning will be a warm-up and then Sunday afternoon race. I think there's more intrigue on each day now. Obviously, with Saturday getting a race over what normally would've been a Fast Six qualifying session, now we’re Fast Sixing on Friday and there's true intrigue and real racing for a fan to be there on all three days.

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