How Did Memo Get Away With It?

[Liz]

We all saw Memo Gidley flash past the pace car as if it were going backward. He was then allowed to resume his position as if nothing happened, and it was left to his imagination to find another way to screw up his race for this time.

How did he get away with passing the pace car? Didn't Scott Goodyear once lose a championship by doing that?

[Hans.ca]

No he lost the Indy 500 to J. Villeneuve. But I think that was just an excuse, the yanks did not want a canadian one two finish!!!!!

[marcus]

the answer is quite simple actually Liz.

when a yellow comes out and a pace car is deployed then it is the job of the pace car driver to pick up the leader of the race and not the leaders job to find the pace car ...simply put this was a mistake by the pace car driver and not memo ..they picked up brack instead of Gidley ..so therfore cart allowed the field to go by until Memo was at his rightfull place at the front of the pack.

now if you go back to the Indy 500 race you were referring to with Scott Goodyear..the problem there was simply that the pace car had picked up the leader and the yellow was about to be put away and racing resume..but goodyear jumped the gun a little bit and before the pace car was clear of the track he passed it and therefore earned himself the penalty he recieved..he was cliaming that the lights were green so he was back to racing ..but in the replays you could see that he simply misjudged it and paid the price..but back to Michigan it was a mistake by the pace car and therefore a driver cannot be penalised by a mistake by the officials so they sorted it out and racind resumed..it is always hard to get things exactly right and little mistakes like that will happen but thankfully CART corrected things without too much fuss.

so basically you are not allowed to pass the pace car unless you are waved by it and i think thats what may have happened in this case.

thats the way i see it anyway

[Liz]

Thanks for that, Marcus - nobody on the air ever explained it and I couldn't find anything about it on the net.

[macdaddy]

I didn't even know that it had happened. Haven't had the opportunity to watch the race on video yet. (VCR's are wonderful things, aren't they?) But I'll be sure to keep my eye open for it tonight after work when I finally watch the broadcast. I must have been either at the souveneir trucks, using the facilities, or simply too beered up to notice while at the race. Or maybe I was staring at the girl in front of me. Whatever the case...

[KC]

Apparently the pace car waved him by and attempted to wave by Brack but he refused to go. He commented over the radio to his crew the same. I think CART did the right thing to allow things to resume as they should have been had the pace car picked up the correct car. All day the computer scoring system had been struggling to correctly count the cars and CART had reverted to manual backup to make sure everything was correct.

[Crash Test]

Going back to the 95 Indy 500- Villeneuve passed the pace car early in the race, and was penalised 2 laps. Jacques was behing Scott going back to the green, he noticed that the pace car was slow exiting the circuit, and effectively stopped. Goodyear ignored the black flag, and the scorers stopped counting his laps- that is why he was credited (i think) with 14th position.

But as to Memo- was it just me, or did it take everyone a long time to slow down? It was like Nascar, everyone will still hard into for almost a lap after the yellow came out.

[jamie928]

I noticed that to Crash , Those guys were flying for about a lap and a half after the yellow came out. As far I as know there is no set speed limit until the pace car picks up the field on yellows .