There were 366 overtakes in this race. Or in other words, about 80% as much as F1 in grand total last year! On a street circuit!

https://wtf1.com/post/there-were-a-massive-366-overtakes-during-the-first-indycar-race-of-the-season/


F1, eat your heart out!

I just don’t see how they get to that figure.

There was a decent amount of passing but I just don’t see anyway there was that much…. Not unless they were counting starts/restarts, Passing that occurred in the pits, Passing due to cars suffering damage/technical problems etc… & maybe even cars been lapped. F1 doesn't count any of those things towards passing totals.

I get your point, but even without getting caught up in the wording, I still can't say I agree.

I'm not even discussing whether Rossi is at fault here, he 100% is because he lost the back end. The key point here, which you mentioned, is the probability of the move of working. Some divebombs have a high probability of working, others don't. If officials keep penalizing the latter, but not the former, I'm fine with it and that's what overtaking is all about. There's still the word "risk" in "calculated risk". Rossi's mistake is the smallest one you can make while going for a move, so if that is penalized, you'll end up penalizing any attempt that isn't 100% sure. And 100%-sure passes are not racing, they're just glorified multi-lane highway passes, and I don't want the drivers being channeled into only making such moves and never making a daring one because it has a slim possibility of taking the leader out.

The message from the stewards yesterday was clear: race each other at the limit, you can make a small mistake, just don't make a super big one and completely misjudge it. I say it's the perfect recipe for entertaining racing: neither dirty/unprofessional, nor sanitized.

Two points. 1) I'm glad Rossie didn't get an avoidable contact penalty. I get frustrated with how often penalties are thrown around in F1. It feels like drivers are afraid to attempt a pass sometimes because they're so afraid they might get penalized.
2) That was a phenomenal race. For the first time in over a decade, IndyCars actually look cool, slide around under braking and have on-throttle oversteer, and can follow closely in the turns.