Barfield Says Rule Penalizing for Engines Blown During Tests Will be Reviewed

IndyCar’s president for competition said grid spot penalties for blowing engines during tests are “unintended consequences” of a rule aimed at containing engine costs.

At issue is a 10-grid-spot penalty Andretti Autosport's James Hinchcliffe will incur at Long Beach for having to change engines after blowing one during a test earlier this week at Sonoma. The IndyCar rulebook says “Any Unapproved Engine Change Out, except those caused by Engine failure in a Race, will result in a 10-place grid penalty.”

Engines can only be replaced without grid penalty when they reach 1850 miles or if they blow during a race, according to the rule book. Therefore if an engine blows at, for example, 900 miles during practice or qualifying on a race weekend or during a test held any time, the change will be “unapproved” and incur the penalty.

IndyCar President of Competition Beaux Barfield said Wednesday the intent of the rule is to discourage engine makers from building short-lived engines in an effort to gain a competitive edge. Theoretically, if an engine only had to last, say, 1000 miles, the reduced need for durability could allow a design that generates a bit more power.

“It was basically a self-imposed penalty that (engine makers) decided would be appropriate to keep them from basically trying to outspend each other in this era of ultimately price caps processes,” said Barfield. “In order to try and keep the engine leases and the engine programs at a reasonable price for a team, they decided this would be an appropriate way to try and move forwards to try and control that.

“I share the fans pain in that it sort of lacks sensibility in penalizing a team and driver rather than penalizing the engine manufacture itself (for faulty or experimental engines)."

When teams pay an engine lease, they essentially get engine warranties that say the maker will replace the engine if it fails or reaches 1,850 miles — whichever comes first — at no extra charge, assuming the teams didn’t make any unauthorized changes to the engine to cause its failure. In the era of sealed engines in IndyCar, unauthorized tweaks to the engine’s internal components are exceedingly rare.

For now, the rule stands and the penalty will be imposed on Hinchcliffe, Barfield said. The rulebook also says:

An Engine that has experienced a problem deemed sufficient to require Change-Out as mutually agreed by INDYCAR and Engine Manufacturer that is beyond the reasonable control of either the Entrant or Engine Manufacturer (such as faulty fuel, accident, damage to the Engines caused by act of God, etc.) may be replaced with an Engine from the pool without penalty.

If teams believe the engine change was caused by reasons beyond their reasonable control under the rule above, they can make their case to IndyCar vice president of technology Will Phillips, Barfield said.

Further complicating the picture is the IndyCar rule that teams can only change engines up to five times in one season. Every engine change beyond the fifth will also result in a 10-grid-spot penalty.

“If they (teams) have engine issues within the 1850 miles and they are putting in new engines now, by the end of the year they may be on their sixth or seventh engine or so, and going over five (limit) also incurs the same penalty, which could show its ugly face later in the year for some teams who are having these early problems,” Barfield said.

Barfield agreed that the prospect of a grid penalty for an engine blown during testing could discourage testing. As it stands now, teams will have to determine if the benefit of testing is worth the risk of a penalty for blowing an engine.

“Ultimately, at this stage, trying to get the car developed and get as many miles on it and such as possible, it’s in everybody’s best interest — the engine manufactures, teams, Dallara, IndyCar — for these cars to just be doing miles,” he said. “So for us sort of inadvertently putting a regulation out there that disincentivizes testing, that is absolutely not what we want.”

Barfield said engine makers won't be likely to allow teams to keep engines with more than 1850 miles on them to use for tests (which, if they blow, would not incur penalty due to the mileage). Engine makers take "mileaged out" engines to rebuild and put them back into the engine pool. A "catastrophic failure" would likely mean the engine could not be used again.

Barfield said he has some ideas for changing the rule so as to not penalize testing, but the issue with changing the rule at this point is maintaining fairness to teams who have already been penalized for changing engines during race weekends at St. Petersburg and Barber.

Barfield said he would soon “bring everybody in and share some opinions to see how we feel about where the rule has gotten us and how everybody feels about the possibility of changing it, obviously taking into consideration how the teams that have already been penalized this year might look at that precedent, and if it’s something the manufacturers would be interested in considering.” Barfield said the group that considered a change would be four or five people, of which he will only have one vote.

“In terms of what my perceived role is (in altering the engine rule), it’s relatively insignificant on the technical side of things,” said Barfield, who added that Phillips leads the technical rule-making efforts. “I certain have something to say and a good bit of influence, but to walk into those guys and saying ‘I think is how we should do it and this is what is going to be done’ would not be inappropriate.”

Comments

[Julie P]

I think the rule is fair. We need to remember that the teams do not own the engines...they lease them.

The manufacturers have to eat the cost to rebuild or replace a blown engine. Several people have said that the manufacturer should be the one penalized not the team....but in a way they are. The have to either repair or replace the blown engine in the pool at their own expense. The penalty is meant to discourage teams from tearing up engines or pushing them beyond the limits during testing because they could without penalty.

This is no different then leasing a car. If you bring it back damaged, you pay a penalty regardless of how the damage occurred. The way to solve the problem is to require teams to buy the engines then you can remove the penalties because all the expense is on them.

[Dylan]

The engine rules aren't very good. I really dislike engine limits/mileage rules. A lot of racing series have some type of engine rule (MotoGP, WSBK, Indycar, f1, NASCAR's 2nd tier series) but they don't seem to do a lot of positive things for the series. Same with testing bans/limits. they may reduce costs but a lot of times they make costs worse, as teams have to use even more expensive and difficult ways of getting information if testings banned and making engines last longer and still be fast is also expensive. Worse, they hurt the parity in a racing series (see Ducati being prevented from testing in MotoGP) and potentially cause teams and drivers/riders to have to take it easy to preserve equipment which hurts the product the fans see on track. Including testing in the engine limits makes even less sense. And Indycar's engine limits compared to GP/F1 is harder on teams because they're limited to 1 engine at a time, where as in those series teams are given an amount of engines for the year. So often they'll swap an older engine in for non qualifying/race use. I would hate to see the title decided based on a testing incident and that's the situation that Indycar is setting up with handing out a ten spot penalty for engine changes.

I don't really get how Indycar plans to make their engine policy work long term, either. They don't want development costs but they don't want to force-equalize the engines the way NASCAR does, so what's going to happen? Are they going to end up with each engine stuck at wherever it starts the year at, and those teams are just out of luck? At least in other series there's a chance a less than competitive car/bike can improve over the year.

[bradman]

We're already seeing that the new car and engine(s) has about the same power to weight ratio as the old car and engine. This is not good. Another 100 hp would have breathed fresh life into the old package, but Honda refused because they didn't want even a single engine failure to tarnish their ever so carefully crafted golden luster. The new engines will simply have to generate more power than they do now. At this point the new chassis is basically sorted, so any further incremental tweaks to spring rates, dampening rates, ride height, toe, camber, etc. isn't going to deliver significant speed. This limit on the number of engines, penalties for swap outs, etc. discourages the very sort of hp war in IndyCar that we have all longed for for, well, decades now. The real upcoming test for the new car and engines will be Indy. If the new car and engine is not faster than the old car and engine, that will be a huge embarassment and will leave everyone wondering what all the fuss was about in having a new chassis and engine formula anyway. Safety? Engineering more hp from smaller displacement? Still needing to fully sort the new car and engine combination? Yeah, I can hear the excuses coming from the front office already. Can't wait for qualifying weekend this year!

[redcar]

I understand cost controls, especially considering the excesses of F1 and some of the Tony George era. But then I also like the idea of mechanics and engineers tinkering to make engines faster, at least within reason. It's less spec and more olden days of yore. So I got no answer, I think they're doing there best, I guess. And I do appreciate Beaux Barfields transparency and question-answering-efficiency.

[Miller Robbins]

The 10 grid penalty might be the dumbest rule in the history of Indy Car Racing.

And that's saying something.

How about this? Come up with a few rules at the beginning of the season and actually STICK WITH THEM. It seems like they change rules every race now. We have some races with 2 wide restarts. And some without. We got too many stupid-ass rules, that even the most diehard of fans can't figure out or keep track of.

Lets figure some stuff out, fellas. We come off looking like a bunch of amateurs just making things up as we go.

[Ramblinman]

I agree whole-heartedly with Miller Robbins' post above.

Give me a break IndyCar. We don't need more rules that takes away the driver's desire to race to the front of the field in a no-holds-barred fashion.

This rule seems to only help cover the behinds of the engine manufacturers and takes away from the competitive nature of the sport.

No fuel knobs, no dumb ass rules, and less strategy. Just old fashioned, hard-nosed racing.

Just my two cents....

[cartracer20]

Miller Robbins, eh? Sounds vaguely familiar...